title: Does Grammatical Structure Accelerate Number Word Learning? Evidence from Learners of Dual and Non-Dual Dialects of Slovenian.
abstract: How does linguistic structure affect children's acquisition of early number word meanings? Previous studies have tested this question by comparing how children learning languages with different grammatical representations of number learn the meanings of labels for small numbers, like 1, 2, and 3. For example, children who acquire a language with singular-plural marking, like English, are faster to learn the word for 1 than children learning a language that lacks the singular-plural distinction, perhaps because the word for 1 is always used in singular contexts, highlighting its meaning. These studies are problematic, however, because reported differences in number word learning may be due to unmeasured cross-cultural differences rather than specific linguistic differences. To address this problem, we investigated number word learning in four groups of children from a single culture who spoke different dialects of the same language that differed chiefly with respect to how they grammatically mark number. We found that learning a dialect which features "dual" morphology (marking of pairs) accelerated children's acquisition of the number word two relative to learning a "non-dual" dialect of the same language.
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognitive Science of Language, University of Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Franc
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0667-3236
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Marušič
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognitive Science of Language, University of Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Rok
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Žaucer
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognitive Science of Language, University of Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Vesna
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Plesničar
authors.affiliation: Center for Cognitive Science of Language, University of Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica, Slovenia.
authors.forename: Tina
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Razboršek
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sullivan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America.|Department of Linguistics, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Barner
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D007858:Learning; D012660:Semantics; D017524:Slovenia