Cross-linguistic differences in early semantic and cognitive development

Cognitive

Development,

11, 197-227

(I 996)

Cross-Linguistic Differences in Early Semantic and Cognitive Development Alison Gopnik University

of California

at Berkeley

Soonja Choi San Diego State University

Therese Baumberger University

In a longitudinal

study, the early semantic and cognitive development

speaking

and 12 English-speaking

abilities,

object-permanence,

three related semantic

children

means-ends

abilities,

was recorded. problem

solving,

disappearance words,

emphasized

Korean

speakers

emphasized

and 30

and categorization, words,

and and a in the

and the naming spurt emerged later

in Korean speakers than in English speakers, and meansends of 18

of 11 Korean-

types of cognitive

speakers. However, categori-

ure words emerged earlier in Korean speakers than in English study

at Berkeley

delayed relative to other abilities

Korean speakers. In absolute terms, categorization

mothers consistently

Three

success/failure

naming spurt emerged at about the same time in English zation and the naming spurt were significantly

tional

of California

and success/fail-

speakers. In a cross-sec-

speakers,

the Korean-speaking

actions, and the English-speaking

mothers consistently

names. The Korean-speaking

English

abilities

children were consistently

rization

and advanced in means-ends

abilities

findings

suggest that differences in linguistic

delayed in catego-

relative to the English

speakers.

These

input may affect cognitive development.

Different languages divide up the world in different ways. How are these differences reflected in patterns of semantic and cognitive development? There are several possible answers to this question. One possibility is that semantic development is determined by universal linguistic principles, and proceeds independently of both nonlinguistic cognitive development and particular patterns of input. We might identify this view with the classic Chomskyan picture of language acquisition (Chomsky, 1980) Another pos-

This research was supported by NSF Grant No. DBS9213959. We are grateful to Kei Nakamura, Lauren Silver, Mee Hyung-Ahn, Nancy Kim, Mi-Yong Kim, and Monica Steichen for help in testing, to the parents of our participants and to the Berklands Baptist church. Andrew Mel&off and Dan Slobin provided helpful comments on a first draft of this article. Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Alison Gopnik, Department of Psychology, Tolman Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720. 197

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sibility is that cognitive development would determine semantic development. Universal patterns of cognitive development might completely determine the meanings expressed in children’s early language. This is the classic Piagetian picture (Piaget, 1962; Sinclair, 1970). On both these views, linguistic differences would have no effect on semantic or cognitive development. A third possibility is that cognitive development proceeds independently of language, but that linguistic differences do influence semantic developments. Slobin (1985) used the metaphor of a waiting room to describe one version of this possibility. Children learning different languages may all develop similar concepts at about the same time. However, they may acquire words for concepts that are clearly encoded in the adult language before they acquire those that are less clearly encoded. The concepts have been formed, but they must wait to be encoded until the child has mastered the relevant syntax. In this way, semantic development, although not cognitive development, would be influenced by linguistic differences. Bowerman (1989) and Choi and Bowerman (1991) suggested a very different way in which linguistic differences could affect semantic development. In contrast to the “waiting room” idea, they argued that the child’s semantics reflects linguistic differences from the very beginnings of language. For example, Korean verbs may make different distinctions than English ones. Korean locative verbs distinguish between movements that result in a “tight fit” and a “loose fit,” (such as the difference between a hand in a glove or a lego block on another lego block, on the one hand, and an orange in a bowl or a vase on a table, on the other hand). These distinctions cross-cut relations of support and containment. English prepositions, in contrast, distinguish between support and containment, but not tight and loose fit. In English, we use the same preposition for the glove and the orange, and differentiate these cases from those of the lego and the vase. The studies of Choi and Bowerman (1991) suggested that these distinctive semantic patterns are also reflected in children’s speech, from the time they begin to talk. Korean-speaking children use the appropriate spatial verbs to talk about movement and the “loose fit, ” “tight fit” distinction at their first use, and do not distinguish support and containment in their use of these verbs. This suggests that semantic development is shaped by particular language-specific semantic patterns from a very early period. It is not just that different patterns of input can delay or accelerate semantic developments, as the “waiting room” metaphor suggests. A fourth possibility is that linguistic differences might influence both semantic development and cognitive development itself. If a distinction is clearly marked in the adult language, it may be easier for children to acquire both the word for that distinction and the conceptual distinction itself. On this view, there is an active interaction between linguistic and cognitive development. Gopnik and Meltzoff (Gopnik, 1982, 1984a; Gopnik &

