ERIC Number: EJ1414579
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2024
Pages: 23
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0142-7237
EISSN: EISSN-1740-2344
Available Date: N/A
Quantifying Events or Entities?--A Corpus-Based Study of Universal Quantifiers in Early Child English and Child-Directed Speech
Xiangjun Deng; Xiaobei Zheng; Haoyan Ge
First Language, v44 n2 p191-213 2024
The acquisition of quantifiers is a central topic in cognitive science. The present study investigated the emergence, frequency, and non-target-like production of the universal quantifiers "all," "every," and "each" in child English from a linguistic perspective, based on the data from longitudinal naturalistic observation of 10 English-speaking children and their caregivers. We found that the use of these quantifiers as adverbs or in adverbials generally appeared earlier, and was more frequent, than their use as (pre)determiners in early child English. We also found that input frequency exerts a great influence on some aspects of the acquisition of universal quantifiers, for example, the frequency of the predeterminer "all," but there are still some patterns that cannot be explained by mere input frequency, such as children's initial preference for using universal quantifiers in A(dverbial)-quantification and their non-target forms. Their initial overreliance on A-quantification may be explained by event quantification being cognitively less demanding than entity quantification, and their non-target productions likely result from their developing grammatical systems. We argue that the acquisition of universal quantifiers involves multiple factors, such as cognitive complexity, children's developing grammatical systems, and input frequency, interacting with each other.
Descriptors: Child Language, Form Classes (Languages), Grammar, Children, Cognitive Processes, Difficulty Level, Language Usage, Speech Communication, Syntax, Semantics, Foreign Countries, Child Caregivers
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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: United Kingdom; United States
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A