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The use of nouns and verbs by Japanese children and their caregivers in book-reading and toy-playing contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2006

TAMIKO OGURA ,
PHILIP S. DALE ,
YUKIE YAMASHITA ,
TOSHIKI MURASE  and
AKI MAHIEU
TAMIKO OGURA
Affiliation:
Kobe University
PHILIP S. DALE
Affiliation:
University of Missouri-Columbia
YUKIE YAMASHITA
Affiliation:
Shimane Prefectural Women's College
TOSHIKI MURASE
Affiliation:
Shimane University
AKI MAHIEU
Affiliation:
Shimane Prefectural Women's College
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Abstract

Japanese provides a valuable contrast for crosslinguistic studies of noun and verb dominance in early child language, and the effect of input on the early lexicon. In this study, 31 Japanese children between 1;0 and 2;0 and their caregivers were recorded in two contexts: joint bookreading and play with toys. Context had the largest effect, as nouns were much more frequent in the book context. Noun dominance was constant across development in the book context, but in the toy context there was a shift away as children developed from single words through the presyntactic stage to the syntactic stage. Caregiver language was verb dominant in a number of respects across development in the toy context, and thus was not closely related to child lexical balance. We conclude that in early lexical development, all children have a conceptual disposition to learn nouns. With vocabulary growth and the emergence of grammar, the proportion of verbs increases substantially, and at this stage properties of the input language may influence development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , February 2006 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

We extend special thanks to all children and the parents who made this study possible. We would like to thank Yoshihiro Nishimitsu for his help on linguistic issues. This research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture of Japan (Project numbers 08202207, 09207214, 10114214, 11111215, 1201211), Center of Developmental Education and Research and Sato Foundation.