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Meltzoff, 1984,1986) have previously advanced the Vygotskyan (Vygotsky, 1962) or even Whorfian (Whorf, 1956) idea that the acquisition of particular linguistic forms motivates the development of the related cognitive abilities; that is, language might actually facilitate cognition. They based this claim on the fact that, in longitudinal studies, semantic and cognitive developments are closely linked temporally, and often children may acquire a word just before they show nonlinguistic signs of understanding the concept the word encodes. Gopnik and Meltzoff’s (1993) conception of the nature of this relation is, however, rather different from the conceptions of Vygotsky (1962) or Whorf (1956). Both Vygotsky and Whorf suggested that we internalize the conceptual structures that are provided to us in the language of others. An alternative view might draw on the analogy between cognitive development and theory change in science (Carey 1986, 1988; Gopnik 1984b, 1988; Gopnik & Wellman, 1994; Karmiloff-Smith 1988; Karmiloff-Smith & Inhelder 1974, Keil 1989; Wellman & Gelman 1987). In particular, consider the kinds of theory change involved when we learn a theory that has already been formulated. Consider, for example, our acquisition of a word like “entropy” in the course of developing an understanding of physics. We learn a word like “entropy” because it is relevant to cognitive problems we are trying to solve. However, it seems wrong to say either that we first learn the word “entropy” and then acquire the concept of entropy or vice-versa. Both conceptual and semantic change go hand in hand in these cases. More important for our present purposes, it seems likely that the fact that those around us use words like “entropy” plays a significant role in our learning of both the word and the concept (see Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1993, 1996 for further discussion). However, we do not simply arbitrarily internalize the conceptual structures provided by the professor, at least not if we are really learning about physics. Rather, we acquire this concept, at least partly, because of its explanatory power. The information we gain from our professors interacts with the mechanisms for understanding the world that we already have in place. In the same way, children could use information in the language of those around them to formulate new intuitive theories. There would be a thoroughgoing bidirectional interaction between language and cognition. If this picture is correct, then differences in the language we hear could lead to differences in the concepts we formulate. If we take a physics course, we will learn words and concepts like “entropy” and “thermodynamics.” If instead we were exposed to a biology course in which words like “adaptation” and “clade” figured, we might expect that our acquisition of biological concepts would be advanced rather than our acquisition of physical concepts. This, then, is a straightforward way in which the language we hear

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might influence cognition, even if cognitive development is not simply the internalization of the conceptual structures of others. Cross-linguistic data provide one particularly perspicuous way to test this hypothesis. In particular, the fact that a concept is encoded clearly and saliently in a particular adult language might make it easier for the child to learn that concept. Some languages might be the equivalent of biology lessons, whereas others offer more tuition in physics. The Choi and Bowerman (1991) findings suggest that this may be true of Korean locatives. A number of other recent cross-linguistic studies make similar suggestions about various aspects of language (Berman & Slobin, 1995; Sera, Rettinger & Castillo Pintado, 1991; Shatz, 1991; Slobin, 1985; Weist, Wysocka, & Lyytinen, 1991). Although they suggested such an outcome, none of these crosslinguistic studies included any clearly nonlinguistic cognitive measures. However, recent studies of Korean acquisition of nouns and verbs (Gopnik & Choi, 1990,1995) provide more concrete evidence that language may influence cognition. English has a highly analytic structure, with relatively little reliance on morphological variation. Nouns are generally obligatory in English sentences; sentences that consist simply of an inflected verb, without nouns or pronouns, are extremely rare. Moreover, the aspects of actions that are cognitively salient to young children, such as success and failure, recurrence and location, are not clearly encoded by verbs in English. Children learning English often end up using rather marginal terms, such as interjections like “uh-oh” or particles like “up” and “down” to encode these concepts (Bloom, 1973,1993; Fenson et al., 1994; Gopnik, 1982,1984b; Nelson, 1973). On the other hand, object categories are very clearly marked in English and English-speaking parents, particularly middle-class parents, focus heavily on object naming in their speech to children (Goldfield, 1993; Nelson et al., 1993). In contrast, Korean and Japanese, languages with a very similar grammatical structure, have a very rich verb morphology, depend on different verb endings to make important semantic distinctions, and are verb-final. Pragmatic rules in Korean and Japanese allow massive noun ellipsis, particularly in informal conversation where the context is clear and present (Clancy, 1985). Some studies suggest that parental speech in these languages, which occurs in precisely such a setting, often consists of highly inflected verbs with few nouns, very much in contrast to North American English parental speech. Moreover, in Korean, action concepts that are salient to young children are straightforwardly and clearly encoded by verbs, rather than being encoded by interjections or particles that also have many other meanings. Children use these verbs in their spontaneous speech to encode these concepts. Fernald & Morikawa (1993) found that Japanese-speaking mothers used fewer nouns in their speech to children than English speakers. Au, Dapretto, and Song (1994) found a similar result for Korean-speaking

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mothers. Choi and Gopnik (1995) found both that Korean-speaking mothers consistently used fewer object nouns than English-speaking mothers, and that they used more action verbs. We might think of the input to Korean children as a medium that naturally teaches a great deal about actions and relations, whereas English input focuses more intensely on object classes. To extend the earlier metaphor, Korean-speaking children sit in on more Introductory Action courses whereas English-speaking children spend more time in Object Categories 101. There is also some evidence that there are differences in the very early language of Korean and Japanese versus English-speaking children. A number of investigators have noted that Korean and Japanese-speaking children use verbs and verb morphology productively earlier than Englishspeaking children, but use fewer and less varied names (Choi, 1991; Choi & Gopnik, 1993, 1995; Clancy, 198.5; Fernald & Morikawa, 1993; Gopnik & Choi, 199.5, Rispoli, 1987; Tanouye, 1979). An exception to this pattern is a cross-sectional study by Au, Dapretto, and Song (1994) that failed to find a difference in verbs and nouns between the two groups. There were a number of methodological features of the study, however, that would have made it difficult to detect such a difference. The linguistic data for the study consisted of a single check-off inventory filled out by mothers on one occasion, for a small number of children. Most notably, for most of the children, the inventory was a word-for-word translation of the Macarthur lexical inventory (MCDI; Dale, Bates, Reznick & Morisset, 1989) from English into Korean (for a few children this questionnaire was supplemented by a short list of Korean verbs). This would obviously underestimate Korean verbs which have no simple equivalents in English, and are not used by English-speaking children. Moreover, as Fenson et al. (1984), pointed out, preestablished lexical inventories are only an appropriate measure of the development of a particular language if extensive norming is first done in the original language. Finally, the number of children in the study, was, in fact, so small that no statistical comparisons between the two groups could be made. In contrast, Choi and Gopnik, (1995) using a larger longitudinal sample with a much more extensive linguistic data base, including a longitudinally administered questionnaire, an interview with the caregiver, and spontaneous speech samples, found consistent, statistically significant differences between the two language groups. In addition to using more verbs and fewer nouns overall than the English speakers, most of the Korean speakers showed an early verb spurt, often preceding the naming spurt-a phenomenon not found in the English speakers. It should be noted that Choi and Gopnik did not find that verbs were aquired before nouns in Korean. Rather, both types of words were acquired at about the same time and played an equally significant role in early vocabularies.

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More significantly for the present purposes, in a longitudinal study of five Korean speakers, Gopnik and Choi (1990) found that these children consistently acquired both a naming spurt and nonlinguistic object classification abilities later than English speakers, although they were not delayed in other areas of cognitive development. Among English speakers there is a close relation between the development of nonlinguistic object classification and the development of a naming spurt (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1987,1992, 1993; Lifter & Bloom, 1989; Mervis & Bertrand, 1993,1994). The study presented here was designed to further explore this finding but also investigated another possible relation between linguistic and cognitive development in these children. The Korean emphasis on verbs might make concepts encoded by verbs, concepts involving actions, plans and goals, particularly salient to young children. During the one-word stage, there are significant changes in children’s understanding of these concepts. The clearest evidence for this comes from children’s performance on “means-ends” tasks, tasks that involve designing actions to accomplish particular goals (Piaget, 1952, Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975,1987). Moreover, an understanding of means-ends relations has been shown to be related to the development of “relational” words that encode success and failure, such as “uh-oh” and “there,” in English speakers (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1984, 1986). These concepts are encoded by verbs in Korean. If fewer and less salient nouns led to a delay in classification, a stress on verbs might lead to an acceleration of these areas of development. There were some indications of such a relative acceleration in Gopnik and Choi (1990). Such a pattern of development, a kind of double dissociation between the two languages and the two types of cognition, would also be important from a methodological perspective. The delay in classification in the Korean speakers might be due to many general factors, motivational or stylistic differences, general cultural differences and so on. These explanations become less likely if Korean speakers are actually advanced in other areas of cognition, particularly when these areas are also related to specific features of linguistic structure that are salient in Korean. Our first study then investigated how Korean children would develop means-ends and classification abilities in comparison to English speakers, and how the development of those abilities was related to semantic developments.

STUDY 1 Method Participants. Participants were 11 Korean-speaking children, 6 girls and 5 boys. Ten of the children were cared for by Korean parents or grandparents who spoke only Korean in the home, and the children also spoke

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only Korean. One of the children also used some English. The Korean families studied were immigrants to the United States. These parents came to the United States as adults (i.e., they are first-generation immigrants), their primary language in everyday life is Korean, and most, if not all, of their social interactions are with other Koreans in the community. The socioeconomic background of the Korean families was middle class. The parents had finished either high school or college. Children’s ages ranged from 383 days to 544 days on the first visit (M = 450.77 days) and from 569 days to 673 days on the last visit. Children were first tested when they used a few words, but did not yet use success/failure or disappearances words, or show signs of a naming spurt. In analysis, these children were compared to the 12 children reported in Gopnik and Meltzoff (1987). These children were all monolingual English speakers and had ages ranging from 410-552 days at the first visit (M = 470 days). These children also came from a roughly similar range of educational and social backgrounds as the Korean speakers did.

