Linguistic Cues Influence Acquisition of Number Words

A cross-linguistic study investigated how syntactic cues influence young children s number representations. We compared how English monolinguals and Russian-English bilinguals perform on number discrimination task. Subjects performances strongly suggest that linguistic cues, such as plural markings, guide children s initial acquisition and representation of number. Introduction Many researchers agree that there is a special cognitive structure that is devoted to representation of number (Gallistel & Gelman, 1992; Whalen, Gallister, & Gelman, 1999; Wynn, 1990a.b). For example, a n a l o g magnitudes represent a number of items as a single magnitude proportional to the target number (Meck and Church, 1983). Because the magnitudes exhibit scalar variability, the discriminability of two given quantities accords with Webers law, in that it increases with the ratio. Accordingly, even 6-month infants can discriminate between both visual and auditory arrays of stimuli based on number, when the ratio in the array is 1:2 (Liption and Spelke, 2002; Xu and Spelke, 2000). Non-human primates have also been shown to succeed on number discrimination tasks (Hauser, McNeilage and Ware, 1996). Despite infants success on number discrimination tasks, children need as long as 6-9 months to learn new number word (Wynn, 1992; Skwarchuk and Anglin, 2002). Thus, mapping analog-magnitude representation onto numberwords is gradual and effortful. One reason for this apparent paradox is that analog-magnitude representation is approximate, while correct application of number words requires exact representation of numbers. How do children accomplish this mapping of approximate representational system onto exact number line? One possibility is that children use linguistic cues to arrive at the correct exact meanings of number words (Bloom and Wynn, 1997). For example, English marks nouns that refer to sets of objects with cardinality larger than 1 (singular-plural distinction). Children might use this cue to make an inference about the meaning of number word one, and how it is different from the rest of number words. One implication of this hypothesis is that speakers of languages with different plural markings use different strategies to acquire and initially represent number words. We investigated this hypothesis by comparing the performance of English monolinguals and Russian-English bilinguals on number discrimination task. Russian language is different from English in that it has two plural markers. Russian marks sets with only one object (by putting the noun in nominative case, singular form); sets with 2, 3, or 4 objects (by putting the noun in genitive case singular form); and finally sets with more than 5 objects, by putting the noun in genitive case plural form (see Table 1). Table1: Examples in English and Russian. English One book 2-4 bookS 5 bookS Russian (Feminine) Odna knigA 2-4 ningI 5 knig