Although both syntax and number words can indicate quantity, only numbers can specify large exact quantities. Do children use syntax to bootstrap preliminary meanings of number words before mastering precise meanings? We compared errors across languages on a Give-a-Number task in non-knowers (who have adult meanings for no number words) and subset knowers (who have adult meanings for fewer than five number words). Participants included learners of English, Spanish, French, and two dialects of Slovenian. One dialect, Central Slovenian, has rich number morphology including singular, dual, small plural, and large plural (for 5+). In all languages, subset knowers and some non-knowers demonstrated better than random responding for at least 2 number words beyond the largest number word they comprehended precisely. Additionally, Central Slovenian-learning non- and 1- knowers responded more accurately to requests for higher numbers than their counterparts in other languages, suggesting that rich plural marking may bootstrap number word meanings.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
COBISS.SI-ID: 4169211Franc Marušič and Rok Žaucer gave an invited lecture at the Scuola Superiore University of Udine in Italy. In this lecture they've presented the research through its most important scientific findings.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 3288571Franc Marušič gave an invited lecture at the University of Belgrade at their Psycholinguistic colloquia. The lecture was about the focal point of this research project, namely the influence of the presence of various grammatical numbers to the speed at which first number word meanings are acquired.
B.04 Guest lecture
COBISS.SI-ID: 3355643This paper briefly presents how this kind of research is done, what exactly we are looking for, what are the motifs for this research and its general background. The main findings of our project are also presented in an easy to get manner.
D.11 Other
COBISS.SI-ID: 63220322The focal question of the presented research is the question of child's understanding of both grammatical and mathematical number. Concretely, we want to know whether child's knowledge of counting is related to his understanding of other linguistic elements that denote quantities, e.g. nominal morphemes expressing grammatical number (baloon vs. baloons). Do children that know the meaning of the numeral 2 know when to use the appropriate dual morphology? Or more generally, what is the relation between language faculty and other cognitive domains.
D.11 Other
COBISS.SI-ID: 2852347