Procedure. Procedures were identical to those employed in Gopnik and Meltzoff (1987), with the exception that children were tested at home or in church, rather than in the laboratory. At the initial testing session, one child (Participant 1) achieved the criterion for means-ends, solving the ring task insightfully (see later). All the rest of the children did not achieve the requisite level of performance in any of the three tasks in the first session. Children were tested approximately once every 3 weeks, until they had solved all the cognitive tasks. Two children moved away before completing the categorization task. Children were tested at home or in a small room attached to the church the children attended on Sundays. During testing, children sat on their parents’ lap opposite a small table from the female experimenter. Parents were told to encourage the children to play with the objects, but not to tell or show them what to do. A camera located behind the experimenter’s shoulder videotaped the sessions. All 11 children received six cognitive tasks adapted from the Uzgiris and Hunt scales (Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975). These included two object-permanence tasks and four means-ends tasks. The two object-permanence tasks were: finding a simply invisibly displaced object (Task 13) and finding a serially invisibly displaced object (Task 14). The four means-ends tasks were: using a string to obtain an object, using a stick to obtain an object, placing a necklace in a bottle, and avoiding placing a solid ring on a post (Tasks 9-12). (For more details on administration of these tasks see Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1986,1987; Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975,1987). Eight of the children also received three categorization tasks (the first three children we tested only received the object-permanence and means-ends tasks). All the tasks were presented in a randomly determined order within each session, with the proviso

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that children never received two categorization tasks in a row (to alleviate boredom). In the categorization tasks, the objects were the same as those employed by Gopnik and Meltzoff (1987) and by Gopnik and Choi (1990) and were similar to those used by Ricciuti (196.5) Starkey (1981) and Sugarman (1983). In the first task, the objects were four “slabs’‘-small, flat rectangles-and four small, stylized, Fisher-Price “people.” In the second task, the objects were four plasticine balls and four small square pillboxes. In the third task, the objects were four small human figures and four small toy trains. The procedure in all three categorization tasks was identical. The experimenter presented the eight to-be-sorted objects in a random array on the table. Children of this age often spontaneously sort the objects into the experimenter’s hands, and so the experimenter sat with both hands palm up on the table equidistant from the child. If children threw the objects off the table they were returned to it. Both the experimenter and the parent encouraged the children to handle the objects in general terms but no specific prompts were given. Objects were presented for 3 min and then removed.

Cognitive Scoring The cognitive tasks were scored from the videotapes by an observer who was blind to the children’s language status, and did not know Korean. (In a few cases, there were technical problems with videotapes and the experimenter’s original scoring was used.) The scoring criteria for the object-permanence and means-ends tasks were taken directly from previous research using the Uzgiris and Hunt scales. (For more details on scoring, see Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1986; Uzgiris & Hunt, 1975). As in previous studies, children were counted as having attained the highest level of object-permanence ability if they solved the most difficult serial invisible displacement task (Task 14). Also as in previous studies, they were counted as having attained the highest means-ends level if they solved any one of the three most difficult means-ends tasks using insight (Tasks 10-12). That is, they determined the correct method of solving the task immediately, without a period of trial and error groping. In particular, this meant that the child pulled the toy to himself or herself immediately with the rake, immediately dangled the necklace bead by bead into the bottle, or immediately discarded the solid ring, without even trying to place it on the post. (In earlier studies, [Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1986; Uzgiris & Hunt, 19751, it was found that Tasks lo-12 all emerged after Task 9, but that there was no ordering among the three tasks). In earlier studies, children’s abilities in these two areas, determined by exactly these same criteria, had been related to the use of relational words in English speakers (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1984, 1986; Tomasello & Farrar, 1984,1986). This provides de facto evidence that these particular tasks using these particular criteria are indicators of significant cognitive developments (see Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1993, for discussion).

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Moreover, these object-permanence and means-ends tasks have been highly replicated, showing similar developmental patterns in many studies (Uzgiris & Hunt, 1987). The scorer determined three levels of categorization behavior: (1) single category sorting, (2) exhaustive serial touching, and (3) exhaustive grouping. (These levels correspond to categorization levels 1,2, and 3 in Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1987). Scoring procedures were the same as those used in Gopnik & Meltzoff (1987) Ricciuti (1965), and Sugarman (1983). However, for purposes of this study, we will restrict our analysis to level-3 categorization, exhaustive grouping. Exhaustive grouping was scored if the children systematically placed the objects of different kinds into physically distinct locations. Typically, in exhaustive sorting, the child either made two separate piles on the table, or else placed all the objects of one kind into one of the experimenter’s hands and all the objects of another kind into the other. Children were scored as having achieved the appropriate level if they displayed the behavior on any one of the three sorting tasks. Again, in earlier studies this level of categorization, determined by these criteria, was found to be significantly related to the development of a naming spurt (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1987,1992; Mervis & Bertrand, 1993,1994).

