Le Corre Mathieu, Li Peggy, Huang Becky H, Jia Gisela, Carey Susan
Centro de Investigación Transdisciplinar en Psicología, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos, Mexico.
Harvard University, USA.
Cogn Psychol. 2016 Aug;88:162-86. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2016.06.003. Epub 2016 Jul 16.
Previous studies showed that children learning a language with an obligatory singular/plural distinction (Russian and English) learn the meaning of the number word for one earlier than children learning Japanese, a language without obligatory number morphology (Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Sarnecka, Kamenskaya, Yamana, Ogura, & Yudovina, 2007). This can be explained by differences in number morphology, but it can also be explained by many other differences between the languages and the environments of the children who were compared. The present study tests the hypothesis that the morphological singular/plural distinction supports the early acquisition of the meaning of the number word for one by comparing young English learners to age and SES matched young Mandarin Chinese learners. Mandarin does not have obligatory number morphology but is more similar to English than Japanese in many crucial respects. Corpus analyses show that, compared to English learners, Mandarin learners hear number words more frequently, are more likely to hear number words followed by a noun, and are more likely to hear number words in contexts where they denote a cardinal value. Two tasks show that, despite these advantages, Mandarin learners learn the meaning of the number word for one three to six months later than do English learners. These results provide the strongest evidence to date that prior knowledge of the numerical meaning of the distinction between singular and plural supports the acquisition of the meaning of the number word for one.
先前的研究表明，学习带有强制性单复数区分的语言（如俄语和英语）的儿童，比学习日语（一种没有强制性数形态的语言）的儿童更早掌握表示“一”的数词的含义（巴纳、利本森、张和高崎，2009年；萨内科娃、卡梅斯卡娅、山名、小仓和尤多维娜，2007年）。这可以用数形态的差异来解释，但也可以用所比较的语言以及儿童所处环境之间的许多其他差异来解释。本研究通过将年轻的英语学习者与年龄和社会经济地位相匹配的年轻汉语学习者进行比较，来检验形态上的单复数区分有助于早期掌握表示“一”的数词含义这一假设。汉语没有强制性的数形态，但在许多关键方面比日语更接近英语。语料库分析表明，与英语学习者相比，汉语学习者听到数词的频率更高，更有可能听到数词后跟名词，并且更有可能在数词表示基数的语境中听到数词。两项任务表明，尽管有这些优势，汉语学习者掌握表示“一”的数词含义的时间比英语学习者晚三到六个月。这些结果提供了迄今为止最有力的证据，表明单复数区分的数值意义的先验知识有助于掌握表示“一”的数词的含义。
