Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T17:31:46.408Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nouns and verbs in Chintang: children's usage and surrounding adult speech*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 August 2011

SABINE STOLL ,
BALTHASAR BICKEL ,
ELENA LIEVEN ,
NETRA P. PAUDYAL ,
GOMA BANJADE ,
TOYA N. BHATTA ,
MARTIN GAENSZLE ,
JUDITH PETTIGREW ,
ICHCHHA PURNA RAI  and
MANOJ RAI
...Show all authors
SABINE STOLL
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
BALTHASAR BICKEL
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig
ELENA LIEVEN
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
NETRA P. PAUDYAL
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig
GOMA BANJADE
Affiliation:
Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, Kathmandu
TOYA N. BHATTA
Affiliation:
Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, Kathmandu
MARTIN GAENSZLE
Affiliation:
Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, Kathmandu
JUDITH PETTIGREW
Affiliation:
Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, Kathmandu
ICHCHHA PURNA RAI
Affiliation:
Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, Kathmandu
MANOJ RAI
Affiliation:
Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, Kathmandu
NOVEL KISHORE RAI
Affiliation:
Chintang and Puma Documentation Project, Kathmandu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Analyzing the development of the noun-to-verb ratio in a longitudinal corpus of four Chintang (Sino-Tibetan) children, we find that up to about age four, children have a significantly higher ratio than adults. Previous cross-linguistic research rules out an explanation of this in terms of a universal noun bias; instead, a likely cause is that Chintang verb morphology is polysynthetic and difficult to learn. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the development of Chintang children's noun-to-verb ratio correlates significantly with the extent to which they show a similar flexibility with verbal morphology to that of the surrounding adults, as measured by morphological paradigm entropy. While this development levels off around age three, children continue to have a higher overall noun-to-verb ratio than adults. A likely explanation lies in the kinds of activities that children are engaged in and that are almost completely separate from adults' activities in this culture.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , March 2012 , pp. 284 - 321
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aguado-Orea, J. (2004). The acquisition of morpho-syntax in Spanish: Implications for current theories of development. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.Google Scholar
Au, T. K.-F., Dapretto, M. & Song, Y.-K. (1994). Input vs. constraints: Early word acquisition in Korean and English. Journal of Memory and Language 33, 567–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bassano, D. (2000). Early development of nouns and verbs in French: Exploring the interface between lexicon and grammar. Journal of Child Language 27, 521–59.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bassano, D., Maillochon, I. & Eme, E. (1998). Developmental changes and variability in the early lexicon: A study of French children's naturalistic productions. Journal of Child Language 25, 493–531.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, E., Bretherton, I. & Snyder, L. (1988). From first words to grammar: Individual differences and dissociable mechanisms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Marchman, V. A., Thal, D., Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, S. J., Reilly, J. & Hartung, J. (1994). Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary. Journal of Child Language 21, 85–123.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bickel, B. (2003). Referential density in discourse and syntactic typology. Language 79, 708–736.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickel, B., Banjade, G., Gaenszle, M., Lieven, E., Paudyal, N., Rai, I. P., Rai, M., Rai, N. K. & Stoll, S. (2007). Free prefix ordering in Chintang. Language 83, 43–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bickel, B., Rai, M., Paudyal, N., Banjade, G., Bhatta, T. N., Gaenszle, M., Lieven, E., Rai, I. P., Rai, N. K. & Stoll, S. (2010). The syntax of three-argument verbs in Chintang and Belhare (Southeastern Kiranti). In Malchukov, A., Haspelmath, M. & Comrie, B. (eds), Studies in ditransitive constructions: A comparative handbook, 382–408. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloom, L., Tinker, E. & Margulis, C. (1993). The words children learn – evidence against a noun bias in early vocabularies. Cognitive Development 8, 431–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornstein, M. & Cote, S., with Maital, I., Painter, K., Park, S.-Y., Pascual, L., Pecheux, M. G., Ruel, J., Venuti, P. & Vyt, A. (2004). Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: Spanish, Dutch, French, Hebrew, Italian, Korean, and American English. Child Development 75, 1115–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, P. (1998). Children's first verbs in Tzeltal: Evidence for an early verb category. Linguistics 36, 713–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camaioni, L., Castelli, M., Longobardi, E. & Volterra, V. (1991). A parent report instrument for early language assessment. First Language 11, 345–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camaioni, L. & Longobardi, E. (2001). Noun versus verb emphasis in Italian mother-to-child-speech. Journal of Child Language 28, 773–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caselli, C., Casadio, P. & Bates, E. (1999). A comparison of the transition from first words to grammar in English and Italian. Journal of Child Language 26, 69–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caselli, M. C., Bates, E., Casadio, P., Fenson, J., Fenson, L., Sanderl, L. & Weir, J. (1995). A cross-linguistic study of early lexical development. Cognitive Development 10, 159–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Childers, J. B., Vaughan, J. & Burquest, D. A. (2007). Joint attention and word learning in Ngas-speaking toddlers in Nigeria. Journal of Child Language 34, 199–225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Choi, S. (2000). Caregiver input in English and Korean: Use of nouns and verbs in book-reading and toy-play contexts. Journal of Child Language 27, 69–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Choi, S. & Gopnik, A. (1993). Nouns are not always learned before verbs: An early verb spurt in Korean. In Clark, E. V. (ed.), The Proceedings of the 25th Annual Child Language Research Forum, 96–105. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Choi, S. & Gopnik, A. (1995). Early acquisition of verbs in Korean: A cross-linguistic study. Journal of Child Language 22, 497–529.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, E. (1993). The lexicon in acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Léon, L. (1999). Verb roots and caregiver speech in early Tzotzil (Mayan) acquisition. In Fox, B., Jurafsky, D. & Michaelis, L. (eds), Cognition and function in language, 99–119. Stanford: CSLI.Google Scholar
D'Odorico, L. & Fasolo, M. (2007). Nouns and verbs in the vocabulary acquisition of Italian children. Journal of Child Language 34, 891–907.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dromi, E. (1987). Early lexical development. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Faraway, J. J. (2006). Extending the linear model with R. Boca Raton, FL: Chapman & Hall/CRC.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, J. S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J. P., Pethick, S. & Reilly, J. S. (1993). The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: User's guide and technical manual. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Bates, E., Thal, D. J. & Pethick, S. J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development, vol. 59 of Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. (1982). Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity versus natural partitioning. In Kuczaj, S. A. (ed.), Language development, vol. 2, 301–334. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. & Boroditsky, L. (2001). Individuation, relativity, and early word learning. In Bowerman, M. & Levinson, S. C. (eds), Language acquisition and conceptual development, 215–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillette, J., Gleitman, H., Gleitman, L. & Lederer, A. (1999). Human simulations of vocabulary learning. Cognition 73, 135–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldfield, B. A. (1993). Noun bias in maternal speech to one-year-olds. Journal of Child Language 20, 85–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gopnik, A. (1981). Development of non-nominal expressions in 1–2-year-olds: Why the first words aren't about things. In Dale, P. S. & Ingram, D. (eds), Child language – an international perspective, 93–104. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press.Google Scholar
Gopnik, A. (1988). Three types of early words: The emergence of social words, names and cognitive-relational words in the one-word stage and their relation to cognitive development. First Language 8, 49–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gries, S. T. & Stoll, S. (2009). Finding developmental groups in acquisition data: Variability-based neighbor clustering. Journal of Quantitative Linguistics 16, 217–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hastie, T. (2010). gam: Generalized Additive Models. R package version 1.03 <http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gam>..>Google Scholar
Hastie, T. & Tibshirani, R. (1990). Generalized additive models. London: Chapman and Hall.Google Scholar
Imai, M., Haryu, E. & Okada, H. (2005). Mapping novel nouns and verbs onto dynamic action events: Are verb meanings easier to learn than noun meanings for Japanese children? Child Development 76, 340–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Imai, M., Li, L., Haryu, E., Okada, H., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. & Shigematsu, J. (2008). Novel noun and verb learning in Chinese-, English-, and Japanese-speaking children. Child Development 79, 979–1000.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jackson-Maldonado, D., Thal, D., Marchman, V. A., Bates, E. & Gutierrez-Clellen, V. (1993). Early lexical development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers. Journal of Child Language 20, 523–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kauschke, C. & Hofmeister, C. (2002). Early lexical development in German: A study on vocabulary growth and vocabulary composition during the second and third year of life. Journal of Child Language 29, 735–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, M., McGregor, K. & Thompson, C. (2000). Early lexical development in English- and Korean-speaking children: Language-general and language-specific patterns. Journal of Child Language 27, 225–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krajewski, G., Lieven, E. V. M. & Theakston, A. L. (2010). Productivity of a Polish child's inflectional noun morphology: A naturalistic study. Unpublished ms., University of Manchester.Google Scholar
Lieven, E. V. M. (1994). Crosslinguistic and crosscultural aspects of language addressed to children. In Gallaway, C. & Richards, B. J. (eds), Input and interaction in language acquisition, 56–73. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macnamara, J. (1982). Names for things: A study of human learning. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M. (1989). Categorization and naming in children. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.Google Scholar
Moscoso del Prado Martín, F., Kostic, A. & Baayen, R. H. (2004). Putting the bits together: An information theoretical perspective on morphological processing. Cognition 94, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, K. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk, vol. 38 of Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Nelson, K., Hampson, J. & Shaw, L. (1993). Nouns in early lexicons: Evidence, explanations, and extensions. Journal of Child Language 20, 61–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ninio, A. (1999). Pathbreaking verbs in syntactic development and the question of prototypical transitivity. Journal of Child Language 26, 619–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Noccetti, S. (2003). Acquisition of verb morphology in Italian: A case study. In Bittner, D., Dressler, W. U. & Kilani-Schoch, M. (eds), Development of verb inflection in first language acquisition, 351–79. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ogura, T., Dale, P., Yamashita, Y., Murase, T. & Mahieu, A. (2006). The use of nouns and verbs by Japanese children and their caregivers in book-reading and toy-playing contexts. Journal of Child Language 33, 1–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pfeiler, B. (2003). Early acquisition of the verbal complex in Yucatec Maya. In Bittner, D., Dressler, W. & Kiliani-Schoch, M. (eds), Development of verb inflection in first language acquisition: A cross-linguistic perspective, 379–99. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Pye, C. (1983). Mayan telegraphese: Intonational determinants of inflectional development in Quiche Mayan. Language 59, 583–604.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Development Core Team (2010). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R Foundation for Statistical Computing <www.r-project.org>..>Google Scholar
Sarkar, D. (2010). lattice: Lattice Graphics. R package version 0.18-8 <http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lattice>..>Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1973). Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In Ferguson, C. A. & Slobin, D. I. (eds), Studies in child language development, 175–208. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I. (1985). Introduction: Why study acquisition crosslinguistically? In Slobin, D. I. (ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition Volume 1: The data, 3–24. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Stoll, S. & Bickel, B. (2009). How deep are differences in referential density? In Lieven, E., Guo, J., Budwig, N., Ervin-Tripp, S., Nakamura, K. & Özçalişkan, S. (eds), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the traditions of Dan Slobin, 543–55. London: Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Stoll, S. & Gries, S. (2009). An association-strength approach to characterizing development in corpora. Journal of Child Language 36, 1075–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tardif, T. (1996). Nouns are not always learned before verbs: Evidence from Mandarin speakers' early vocabularies. Developmental Psychology 32, 492–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tardif, T. (2006). But are they really verbs? Chinese words for action. In Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M. (eds), Action meets words: How children learn verbs, 477–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tardif, T., Fletcher, P., Liang, W., Zhang, Z., Kaciroti, N. & Marchman, V. (2008). Baby's first 10 words. Developmental Psychology 44, 929–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tardif, T., Gelman, S. A. & Xu, F. (1999). Putting the ‘noun bias’ in context: A comparison of English and Mandarin. Child Development 70, 620–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tardif, T., Shatz, M. & Naigles, L. (1997). Caregiver speech and children's use of nouns versus verbs: A comparison of English, Italian, and Mandarin. Journal of Child Language 24, 535–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Theakston, A. L., Lieven, E. V. M., Pine, J. M. & Rowland, C. F. (2004). Semantic generality, input frequency and the acquisition of syntax. Journal of Child Language 31, 61–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. & Akhtar, N. (1995). Two-year-olds use pragmatic cues to differentiate reference to objects and actions. Cognitive Development 10, 201–224.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M., Akhtar, N., Dodson, K. & Rekau, L. (1997). Differential productivity in young children's use of nouns and verbs. Journal of Child Language 24, 373–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. & Stahl, D. (2004). Sampling children's spontaneous speech: How much is enough? Jounal of Child Language 31, 101–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar