4 research outputs found
conceptual distinction between one
On the relation between the acquisition of singular-plural morpho-syntax and th
On the relation between the acquisition of singular-plural morpho-syntax and the conceptual distinction between one and more than one
We investigated the relationship between the acquisition of singular–plural
morpho-syntax and children’s representation of the distinction between
singular and plural sets. Experiment 1 tested 18-month-olds using the
manual-search paradigm and found that, like 14-month-olds (Feigenson &
Carey, 2005), they distinguished three objects from one but not four
objects from one. Thus, they failed to represent four objects as ‘plural’
or ‘more than one’. Experiment 2 found that children continued to fail at
the 1 vs. 4 manual-search task at 20 months of age, even when told, via
explicit morpho-syntactic singular–plural cues, that one or many balls are
being hidden. However, 22-and 24-month-olds succeeded both with and without
verbal cues. Parental report data indicated that most 22-and 24-month-olds,
but few 20-month-olds, had begun producing plural nouns in their speech.
Also, the success among the older children was due to those children who
had reportedly begun producing plural nouns. We discuss a possible role for
language acquisition in children’s deployment of set-based quantification
and the distinction between singular and plural sets