Both of the readings this week focus on children's ability to distinguish different quantifiers from the same class (i.e. a, some, many, most, all, etc). The Barner/Brooks/Bale paper explains the four steps of interpreting a scalar implicature and goes on to analyze why children are unable to differentiate "some" from "all" and "or" from "and." The paper concludes that children are hindered by their struggle to compare the given scale with its scalar alternatives. While they are able to compute different numerals, children cannot generate the right alternatives for "some" and therefore could not categorize "some" as more or less informative. If alternatives were provided, then children were able to better compute "some" vs. "all" when the word "only" preceded "some." However, if the alternatives were not contextually added, then the addition of "only" made no difference.
The end of the Barner/Brooks/Bale paper calls upon future studies to compare scalar implicature in both adults and children. The second reading by Stiller, Goodman, and Frank does exactly that. In all three experiments, adults performed better than children when asked to pick something out based on the given quantifier(s). I was intrigued by how we as humans assume that having a certain feature is less common that not having that feature.
In one of the first blog readings, we discussed acquisition and how children learn to understand, speak, and interpret language. While I believe that we are all born with the tools necessary to learn language, certain aspects of English clearly take longer to understand. Do children struggle with quantifiers across all languages, or is this just specific to English? I would love to learn more about how children learn language and why we are told that it is easier for kids to learn new languages than it is for adults.
And why do adults use "baby talk" when speaking with younger children? Does that help or hinder children's ability to learn language? Research claims that "baby talk" is important because it help toddlers understand which words are important to the meaning of the question or sentence. But I also feel that we often use incorrect grammar in "baby talk" which makes it harder for toddlers to learn the language.
Furthermore, why are some children able to speak or read before others? Studies show that boys, twins, and especially male twins are more likely to have language delays. Do flashcards and "Hooked on Phonics" help children learn language at a faster pace? I started reading when I was four years old in Kumon, and I wonder if Kumon actually made a difference in my ability to read. I truly hope that Kumon was insignificant in my reading ability because I swore to never put my kids through it (I really dreaded Kumon homework!!).
I love your thoughts about the differences among the world's languages! I am curious as well if these studies and experiments would yield the same results if conducted in other languages. I predict that kids in general, regardless of the language they learn as a child, would face similar issues of failing to compute scalar implicature because of a lack of world knowledge and lexical items. However, perhaps other languages' quantifier words or scalar words are inherently different and hold different meanings and cognitive representations in comparison to their English counterparts. Then, kids might be better at understanding these words and finding alternatives.
ReplyDeleteI also think your discussion of baby talk is fascinating! Maybe instead of focusing on incorrect grammar when talking to toddlers, we should just emphasize and repeat certain words. I am also curious how discrepancies in reading and speaking abilities arise among children. I wonder how much is dependent on the child and how much is dependent on their environment (the variability of the parents' vocabulary, how often the parents read to their child, etc.).