| Budget Amount *help |
¥12,820,000 (Direct Cost: ¥12,100,000、Indirect Cost: ¥720,000)
Fiscal Year 2007: ¥3,120,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥720,000)
Fiscal Year 2006: ¥4,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥4,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2005: ¥5,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥5,500,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Verbs refer to kinds of relation, whereas nouns are likely to denote kinds of object, although the application of proper nouns should be limited to a particular individual. Thus, in order to learn a novel word, children must identify the word's class and map the word to the kinds of meaning characteristic of the class.
However, whether and how a particular word's class is syntactically marked varies from language to language. This research project explored what information, syntactic or not, children rely on in inferring an appropriate meaning for a novel word, and how these strategies are affected by the structure of language, focusing on verb and proper noun learning.
As for verb learning, the results show that Japanese children can identify a novel word as a verb by utilizing obligatory verbal suffixes even when subject and object are omitted from sentence. In contrast, English-learning children require that a novel word be uttered in a sentence with subject and object so that they can identify the novel word as a verb. Thus, what information children rely on in identifying the given word as a verb reflects the structure of language.
As for proper nouns, the Japanese language does not syntactically discriminate proper nouns from common nouns whereas English does make this distinction. English-learning 20-month-olds has been reported to be able to map a novel proper noun to the particular individual as well as they regard a common noun as a category label, by attending to syntactic cues. Japanese-learning 30-month-olds take a strategy to interpret a novel word associated with a familiar animal as a proper name, although there is no syntactic distinction between proper nouns and common nouns in Japanese. However, Japanese 26-month-olds cannot take this strategy yet. Thus, Japanese children find their way of learning proper nouns, although they need more time to get there without aid from syntax than English-learning children.
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