Cross-linguistic relations between quantifiers and numerals in language acquisition: Evidence from Japanese

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• 作者：David Barner ; Am ; a Libenson ; Pierina Cheung ; Mayu Takasaki
• 关键词：Counting ; Quantifiers ; Bootstrapping ; Language acquisition ; Semantic development ; Number ; Japanese
• 刊名：Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
• 出版年：2009
• 出版时间：August 2009
• 年：2009
• 卷：103
• 期：4
• 页码：421-440
• 全文大小：541 K

文摘

A study of 104 Japanese-speaking 2- to 5-year-olds tested the relation between numeral and quantifier acquisition. A first study assessed Japanese children’s comprehension of quantifiers, numerals, and classifiers. Relative to English-speaking counterparts, Japanese children were delayed in numeral comprehension at 2 years of age but showed no difference at 3 and 4 years of age. Also, Japanese 2-year-olds had better comprehension of quantifiers, indicating that their delay was specific to numerals. A second study examined the speech of Japanese and English caregivers to explore the syntactic cues that might affect integer acquisition. Quantifiers and numerals occurred in similar syntactic positions and overlapped to a greater degree in English than in Japanese. Also, Japanese nouns were often dropped, and both quantifiers and numerals exhibited variable positions relative to the nouns they modified. We conclude that syntactic cues in English facilitate bootstrapping numeral meanings from quantifier meanings and that such cues are weaker in classifier languages such as Japanese.