Miniature language system acquisition by children with different learning proficiencies.
Sixteen children, aged 7:8 to 9:10, learned two miniature languages while playing a communication game. Both languages expressed Action (Agent, Patient) meanings and incorporated a Patient suffix. They differed in word order: VSO (Language I) versus SOV (Language II). Children found the SOV language easier; they also made more suffix errors and fewer word order errors in this language. The results suggest that the perceptual salience of an utterance-final particle may hinder grammatical analysis, at least if capacity limits and perseverative learning strategies intervene.
Johnston
J
J
Indiana University.
Blatchley
M
M
Olness
G S
GS
D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D007360:Intelligence; D007804:Language Development; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology; D007807:Language Tests; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008037:Linguistics; D008568:Memory; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception