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Scott, Molly E.; Kanero, Junko; Saji, Noburo; Chen, Yu; Imai, Mutsumi; Golinkoff, Roberta M.; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy – First Language, 2023
Previous research demonstrates that children delineate more nuanced color boundaries with increased exposure to their native language. As socioeconomic status (SES) is known to correlate with differences in the amount of language input children receive, this study attempts to extend previous research by asking how both age (age 3 vs 5) and SES…
Descriptors: Color, Age Differences, Social Differences, Socioeconomic Status
Anna Gavarró; Alejandra Keidel – First Language, 2024
This study delves into the syntactic parsing abilities of children and infants exposed to Catalan as their first language. Focusing first on ages 3 to 6, we conducted two sentence-picture matching tasks. In experiment 1, 3 to 4-year-old children failed in identifying singular third-person subjects within null-subject sentences, although they…
Descriptors: Grammar, Syntax, Infants, Preschool Children
Karlsen, Jannicke; Hjetland, Hanne Naess; Hagtvet, Bente Eriksen; Braeken, Johan; Melby-Lervåg, Monica – First Language, 2021
We examined the concurrent relationship between narrative skills (the Renfrew Bus Story Test) and core language measures (vocabulary, grammar and verbal memory) at age 4 and the longitudinal relationship between core language and listening comprehension skills at age 7 in a sample of 215 children using latent variables and structural equation…
Descriptors: Correlation, Language Skills, Narration, Listening Comprehension
Gao, Na; Zhou, Peng; Thornton, Rosalind; Crain, Stephen – First Language, 2021
It has long been noted that verb phrase (VP) ellipsis cancels the polarity sensitivity of the English Positive Polarity Items (PPIs). In recent work, it has been proposed that words for disjunction are governed by a parameter. On one value of the parameter, disjunction is a PPI for adult speakers of many languages including Mandarin Chinese. On…
Descriptors: Mandarin Chinese, Verbs, Sentence Structure, Age Differences
Kupersmitt, Judy R.; Nicoladis, Elena – First Language, 2021
This study examines the expression of simultaneity in the film-based oral narratives of 100 English monolinguals in the following three age groups: preschoolers (4-6 years), school-aged children (7-10 years), and adults (19-48 years). Participants told a story of what happened in the film, in an off-line task, to an interviewer who had not seen…
Descriptors: Children, Adults, Story Telling, Films
Sarvasy, Hannah S. – First Language, 2021
Studies of the acquisition of verbs tend to focus on one-verb predicates of the prevalent English type. But in hundreds of languages around the world, multi-verb predicates like serial verb constructions are widely used. It could be reasoned that children should begin producing simple, single-verb predicates before they are able to produce…
Descriptors: Verbs, Language Acquisition, Preschool Children, Languages
Mateo Pedro, Pedro – First Language, 2021
Causatives have received considerable attention in first language acquisition. Of Mayan languages, acquisition of the causative has only been investigated for K'iche' and Tzotzil, based on longitudinal and spontaneous data. K'iche'-speaking children do not acquire morphological causatives until the age of 3 years, while children acquiring Tzotzil…
Descriptors: Mayan Languages, Language Acquisition, Native Language, Preschool Children
Amandine Hippolyte; Nicolas Ribeiro; Laure Ibernon; Nathalie Marec-Breton; Christelle Declercq – First Language, 2025
This study aimed to establish normative data for 145 words using phonological and semantic association tasks with 242 French schoolchildren, ranging from ages 5 (Grande Section) to 8 (Cours Elémentaire 2), providing a fundamental resource for future research and educational planning. The participants were engaged in two primary tasks: a free…
Descriptors: French, Phonology, Semantics, Preschool Children
Lustigman, Lyle – First Language, 2021
The present study examines the development of the earliest type of complex predicates to emerge in child Hebrew -- extended predicate constructions. These constructions take the form of a modal/aspectual operator followed by an infinitival verb form (e.g., "roce lesaxek" 'want to.play'), and since they serve various discursive functions…
Descriptors: Semitic Languages, Verbs, Child Language, Language Acquisition
Aveledo, Fraibet; Sanchez-Alonso, Sara; Piñango, Maria Mercedes – First Language, 2022
The delayed acquisition of Spanish "ser" and "estar" is generally understood as rooted in the cognitive demands imposed by the integration of semantic-pragmatic and world-knowledge factors associated with their lexical meanings. Here we ask (1) what is the nature of this language world-knowledge integration? and (2) what is the…
Descriptors: Verbs, Language Usage, Language Acquisition, Semantics
Tatsumi, Tomoko; Chang, Franklin; Pine, Julian M. – First Language, 2021
The acquisition of verb morphology is often studied using categorical criteria for determining the productivity of a morpheme. Applying this approach to Japanese, an agglutinative language, this study finds no consistent order for morpheme acquisition and that productivity could be explained by sampling effects. To examine morpheme acquisition…
Descriptors: Verbs, Japanese, Language Acquisition, Morphemes
Jackson, Samantha – First Language, 2023
While monolingual English speakers acquire most pronouns by age 5, acquisition amid prevalent, normative code-mixing, such as in Trinidad, is underexplored. This study examines how Trinidadian 3- to 5-year-olds express third-person subject, object, reflexive and possessive pronouns and factors influencing pronoun choices. Seventy-five preschoolers…
Descriptors: Grammar, Code Switching (Language), Language Usage, English
Childers, Jane B.; Porter, Blaire; Dolan, Megan; Whitehead, Clare B.; McIntyre, Kevin P. – First Language, 2020
To learn a verb, children must attend to objects and relations, often within a dynamic scene. Several studies show that comparing varied events linked to a verb helps children learn verbs, but there is also controversy in this area. This study asks whether children benefit from seeing variation across events as they learn a new verb, and uses an…
Descriptors: Verbs, Attention, Language Acquisition, Eye Movements
Vasil, Jared; Moore, Charlotte; Tomasello, Michael – First Language, 2023
Shared intentionality theory posits that at age 3, children expand their conception of plural agency to include 3- or more-person groups. We sought to determine whether this conceptual shift is detectable in children's pronoun use. We report the results of a series of Bayesian hierarchical generative models fitted to 479 English-speaking…
Descriptors: Form Classes (Languages), Preschool Children, Language Acquisition, Language Usage
Zanchi, Paola; Zampini, Laura; Pancani, Luca; Berici, Roberta; D'Imperio, Mariapaola – First Language, 2021
This work presents an analysis of the intonation competence in a group of Italian children with cochlear implant (CI). Early cochlear implantation plays a crucial role in language development for children who were born deaf in that it favours the acquisition of complex aspects of language, such as the intonation structure. A story-generation task,…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Deafness, Hearing Impairments, Assistive Technology