LINGUISTICS--CHILDREN'S LEARNING OF WORDS

研究表明，在大约3岁时，学习英语的儿童在概括对象和物质标签时会注意到本体论信息(例如，物体是有界的，形状是刚性的)；到了大约4岁时，他们会注意到标签的句法上下文(质量或计数名词)。其他研究表明，非常年轻的学习者在学习单词的过程中可能会受到对标签的期望的指导。目前尚不清楚对本体论类型的关注是否受到这样的期望的指导，如果是这样的话，这种期望是特定于语言还是普遍存在的。这项拟议的研究将使用跨语言框架来调查幼儿对宾语和实体词的学习。它将考察对标签的期望是否会在儿童早期单词学习中指导他们，并检查他们的天性而不是发展。最后，它将评估儿童在概括新标签时，何时开始注意其他信息来源，如句法上下文。在实验1中，4到5岁的儿童和说西班牙语的成年人将在一个标签上进行测试(“这也是DAX吗？”和无标签任务(“这和这一样吗？”)使用“是”或“否”的方法。在实验2中，2-1/2-到3、3和4岁的儿童和说英语、汉语(普通话)和西班牙语的成年人将在一个标签上进行测试(“这是DAX还是这是DAX？”)和无标签任务(“这个与这个相同，还是这个与这个相同？”)使用强制选择任务。在实验3中，会说英语的2-1/2-3岁和3-4岁儿童将只在标签任务中被测试，在该任务中，标签将被呈现为计数名词或质量名词。我们预计，所有这三种语言的最年轻发言者可能会受到类似的期望的指导，即随后将有更多针对语言的期望来指导他们的注意力。基于对名词短语结构的分析，预计西班牙语和英语使用者会注意本体论类型，而汉语使用者在标注过程中会注意材料。我们还希望在无标签任务中从年龄较大的儿童和成人S那里获得特定语言的理解。总之，这项研究将阐明普遍的语言机制如何与更具语言针对性的机制相互作用，以引导学习者注意刺激的不同方面，以及语言如何影响非语言任务。

Research has shown that by about 3-years of age, children learning English attend to ontological information (e.g., objects are bounded and have rigid shapes) when generalizing object and substance labels; by about 4-years they attend to the syntactic context (mass or count noun) of the label. Other research suggests that very young learners might be guided by expectations about labels during word learning. It is unclear whether attention to ontological kind is guided by such expectations, and if so, whether the expectations are language-specific or universal. The proposed research will investigate young children's learning of object and substance words using a cross-linguistic framework. It will examine whether expectations about labels guide children early in word learning and examine their nature over development. Finally it will assess when children start attending to other sources of information, such as the syntactic context, when generalizing novel labels. In Experiment 1, 4- to 5-year-olds and adult Spanish-speakers will be tested on a Label ("Is this also the dax?" and No-label task ("Is this the same as this?") using a "yes" or "no" method. In Experiment 2, 2-1/2- to 3-, 3- and4-year old-children and adult English-, Chinese (Mandarin)-, and Spanish-speakers will be tested on a Label ("Is this the dax or is this the dax?") and No-label task ("Is this the same as this or is this the same as this?") using a forced-choice task. In Experiment 3, English-speaking 2-1/2- to 3-year-olds and 3- to 4-year-olds will be tested only in a Label task, in which labels will be presented as either a count or mass noun. We expect that the youngest speakers of all 3 languages might be guided by similar expectations that subsequently more language-specific expectations will guide their attention. Based on an analysis of noun phrase structure, it is expected that Spanish- and English-speakers will attended to ontological kind, whereas Chinese-speakers will attend to material during labeling. We also expect to obtain language-specific construals from older children and adult s in the No-label task. In sum, the proposed research will clarify how universal language mechanisms interact with more language-specific mechanisms to guide learners' attention to different aspects of the stimulus and how language impacts non-linguistic tasks.