كليدواژه :
conceptual development , generic noun , linguistic contexts , morphosyntactic cues , اسمجنس , رشد مفهومي , بافت زباني , مشخصههاي صرفي و نحوي
چكيده لاتين :
1- INTRODUCTION
Studies on child language acquisition show that the generic concepts have a significant function in the lexical development process, as they play a determining role in the formation of skills such as extension and categorization of concepts. The present research aimed to investigate the production and comprehension of generic nouns, as well as their developmental patterns in two age groups (4-5 and 5-6 years) of 16 monolingual Persian-speaking children. To achieve this goal, we used two experiments, a morphological experiment taken from Cimpian and Markman (2008) involving different linguistic contexts (with generic, nongeneric and neutral concepts), and a syntactic experiment taken from Cimpian, Meltzer and Markman (2011).
2- THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Generic nouns play a fundamental role in the formation of generic knowledge, inductive inferences and category-based reasoning of child language. A Generic noun phrase conveys generalizations about an entire category, and represents properties that apply to all members of a category (Cimpian and Markman, 2008: 19). In Persian, generic noun phrases are expressed via multiple grammatical devices, including (1) singular noun phrases (e.g., [?orbe hejvan ??st] “A cat is an animal”), (2) plural noun phrases (e.g., [b???eha bazi ra dust dar?nd] “Children like playing”), (3) [h?r/hi?] “any” + indefinite noun phrases (e.g., [h?r ?oli p??morde mi??rd?d] “Every flower withers”, [hi? rahi nist ke pajan n?da?te ba??d] “There is no way that has no ending”) (Monshizade, 1376: 115), (4) using abstract noun phrases (e.g., [sefidije b?rf ?e?m ra miz?n?d] “Whiteness of snow makes eyes go blind”) (Khanlari, 1384: 50), (5) uncountable noun phrases (e.g., [?ek?r ?irin ??st] “Sugar is sweet”), (6) using present tense and simple aspect (e.g., [hejvanat d?r ??n??l zende?i mikon?nd] “Animals live in forest”), and (7) using singular or plural demonstrative pronouns in specific linguistic contexts (e.g., [?in/?an p?l?n? v?h?i ??st] “This/that leopard is wild”, or [?anha/?inha (?ijahan) be ?ab nijaz dar?nd] “Those (plants) need water”). The goal of this research was to examine and compare the developmental patterns of generic noun processing (NP) in three age groups of Persian-speaking children. To this goal, we have evaluated their level of sensitivity to different morphosyntactic and contextual cues in the production and comprehension of generic NPs across two morphological and syntactic experiments.
3- METHODOLOGY
Pappas and Gelman (1998) examined generic noun phrases used by English-speaking preschool children and their mothers. Their study provides strong evidence that generic noun phrases differ in their semantics and conceptual organization from nongeneric noun phrases. Thus, generic nouns may provide input to childrenʹs early developing notion of kinds. Hollander, Gelman and Star (2002) confirmed that 4-year-old children, like adults, treated generics as distinct from nongeneric nouns. Gelman, Star and Flukes (2002) examined the role of language, specifically the scope of noun phrases used in conveying novel property information. Their Results indicated that both 4-year-old children and adults distinguish generics from sentences
Containing quantifiers such as “all” and “some”, and age differences exist in the interpretation of generic noun phrases. Gelman and Raman (2003) examined the influence of linguistic forms and pragmatic contexts in the interpretation of generic nouns in five tests. Their findings showed that 2-year-old children use linguistic forms, whereas 3-year-olds use both linguistic forms and pragmatic contexts to understand the distinction between generic and nongeneric noun phrases. Cimpian and Markman (2008) studied the preschool children’s utilization of linguistic features in comprehending generic nouns. 4-year-olds were able to make use of morphosyntactic and contextual cues, but the 3-year-olds were only sensitive to morphosyntactic cues.
4- DISCUSSION
The data analysis of the two experiments was performed using the SPSS software (version 19). In the morphological experiment which involved three linguistic contexts, we considered the type of noun phrases children produced to code their answers into two categories of generic and nongeneric. Singular or plural NPs [P?r?nde/ P?r?ndeha ?z mu? mit?rs?d /mit?rs?nd] were coded as generic and received a score of “1”, whereas NPs that contained a demonstrative pronoun were coded as nongeneric and received a score of “2”. An intergroup data analysis of the three linguistic contexts of this experiment showed that there was no significant difference in the pattern of the performance of the two groups (t= 0.47, sig= 0.64 and t= 0.0, sig= 0.33 and t= 0.0, sig= 1.00 and t= 1.00, sig= 0.33).
In the first part of the syntactic experiment, children’s answers were evaluated according to the tense and aspect of the sentences. If the child answered the question with [ f???t jek ozv] “just one member”, his/her answer was considered as “nongeneric” and scored “0”. If he/she answered the question with [h?me] “all”, the answer was considered as “generic” and received a score of “1”. The performance of the two groups in the first part of the syntactic experiment showed no significant difference (t=0.6, sig=0.55 and t=0.00, sig=1.00 and t=0.50, sig=0.61). In the second part of this experiment, the type of NPs that the children produced was analyzed. Based on the tense and aspect features of the sentences, answers with singular or plural NPs were coded as generic and scored “1”, while the answers with demonstrative pronouns were coded as nongeneric and received a score of “0”. The scores of the two groups in the second part of the syntactic experiment had no significant difference (t= 1.00, sig= 0.33 and t= 0.60, sig= 0.55 and t= 0.00, sig= 1.00).
5. CONCLUSION
This study provided strong evidence that the children, as young as 4, were able to interpret singular and plural NPs as referring to a kind or a generic concept, and can differentiate between sentences involving generic and nongeneric nouns. An intergroup data analysis in both experiments revealed that there was no significant difference in the pattern of the performance of the two groups. The findings also confirmed that our Persian-speaking participants were able to use morphosyntactic and contextual cues of the language to recognize generic and nongeneric NPs.
