Language as lens: Plurality marking and numeral learning in English, Japanese, and Russian.

Abstract

This study investigates whether young children use numerical information provided by plurality marking to help them learn the meanings of numerals. The study looked at children's understanding of numeral expressions (e.g., 'two flowers') in Japanese, English, and Russian. The languages differ in their plurality marking systems. English marks singular/plural; Russian marks one/few/many; Japanese usually does not mark plurality. To investigate the relationship between these systems in development, we administered 15 trials of the Give-a-Number task to children at three sites: Kobe, Japan (48 children); Ann Arbor, Michigan (70 children); and St. Petersburg, Russia (44 children). The mean age in each group was 3--2. Results were as follows: English- and Russian-speaking children distinguished 1 from many objects significantly earlier than Japanese-speaking children. (96% of English speakers and 98% of Russian speakers made this distinction, whereas only 59% of Japanese speakers did so.) Among children at Level I (who knew the exact meaning of <italic>one</italic> but no other numerals) only the Russian speakers made a distinction between high and low numbers. They did this by giving significantly more objects when asked for <italic>five</italic> or <italic>six</italic> than when asked for <italic>two</italic> or <italic>three</italic>. The English and Japanese speakers made no such distinction. Among children at Level III (children who knew the exact meanings of 'one,' 'two,' and 'three'), Russian speakers were significantly more accurate in their estimation of 'five' than were English and Japanese speakers. A second study used CHILDES analyses of English, Japanese, and Russian corpora to verify the assumptions underlying the Give-A-Number study. The analyses found that plurality marking in speech to children matched standard grammatical descriptions, and that numerals were used with similar frequency and in similar ways across languages. Thus, the results obtained in the first study cannot be attributed to anomalous plurality marking in speech to children, or to differences in the frequency of numeral use across languages. These findings indicate that young children do attach numerical meaning to plurality inflections (word-world mappings, not just word-word mappings). Moreover, the grammar of each language acts like a lens, directing speakers' attention to number in specific ways.