Grammatical morphology as a source of early number word meanings
Name
Almoammer-2013-Grammatical morpholo.pdf
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Author(s)
Almoammer, Alhanouf
Sullivan, Jessica
Donlan, Chris
Marusic, Franc
Zaucer, Rok
O'Donnell, Timothy John
Barner, David
Date Issued
November 2013
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
Citation
Almoammer, A., J. Sullivan, C. Donlan, F. Marusic, R. Zaucer, T. O’Donnell, and D. Barner. “Grammatical Morphology as a Source of Early Number Word Meanings.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 46 (October 28, 2013): 18448–18453.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
How does cross-linguistic variation in linguistic structure affect children’s acquisition of early number word meanings? We tested this question by investigating number word learning in two unrelated languages that feature a tripartite singular-dual-plural distinction: Slovenian and Saudi Arabic. We found that learning dual morphology affects children’s acquisition of the number word two in both languages, relative to English. Children who knew the meaning of two were surprisingly frequent in the dual languages, relative to English. Furthermore, Slovenian children were faster to learn two than children learning English, despite being less-competent counters. Finally, in both Slovenian and Saudi Arabic, comprehension of the dual was correlated with knowledge of two and higher number words.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1313652110