Language Testing and Scoring. Children’s parents received the Early Language Questionnaire used in Gopnik & Meltzoff (1987) which was translated into a Korean version, and administered and scored by a native Korean speaker. This questionnaire lists different contexts in which early social and relational words are likely to occur, such as words for success and failure, location and disappearance. It also asks parents to list their children’s uses of object names. Finally, it asks parents to record any other words used by their children. A number of features of this questionnaire should be noted. First, whereas it provides the parent with a structured list rather than an entirely open-ended one, it also focuses on the types of meanings of words rather than the lexical items themselves. In this respect it is quite different from, for example, the Macarthur Inventory, which lists particular lexical items in English and asks parents to check them off. It is also much better suited to cross-linguistic investigations of this particular kind. The relevant question is not which lexical items the children in these languages use (obviously, they will be different in the two languages), but whether the kinds of semantic information the children convey, the distinctions they make, and the subtleties they include, are different. Second, the questionnaire was given to the mothers at the first recording session, and they were asked to keep a copy of the questionnaire between sessions to record language developments they noticed at home. Thus, the

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questionnaire provided a focused but quite deep and extensive source of information about the child’s early language. The Korean-speaking children’s spontaneous speech was also transcribed, providing yet another source of information about language. As in Gopnik and Mel&off (1987) children were counted as having acquired a word if they used it spontaneously in three separate contexts, (i.e., not in a particular ritualized context or “script”) either according to the questionnaire or in the taped session. We have previously reported eight of these Korean speakers’ general linguistic profile, and their use of early verbs, in particular (Choi & Gopnik, 1995). The Korean-speaking children used many more verbs in their early speech overall than the English speakers. For purposes of the study presented here, we focused on two types of relational language, generally encoded by verbs in Korean, the use of a word encoding success or failure, and the use of a word encoding disappearance. In previous studies of English- and Korean-speaking children success/failure words were found to be related to means-ends tasks, whereas disappearance words were found to be related to object-permanence tasks (Gopnik & Choi, 1990, Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1986). Moreover, data on the acquisition of these words, as recorded on the Early Language Questionnaire, were also available for the 12 children whose cognitive development was recorded in Gopnik & Meltzoff (1987). We also focused on “the naming spurt”-the sharp increase in names that has been reported in many studies. Gopnik and Meltzoff (1987, 1992) and Mervis and Bertrand (1993, 1994) found that this spurt was related to spontaneous classification. As in Gopnik and Meltzoff (1987) children were scored as having acquired a naming spurt if they developed 10 new names in a 3-week session. This is comparable to the criterion used in other studies of the spurt (Bloom, 1985; Corrigan, 1978; Goldfield & Reznick, 1990). Reliability. An additional coder scored 13 of the taped sessions randomly chosen. This scorer’s coding was compared to the original scorer’s coding for all of the sessions. Interscorer agreement was high. The two coders assigned the same categorization score to the children in all 13 cases, the same means-ends score in 12 of the 13 cases and the same object-permanence score in 11 of the 13. The original scorer’s coding was used in all cases. Results and Discussion Cognitive Measures. The raw data for the Korean speakers is displayed in Table 1. As noted above, all the Korean-speaking children acquired the means-ends and object-permanence abilities. Two children moved away

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Differences

Table 1. Age in Days at Which Eleven Cognitive and Linguistic Milestones

Korean-Speaking

Children

Achieved

Six

Language Measures

Cognitive Measures Participant

ObjectPermanence

MeansEnds

Exhaustive Sorting

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 m English m

531 475 555 445 474 478 605 442 646 490 499 510 521

489 454 470 509 548 478 474 496 487 617 476 511 522

** ** ** 586 597* 631 567 554* 576 525 607 580 524

Disappearance

Success Failure

574 500 555 424 424 478 537 428 688* 554 524 517 554

511 475 470 509 445 478 496 442 576 554 434 490 518

Naming Spurt 673 628 569 586 521 672 670 554* 688* 646 572 616 557

*These children did not accomplish this skill by the end of the testing session **These children did not receive categorization tasks

before

they

displayed

they were assigned the earliest point

the

categorization

a date of acquisition at which these skills

ability.

For purposes

of analysis,

3 weeks after the last testing could

have

been

acquired.

session, This is a

estimate and would work against the hypothesis that Korean speakers are delayed in categorization. Data were also reanalyzed dropping these participants and the results were the same in all respects. For the English speakers in the earlier study, the three types of cognitive ability emerged, on average, at almost exactly the same age (see Table 2). Moreover, there was no consistent ordering among these developments. In particular, 6 of the 12 English-speaking children acquired the highest level of means-ends ability only after they acquired the highest level of categorization. Although the Korean-speaking children in this study developed these abilities overall at about the same age as the English speakers, there was evidence that the three measures did not emerge at similar ages for them (see Table 1). In particular, 7 of the 8 children who received categorization tasks acquired means-ends abilities before they acquired categorization abilities, as did 4 of the 5 Korean-speaking children reported in Gopnik and Choi (1990). The difference between the age of acquisition of the two tasks for the Korean speakers was significant (p < .05 by Wilcoxon Test). The emergence of object-permanence abilities appeared to be intermediate for these children. Six children acquired object-permanence abilities after means-ends abilities, four reversed this order, and one child developed both abilities in the same session. There was some evidence that object-permaconservative

A. Copnik, S. Choi, and 1. Baumberger

208 Table 2.

Median Age in Days at Which Korean-Speakers Acquired Six Cognitive and Linguistic Abilities Cognitive Measures ObjectPermanence

