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ERIC Number: EJ1314582
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Nov
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Contrasting Lexical Biases in Bilingual English-Mandarin Speech: Verb-Biased Mothers, but Noun-Biased Toddlers
Setoh, Peipei; Cheng, Michelle; Bornstein, Marc H.; Esposito, Gianluca
Journal of Child Language, v48 n6 p1185-1208 Nov 2021
Is noun dominance in early lexical acquisition a widespread or a language-specific phenomenon? Thirty Singaporean bilingual English-Mandarin learning toddlers and their mothers were observed in a mother-child play interaction. For both English and Mandarin, toddlers' speech and reported vocabulary contained more nouns than verbs across book reading and toy playing. In contrast, their mothers' speech contained more verbs than nouns in both English and Mandarin but differed depending on the context of the interaction. Although toddlers demonstrated a noun bias for both languages, the noun bias was more pronounced in English than in Mandarin. Together, these findings support early noun dominance as a widespread phenomenon in the lexical acquisition debate but also provide evidence that language specificity also plays a minor role in children's early lexical development.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Singapore
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A