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Abstract Research has suggested that children who speak African American English (AAE) have difficulty using features produced in Mainstream American English (MAE) but not AAE, to comprehend sentences in MAE. However, past studies mainly examined dialect features, such as verbal -s , that are produced as final consonants with shorter durations when produced in conversation which impacts their phonetic saliency. Therefore, it is unclear if previous results are due to the phonetic saliency of the feature or how AAE speakers process MAE dialect features more generally. This study evaluated if there were group differences in how AAE- and MAE-speaking children used the auxiliary verbs was and were, a dialect feature with increased phonetic saliency but produced differently between the dialects, to interpret sentences in MAE. Participants aged 6, 5–10, and 0 years, who spoke MAE or AAE, completed the DELV-ST, a vocabulary measure (PVT), and a sentence comprehension task. In the sentence comprehension task, participants heard sentences in MAE that had either unambiguous or ambiguous subjects. Sentences with ambiguous subjects were used to evaluate group differences in sentence comprehension. AAE-speaking children were less likely than MAE-speaking children to use the auxiliary verbs was and were to interpret sentences in MAE. Furthermore, dialect density was predictive of Black participant’s sensitivity to the auxiliary verb. This finding is consistent with how the auxiliary verb is produced between the two dialects: was is used to mark both singular and plural subjects in AAE, while MAE uses was for singular and were for plural subjects. This study demonstrated that even when the dialect feature is more phonetically salient, differences between how verb morphology is produced in AAE and MAE impact how AAE-speaking children comprehend MAE sentences.
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Does grammatical number support the acquisition of number words?
The morphosyntactic information in grammatical number marking may be a useful cue for children in the process of acquiring number words. A language with dual marking, like Slovenian, may help children to bootstrap the meaning of the word “two” by drawing their attention to sets of two as a referent of language. If the dual marker indeed facilitates number learning, then we hypothesized that “two” should be acquired earlier in populations exposed to the dual marker; the dual should be learned before “two”; and knowledge of the dual form should be correlated with knowledge of “two”. We tested these hypotheses by having Slovenian and English-speaking children complete the Give-a-Number and Give-Morphology tasks. We analyzed the Give-Morphology in a new way, using stricter criteria to determine that children “know” the morphological markers than simple percent correct. In this sample, Slovenian children exposed to the dual marker did not show evidence of knowing “two” (i.e., being 2-knowers) at very young ages or earlier than English-speaking children. Knowledge of the dual marker did not precede nor correlate with the acquisition of “two”; indeed, the dual form was only acquired after the singular and plural. These analyses were conducted using an open data set with more Slovenian 2-knowers, yielding similar results. These findings present challenges for the view that grammatical number plays a role in number acquisition. This theory requires articulation about how a dual-marked language can facilitate number acquisition if children do not notice or learn the dual form. The information in grammatical number marking may be a useful cue for children in the process of acquiring number words. A language with dual marking, like Slovenian, may help children to bootstrap the meaning of the word “two” by drawing their attention to sets of two as a referent of language. If the dual marker indeed facilitates number learning, we hypothesized that “two” should be acquired earlier in populations exposed to the dual marker; the dual should be learned before “two”; and knowledge of the dual form should be correlated with knowledge of “two”. We tested these hypotheses by having Slovenian and English-speaking children complete the Give-a-Number and Give-Morphology tasks. We analyzed the Give-Morphology in a new way, using stricter criteria to determine that children “know” the morphological markers than simple percent correct. In this sample, Slovenian children exposed to the dual marker did not show evidence of knowing “two” (i.e., being 2-knowers) at very young ages or earlier than English-speaking children. Knowledge of the dual marker did not precede nor correlate with the acquisition of “two”. Indeed, the dual form was acquired only after the singular and plural. Parallel analyses were also conducted using an open data set with more Slovenian 2-knowers, yielding similar results. These findings present challenges for the claim that grammatical number plays a role in number acquisition. Specifically, this theory requires better articulation about how a dual-marked language can facilitate number acquisition if children do not notice or learn the dual form.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2010547
- PAR ID:
- 10427498
- Editor(s):
- Cascadilla Press
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the 2022 Boston University Conference on Language Development
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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