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

要旨

A study of 104 Japanese-speaking 2- to 5-year-olds tested the relationbetween numeral and quantifier acquisition. Experiment 1 assessed Japanesechildren’s comprehension of quantifiers, numerals, and classifiers.Relative to English-speaking counterparts, Japanese children were delayedin numeral comprehension at 2 years old, but showed no difference at 3 and4. Also, Japanese 2-year-olds had better comprehension of quantifiers,indicating that their delay was specific to numerals. A second studyexamined the speech of Japanese and English caregivers, to explore thesyntactic cues that might affect integer acquisition. In English,quantifiers and numerals occurred in similar syntactic positions, andoverlapped to a greater degree than in Japanese. Also, Japanese nouns wereoften dropped, and both quantifiers and numerals exhibited variablepositions relative to the nouns they modified. We conclude that syntacticcues in English facilitate bootstrapping numeral meanings from quantifiermeanings, and that such cues are weaker in classifier languages likeJapanese.

主題