Means Ends

and English-Speakers

Language Measures

Exhaustive Sorting

Disappearance

Success Failure

Naming SPUrt

Language

Korean English

490

489

581

524

478

42s

516.5

525.5*

510*

519

5231

550*

*p < .05 by ~~~n-~itn~y

U test

“p = .058 by Joann-~irney

U test.

nence, like means-ends abilities emerged before categorization (p < .0.5 by Wilcoxon Test). Two of the 8 children who received categorization tasks acquired object-permanence abilities after categorization abilities, and 6 reversed this order. Language Measures. Like English speakers, Korean-speaking children used words to encode concepts of success, failure, and disappearance. Unlike the English speakers, however, these children used verbs to encode these concepts. The most common forms were “epsta” for disappearance (used by 6 children) and “twayssta” for success (used by 6 children). “Eps” and “twae” are Korean verb roots meaning “not exist” and “become” respectively. Children used these words with the modal suffix “-ta,” which denotes perceptually salient events. In addition, 2 children used the Korean verb “issta” (which means, roughly, “exist”) to mark disappearance, and 1 child did not use a disappearance word at all. In addition, children used the verb “an hay” (which means, roughly, “not do”) and the exclamations “uh” for failure and used the exclamatory “ya. 1” for success. Both these exclamations are standardly used in similar contexts by adult Korean speakers. The one bilingual child used the English “uh-oh” to indicate failure. The pattern of emergence of the three types of linguistic developments (success/failure words, disappearance words, and the naming spurt) again differed somewhat from that of the English speakers. For the English speakers, there were no significant differences between the three types of linguistic developments. For the Korean speakers, however, there was a significant delay of the naming spurt compared to both of the other two types of words. AI1 11 of the children developed a success/failure word before they developed a naming spurt, whereas 10 of the 11 children developed disappearance words before the naming spurt, and 1 child developed a success/failure word, but neither a disappearance word nor a naming spurt. The difference between the acquisition of the two types of words in the Korean speakers was significant @ < .Ol by Wilcoxon Test in both cases). There was no such evidence for a sequencing of disappearance words and success/failure

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209

Differences

words; 6 children acquired disappearance words after success/failure words, 3 reversed this order and 2 acquired both types of words in the same session. Differences Between English and Korean Speakers The next question under investigation was the absolute difference between the English and Korean speakers. One-tailed Mann-Whitney U tests were used to test the double dissociation hypothesis that Korean speakers would be delayed in categorization and naming, but advanced in means-ends skills and relational-word use (note that this hypothesis makes a clear prediction about the direction of the effects). There was a significant difference between the Korean and English speakers’ development of exhaustive sorting in the categorization tasks. The Korean speakers were significantly delayed on this measure compared to the English speakers (U = 14.5, p < .Ol, Mann-Whitney U test). Similarly, there was a significant difference between Korean and English-speaker’s performance in the development of a naming explosion (Li = 31,~ < .05, Mann-Whitney U test); (see Table 2). Intriguingly, however, the opposite pattern held for the development of means-ends abilities and success/failure words. Korean-speaking children were advanced in both these areas of development compared to the English speakers (for success/failure, U = 40.5,~ = .058; for means-ends, U = 36,~ < .05, both by Mann-Whitney U tests). Finally, although the Korean speakers appeared slightly in advance of the English speakers on object-permanence and disappearance measures, these differences did not approach significance (see Table 2).

STUDY 2 Study 1 confirmed the suggestion that there were differences in the cognitive development of Korean- and English-speaking children. The Koreanspeaking children were both delayed in the development of spontaneous classification and advanced in means-ends development. Moreover, there was some evidence for a more direct relation between language and cognition in so far as the children also showed a similar pattern of semantic development. In Study 1, we simply assumed that the cognitive and linguistic differences between Korean- and English-speaking children were accompanied by differences in maternal input, as suggested by previous studies of Japanese-and Korean-speaking mothers. In this study, however, we wanted to test the nature of those differences directly. One set of questions concern whether differences among mothers were at least partly linguistic or stemmed from differences in the kinds of activities mothers engaged in with their children, as Fernald has suggested (Fernald & Morikawa, 1993). In earlier studies, mother’s spontaneous speech

