Exploring noun bias in Filipino-English bilingual children

College

Br. Andrew Gonzalez FSC College of Education

Department/Unit

Dept of English and Applied Linguistics

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Journal of Genetic Psychology

Volume

169

Issue

2

First Page

149

Last Page

164

Publication Date

1-1-2008

Abstract

Researchers have suggested that there is a noun bias in children's early vocabularies brought about by features of adults' child-directed utterances, which may vary across languages (E. V. Bates et al., 1994; D. Gentner, 1982). In the present study, the authors explored noun bias in 60 Filipino-English bilingual children whose 2 languages differed in how they emphasized nouns and verbs in typical syntactic forms. The results revealed a noun bias, but only in the bilingual children's English vocabulary. The noun bias in English was associated with the frequency of nouns in the caregivers' utterances and the proportion of nouns in the initial positions of the caregivers' utterances. The authors also found different associations between salient positions in the adult utterances and children's vocabularies in English and Filipino. Copyright © 2008 Heldref Publications.

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Digitial Object Identifier (DOI)

10.3200/GNTP.169.2.149-164

Disciplines

Language and Literacy Education

Keywords

Bilingualism in children; English language—Noun; Filipino language—Noun

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