1. Do children derive exact meanings pragmatically? Evidence from a dual morphology languageFranc Marušič, Rok Žaucer, Amanda Saksida, Jessica Sullivan, Dimitrios Skordos, Longlong Wang, David Barner, 2021, original scientific article Abstract: Number words allow us to describe exact quantities like sixty-three and (exactly) one. How do we derive exact interpretations? By some views, these words are lexically exact, and are therefore unlike other grammatical forms in language. Other theories, however, argue that numbers are not special and that their exact interpretation arises from pragmatic enrichment, rather than lexically. For example, the word one may gain its exact interpretation because the presence of the immediate successor two licenses the pragmatic inference that one implies “one, and not two”. To investigate the possible role of pragmatic enrichment in the development of exact representations, we looked outside the test case of number to grammatical morphological markers of quantity. In particular, we asked whether children can derive an exact interpretation of singular noun phrases (e.g., “a button”) when their language features an immediate “successor” that encodes sets of two. To do this, we used a series of tasks to compare English-speaking children who have only singular and plural morphology to Slovenian-speaking children who have singular and plural forms, but also dual morphology, that is used when describing sets of two. Replicating previous work, we found that English-speaking preschoolers failed to enrich their interpretation of the singular and did not treat it as exact. New to the present study, we found that 4- and 5-year-old Slovenian-speakers who comprehended the dual treated the singular form as exact, while younger Slovenian children who were still learning the dual did not, providing evidence that young children may derive exact meanings pragmatically. Keywords: Acquisition of quantity expressions, Acquisition of exactness, Pragmatics of grammatical number, Inferences on quantity, Dual, Slovenian Published in RUNG: 13.12.2020; Views: 3212; Downloads: 0 This document has many files! More... |
2. Do children use language structure to discover the recursive rules of counting?Rose M. Schneider, Jessica Sullivan, Franc Marušič, Rok Žaucer, Priyanka Biswas, Petra Mišmaš, Vesna Plesničar, David Barner, 2020, original scientific article Abstract: We test the hypothesis that children acquire knowledge of the successor function — a foundational principle stating that every natural number n has a successor n + 1 — by learning the productive linguistic rules that govern verbal counting. Previous studies report that speakers of languages with less complex count list morphology have greater counting and mathematical knowledge at earlier ages in comparison to speakers of more complex languages (e.g., Miller & Stigler, 1987). Here, we tested whether differences in count list transparency affected children’s acquisition of the successor function in three languages with relatively transparent count lists (Cantonese, Slovenian, and English) and two languages with relatively opaque count lists (Hindi and Gujarati). We measured 3.5- to 6.5-year-old children’s mastery of their count list’s recursive structure with two tasks assessing productive counting, which we then related to a measure of successor function knowledge. While the more opaque languages were associated with lower counting proficiency and successor function task performance in comparison to the more transparent languages, a unique within-language analytic approach revealed a robust relationship between measures of productive counting and successor knowledge in almost every language. We conclude that learning productive rules of counting is a critical step in acquiring knowledge of recursive successor function across languages, and that the timeline for this learning varies as a function of count list transparency. Keywords: Cross-linguistic
Count list
Successor function
Natural number concepts
Number acquisition
Conceptual development Published in RUNG: 05.01.2020; Views: 4226; Downloads: 0 This document has many files! More... |
3. Does Grammatical Structure Accelerate Number Word Learning? Evidence from Learners of Dual and Non-Dual Dialects of SlovenianFranc Marušič, Rok Žaucer, Vesna Plesničar, Tina Razboršek, Jessica Sullivan, David Barner, 2016, original scientific article Abstract: How does linguistic structure affect children’s acquisition of early number word meanings? Previous studies have tested this question by comparing how children learning languages with different grammatical representations of number learn the meanings of labels for small numbers, like 1, 2, and 3. For example, children who acquire a language with singular-plural marking, like English, are faster to learn the word for 1 than children learning a language that lacks the singular-plural distinction, perhaps because the word for 1 is always used in singular contexts, highlighting its meaning. These studies are problematic, however, because reported differences in number word learning may be due to unmeasured cross-cultural differences rather than specific linguistic differences. To address this problem, we investigated number word learning in four groups of children from a single culture who spoke different dialects of the same language that differed chiefly with respect to how they grammatically mark number. We found that learning a dialect which features “dual” morphology (marking of pairs) accelerated children’s acquisition of the number word two relative to learning a “non-dual” dialect of the same language. Keywords: števila, številke, slovnično število, dvojina, narečja, usvajanje, učenje, slovenščina, angleščina, numbers, grammatical number, dual, dialects, acquisition, learning, Slovenian, English Published in RUNG: 10.08.2016; Views: 5923; Downloads: 249 Full text (1,38 MB) |
4. Beyond Knower Levels: Early partial knowledge of number wordsKatie Wagner, Franc Marušič, Vesna Plesničar, Tina Razboršek, Jessica Sullivan, Rok Žaucer, David Barner, 2015, published scientific conference contribution abstract Abstract: Although both syntax and number words can indicate quantity, only numbers can specify large exact quantities. Do children use
syntax to bootstrap preliminary meanings of number words before mastering precise meanings? We compared errors across
languages on a Give-a-Number task in non-knowers (who have adult meanings for no number words) and subset knowers (who
have adult meanings for fewer than five number words). Participants included learners of English, Spanish, French, and two
dialects of Slovenian. One dialect, Central Slovenian, has rich number morphology including singular, dual, small plural, and large
plural (for 5+). In all languages, subset knowers and some non-knowers demonstrated better than random responding for at least 2
number words beyond the largest number word they comprehended precisely. Additionally, Central Slovenian-learning non- and 1-
knowers responded more accurately to requests for higher numbers than their counterparts in other languages, suggesting that rich
plural marking may bootstrap number word meanings. Keywords: knower level, grammatical number, acquisition of number words, bootstrapping Published in RUNG: 21.03.2016; Views: 5750; Downloads: 0 This document has many files! More... |
5. Grammatical morphology as a source of early number word meaningsFranc Marušič, Rok Žaucer, Alhanouf Almoammer, Jessica Sullivan, Chris Donlan, Timothy O'Donnell, David Barner, 2013, original scientific article Keywords: števila, število (jezikoslovje), učenje, spoznavanje in jezik, slovenščina, arabščina (Saudova Arabija), primerjalne študije Published in RUNG: 25.04.2014; Views: 6446; Downloads: 158 Link to full text |