| Project/Area Number |
12610567
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
言語学・音声学
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| Research Institution | Aichi Shukutoku University |
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Principal Investigator |
MIYATA Susanne Aichi Shukutoku University, Faculty of Creativity and Culture, Associate Professor, 文化創造学部, 助教授 (40239413)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
NISISAWA Hiroyuki (KAWASHIMA Hiroyuki) Tokiwa University, College of Human Science, Associate Professor, 人間科学部, 助教授 (50296068)
中 規夫 (中 則夫) 大阪学院大学, 国際学部, 講師 (70278555)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2000 – 2002
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| Project Status |
Completed (Fiscal Year 2002)
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| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,600,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥1,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,100,000)
Fiscal Year 2000: ¥1,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000)
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| Keywords | Language Acquisition / Vocabulary Acquisition / Japanese / English / Motherese / Input |
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| Research Abstract |
Since Gentner's (1982) claim that nouns are universally predominant in children's early vocabulary, a noun bias has been confirmed in English-speaking children, while for Mandarin and Korean a prevalence of verbs has been reported. Explanations point to such language-typological factors as pro-drop, which promotes a verb-focused input. For Italian and Japanese, both pro-drop languages, mixed results are reported. On possible explanation is that pro-drop languages allow for greater individual variation in maternal speech, which in turn results in a range of different vocabulary compositions in individual children. Our results from longitudinal speech data of 4 Japanese-speaking mother-child dyads indicate that the mothers adjusted their speech to their children, and adapted a more noun-focused style. This adjustment occurred to an individually different degree, and appeared to be connected with the children's vocabulary composition. The children whose mothers had a noun-and object-focused speech style (high noun/verb ratio in types, tokens, and isolated word presentation, high frequency of object descriptions) displayed a noun-biased vocabulary, while the children of mothers whose use of nouns and verbs was more balanced, produced a balanced or slightly verb-biased vocabulary. Our results suggest that the individual maternal input plays a more important role in a child's development of a noun bias than the general language type.
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