TY - JOUR
T1 - Learning Verbs in English and Korean
T2 - The Roles of Word Order and Argument Drop
AU - Shi, Huanhuan
AU - He, Angela Xiaoxue
AU - Song, Hyun Joo
AU - Jin, Kyong Sun
AU - Arunachalam, Sudha
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [BCS 1748826]; the National Institute of Health [R01 DC016592].
PY - 2024/1/2
Y1 - 2024/1/2
N2 - To learn new words, particularly verbs, child learners have been shown to benefit from the linguistic contexts in which the words appear. However, cross-linguistic differences affect how this process unfolds. One previous study found that children’s abilities to learn a new verb differed across Korean and English as a function of the sentence in which the verb occurred. The authors hypothesized that the properties of word order and argument drop, which vary systematically in these two languages, were driving the differences. In the current study, we pursued this finding to ask if the difference persists later in development, or if children acquiring different languages come to appear more similar as their linguistic knowledge and learning capacities increase. Preschool-aged monolingual English learners (N = 80) and monolingual Korean learners (N = 64) were presented with novel verbs in contexts that varied in word order and argument drop and accompanying visual stimuli. We assessed their learning by measuring accuracy in a forced-choice pointing task, and we measured eye gaze during the learning phase as an indicator of the processes by which they mapped the novel verbs to meaning. Unlike previous studies which identified differences between English and Korean learning 2-year-olds in a similar task, our results revealed similarities between the two language groups with these older preschoolers. We interpret our results as evidence that over the course of early childhood, children become adept at learning from a large variety of contexts, such that differences between learners of different languages are attenuated.
AB - To learn new words, particularly verbs, child learners have been shown to benefit from the linguistic contexts in which the words appear. However, cross-linguistic differences affect how this process unfolds. One previous study found that children’s abilities to learn a new verb differed across Korean and English as a function of the sentence in which the verb occurred. The authors hypothesized that the properties of word order and argument drop, which vary systematically in these two languages, were driving the differences. In the current study, we pursued this finding to ask if the difference persists later in development, or if children acquiring different languages come to appear more similar as their linguistic knowledge and learning capacities increase. Preschool-aged monolingual English learners (N = 80) and monolingual Korean learners (N = 64) were presented with novel verbs in contexts that varied in word order and argument drop and accompanying visual stimuli. We assessed their learning by measuring accuracy in a forced-choice pointing task, and we measured eye gaze during the learning phase as an indicator of the processes by which they mapped the novel verbs to meaning. Unlike previous studies which identified differences between English and Korean learning 2-year-olds in a similar task, our results revealed similarities between the two language groups with these older preschoolers. We interpret our results as evidence that over the course of early childhood, children become adept at learning from a large variety of contexts, such that differences between learners of different languages are attenuated.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85146988747&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15475441.2023.2165926
DO - 10.1080/15475441.2023.2165926
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85146988747
SN - 1547-5441
VL - 20
SP - 19
EP - 39
JO - Language Learning and Development
JF - Language Learning and Development
IS - 1
ER -