Young Children's Imitation and Comprehension of Sentential Singularity and Plurality

Abstract

The number of the subject is marked in most third-person sentences both in the subject-noun (e.g., " dog/dogs ") and in the verb (e.g., " barks/bark "). The verb inflection for number is redundant with the noun inflection except in those rare instances in which the subject-noun is not marked for number (e.g., " sheep/sheep "). Since the verb inflection for number is rarely crucial for determining the meaning of a sentence, and since number is marked in exactly the opposite manner in regularly formed verbs from the manner in which it is marked in regularly formed nouns, children might be expected to acquire the verb inflection for number relatively late in the course of language development. Sentences in which number was marked in (a) the verb only, and (b) the subject-noun and the verb were presented to a sample of 24 children 4 years of age in both imitation and comprehension tests. The results indicated that the children did not comprehend the verb inflection for number even when the noun was unmarked and the verb inflection was the only cue for number. Despite explicit training on the meaning of unmarked nouns, the children understood the unmarked subject-noun as singular and responded to the entire sentence as if it were singular. At four years of age, the apparent number of the subject-noun is the only effective cue for sentential singularity or plurality.

One or More Labels on the Bottles? Notional Concord in Dutch and French

“…Some evidence compatible with this idea comes from language acquisition studies. Berko (1958) and Keeney and Smith (1971) showed that noun number in ections are produced prior to verb number in ections by English children. Keeney and Wolfe (1972) reported that English-speaking 3-to 4-year-olds performed at chance level when required to choose between a picture depicting one bird and another depicting two birds when the verb form "sing" or "sings" was presented.…”

Generalization between receptive and expressive language in young children with autism

“…However, such a focus may be overly narrow. Studies have identified typically developing children (Bowerman, 1976;Goldin-Meadow, Seligman, & Gelman, 1976;Keeney & Smith, 1971;Keeney & Wolfe, 1972) and children with developmental disabilities (Guess & Baer, 1973;Mineo & Goldstein, 1990) who display expressive language skills yet lack the corresponding receptive language skills. These skills usually pertain to syntactical or grammatical structures (subject/ verb agreement, noun/verb/object phrases, or pronouns), rather than one-word labels for objects or events.…”

Individual differences in the acquisition of number markers

“…This noun phrase consisted of a possessive and a noun, the number of which was the same as that of the rest of the sentence. Keeney & Smith (1971) and Keeney & Wolfe (1972) have suggested that the number marking of noun phrase elements is acquired before that of verb phrase elements. This was confirmed by Nicolaci-da-Costa & Harris (1984) who have shown that the number marking of noun phrase elements is the first to be acquired.…”