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Knowing more than one can say: The early regular plural*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2009

JENNIFER A. ZAPF*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
LINDA B. SMITH
Affiliation:
Indiana University
*
Address for correspondence: Jennifer A. Zapf, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Department of Psychology, 2420 Nicolet Drive, Mary Ann Cofrin Hall C310, Green Bay, WI 54311. e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This paper reports on partial knowledge in two-year-old children's learning of the regular English plural. In Experiments 1 and 2, children were presented with one kind and its label and then were either presented with two of that same kind (A→AA) or the initial picture next to a very different thing (A→AB). The children in A→AA rarely produced the plural. The children in A→AB supplied the singular form of A but children in A→AA did not. Experiment 3 compared the performance of English-speaking and Japanese-speaking children in A→AA with common and novel nouns. The Japanese-speaking children (learning a language without a mandatory plural) supplied the singular form of A but the English-speaking children did not. The findings indicate young children learning English know there is a plural to be learned before they have fully worked out the rules of production or acquired the necessary singular–plural pairs for broad generalization.

Type
Brief Research Report
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by a National Institute of Mental Health grant (R01 MH60200). This first author was supported by a National Institute of Mental Health grant (T32 HD07475). We thank Jennifer Benson, Caitlin Hanrahan and Emiko Nakanaga for assisting in data collection.

References

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