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was simply sampled. Au, Dapretto, and Song (1994), for example, used CHILDES records of mother’s speech. Differences in the two groups might reflect differences in the typical activities mothers engage in, rather than differences in the kinds of language they use to talk about those activities. In the current study, as in Choi and Gopnik (1995) we compared Korean and English speaker’s input in the same setting and with the same materials encouraging similar sorts of play. If differences still emerge, we might conclude that such differences are not simply cultural differences in the kinds of activities the mothers engage in spontaneously. (Of course, such cultural differences may also play a role in the child’s semantic and cognitive development). Moreover, in the current study, unlike Choi and Gopnik (1995), we compared data from two different types of settings, a “book-reading” task that might encourage the use of nouns, and a “toy play” task that might encourage the use of verbs. Second, we wanted to test whether the Korean-speaking mothers used both fewer object nouns and more action verbs than English speakers. In Japanese, Fernald and Morikawa (1993) found differences in nouns, but not A pattern of a “double dissociain what they called “activity utterances.” tion” between nouns and verbs is particularly important methodologically. The logic is the same as that described earlier. The mere fact of a naming difference in mothers could by itself have many interpretations; Koreanspeaking mothers might simply use less speech overall or be less pedagogical in their speech style. If, however, we can point to a respect in which Korean-speaking mothers are actually using more of some form than English speakers, these more general explanations become less plausible, and we can surmise a closer relation between linguistic aspects of the input and the children’s cognitive development. This study also gave us a chance to replicate our earlier findings of a cognitive difference in the two groups with a larger sample and a different, cross-sectional, design. In addition, whereas the earlier longitudinal study compared Korean and English samples tested at different times and in different studies although with very similar methodologies, this study ensured that all the details of testing and procedure were the same in the two groups. Finally, and most significantly, by looking at maternal input to these same children, we could see if the input to these particular groups of children was directly related to their cognitive performance. In earlier studies, we either compared input, or compared cognitive and linguistic performance. In this study, we could compare both measures for the very same set of children. It may be noted that we did not attempt to assess the children’s language in this study. The major difficulty was that we could contrive no way of assessing both the Korean and English speakers in a comparable way. The Early Language Questionnaire plus interview depends on a longitudinal

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format where the mothers have a chance to monitor the children in the intervening sessions. However, in pilot studies we found that this was a considerably less reliable instrument in a cross-sectional study. Mothers varied widely in their reporting on this somewhat open-ended measure (see also Gopnik & Mel&off, 1986). On the other hand, a simple word for word translation of the Macarthur Developmental Inventory, which has previously been used in cross-sectional studies of language and cognition in English speakers (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1992) is obviously not appropriate for cross-linguistic testing. As noted earlier, the list of lexical items provided in the inventory is based on early English vocabularies, and there is every reason to think that simple translation of those items into Korean would not provide an adequate assessment of Korean vocabularies (see also Fenson et al.). This is particularly true of the early verbs that are used by Korean speakers to encode relational concepts and that have no simple translated equivalent in English (see Choi & Bowerman, 1991; Choi & Gopnik, in press). In order to make a comparison we would need, at the least, to construct a new checklist based on the spontaneous early vocabularies of Korean speakers and this was beyond our current purview. Method

Participants. Participants were 18 Korean-speaking children, 11 girls and 7 boys, recorded in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange County, and 30 English-speaking children, 15 girls and 15 boys, recorded in the San Francisco Bay area. The English-speaking children were recruited from a list of children born in the Bay area, and were largely white and middle class. They were all monolingual English speakers. The Korean speakers in this study came from similar backgrounds as those in the previous study, 16 of the 18 were children of first-generation Korean immigrants, and 2 were children of Korean graduate students living in the United States to finish their education. All children were monolingual Korean speakers. The primary caregivers of 3 Korean children were their grandmothers. Reference to the Korean mothers of this study includes the 3 grandmothers. The mean age of the children was 1;6.2 in the Korean group and 1;6.4 in the English group. Procedure. The study included both cognitive and input measures. Each session began and ended with a period in which children played with toys or books with their caregivers. The caregiver’s speech in these sessions was later coded and analyzed. Cognitive tasks were presented in a randomly determined order in the intervening 20 min. The cognitive measures were the same as those in Study I, based on those described in Uzgiris and I-Iunt (1975) and are described in detail in Gopnik and Meltzoff (1986, 1987). Administration and scoring of the tasks was identical to that in Study 1.

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Children in the English-speaking sample were tested in a 10’ x 10’ room containing an adult-sized table and two chairs. Children sat in their mothers’ laps during the 30-min sessions. The two 5-min play periods were transcribed and coded for this study. Korean-speaking children were tested in a similar setting in the child’s home or in Korean church preschools. In the first 5 min of each session, mothers and children looked at two books together. Mothers were instructed to look at them as they would do at home. The books contained pictures of various complex scenes; for example children playing at the seaside, ants marching, but no words. In the last 5 min of each session, mothers and children played with a toy house for toddlers. Mothers were instructed to play with it as they would at home. The set included two dolls, two beds, a car, a bathroom set, a kitchen set, a picnic table, and a swimming pool. (In pilot work, we discovered that if the playhouse was presented at the start of the session, children would refuse to play with anything else). Input Coding. Both input sessions were transcribed from the videotapes, then typed into a computer. These first drafts were checked against the videotape by a different researcher, who corrected typographi~l and transcription errors. Changes were made to the computer files and final drafts were printed. These transcripts were then coded as described later. The primary coders for both English and Korean transcripts were native speakers of those Ianguages, and both had background in linguistics. In the semantic coding, nouns and verbs were classified as “referential” or “nonreferential,” with both types and tokens being counted. (This corresponds to the distinction between “action verbs” and other verbs, and “object nouns” and other nouns in Choi and Gopnik, 1995). This classification was intended to distinguish utterances of nouns or verbs that clearly referred to current ongoing objects, actions, or events, from other utterances whose meaning was not directly given by the context in this way. Our assumption was that words that clearly referred to salient events in the immediate context would be more Iikely to be understood by children, and would be more likely to influence their cognitive construals, than words that referred to distant or abstract objects, states, and relations. Referential nouns referred to concrete objects and people in the books or toy set (e.g., dog, kitty, the mommy, car, bathtub, house). Nonreferential nouns include nouns that describe activities or states (e.g., fun), indeterminate nouns (e.g., thing, way), abstract nouns (e.g., household, idea), and locative nouns (e.g., front, top). Proper names and pronouns were not included in the analyses. Referential verbs referred to specific, observable activities that were impending, ongoing, or completed, as represented either in the books or the toy set (e.g., going to drive, swimming, ate). They included activities performed by the child or the parent as well as by characters in the books or

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figures in the toy set. Nonreferential verbs include attention-getting verbs (e.g., lookit, watch), stative verbs (e.g., know, feel, want), verbs that focus on naming objects (e.g., looks like), and verbs that do not refer to specific activities (e.g., “do” in “What shall we do?“). Copulas, auxiliaries, and modais were not included in either of the above verb categories. Appendix A includes further examples of referential and nonreferential nouns and verbs, as well as some sample sentences. In an additional pragmatic coding, utterances were coded as activity-oriented, naming-oriented, or neither. (Again, this is the same analysis used in Choi & Gopnik, 1995). Utterances were defined by a significant pause in maternal speech or a turn taken by the child. Activity-oriented utterances included requests for, or comments on, the movements of objects. Other activity-oriented utterances were comments on anticipated or completed actions, and requests or commands for the child to perform an action or comment on an action. Finally, praising the child with a full sentence for performing an action counted as activity-oriented. Naming-oriented utterances included naming an object with or without a copula, requesting the name of an object or a picture, and encouraging the child to find an object by giving a specific name (e.g., “Where is the car?“). Other naming-oriented utterances involved stating the locations of specific objects (e.g., The car is in the garage), asking the child to look at a specific object, prompting the child to name an object, and naming with “looks like” (e.g., ‘That looks like Oscar”). The “other” category included utterances that were ambiguous (e.g., “Good, All right, Come on, Good boy”) and deictics that were nonspecific (e.g., “‘This. Look at this,“). Additional “other” utterances involved using pronouns (e.g., “Here it is”), using the verb “like” (e.g., “You like that”), and adverbial expressions (e.g., “Night-night”), asking the child to say a word explicitly but without reference to the context (e.g., “Say ‘ball,’ say ‘nightnight”‘), and using onomatopoeic words in isolation (e.g., “meow, meow”). Examples of activity-oriented, naming-oriented, and other utterances are provided in Appendix B.

Reliability. As in the previous studies, the cognitive scoring was highly reliable; a second scorer given 13 randomly chosen sessions assigned the same object-permanence score in 11 of the sessions and the same means-ends and categorization scores in 12 of the sessions. Similarly, 25% of both English and Korean transcripts were recoded by a second coder, a native speaker of English or Korean, using the coding scheme described above. Overall reliability for semantic coding of the Korean tapes was 93.5 percent and for English tapes was 91.3%. For pragmatic coding the figures were 97% and 89.5%. The original coder’s scoring was used in all cases.

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Results and Discussion

Cognifive Measures. We first compared the two groups of children on the three cognitive measures (see Table 3). As in the previous study onetailed tests were used to test the double dissociation hypothesis. As in the longitudinal study, there was a significant difference between performance on the means-ends and categorization tasks for the Korean speakers but not for the English speakers (t = 7.211,~ < .Ol for the Korean speakers). There were no significant differences between the two groups on the object-permanence measure, though as in the longitudinal study Korean speakers did somewhat better than English speakers. There were, however, significant differences on the other two measures. As predicted from the earlier study the Korean speakers were significantly advanced in means-ends development compared to the English speakers (chi-square = 3.254,~ < .OS).Also as predicted the Korean speakers showed significantly tower categorization ability than the English speakers (chi-square = 4.9,~ < .05). These results, then, confirmed the results of the longitudinal study. ~aie~~~ Input. Next, we examined the differences between maternal input in Korean and English in the two contexts (see Table 4, Figures 1 and 2). Overall, Korean-speaking mothers produced significantly more utterances than English speakers (for books, Korean M = 137.3, English M = 108.67, t = 2.64,~ < .05; for toys, Korean M = 108.78, English M = 86.93, t = 2.06, p < .05). We therefore divided the nouns and verbs by the total number of utterances produced by each mother in each session. We performed a 2 X 2 (Language X Context) ANOVA on the resulting scores. There were significant overall differences between the two language groups in every category of nouns. English-speaking mothers used more referential and nonreferentia~ noun types and tokens per utterance than Korean-speaking mothers (for referential types, F = 25.38, p < .OOOl;for nonreferential types,p < .OOl;for referential tokens, F = 7.95,~ < .OS;for nonreferential tokens, F = 8.00,~ < .Ol). As we might expect there were also differences in the input produced in the two types of contexts, with both linguistic groups using more referential and nonreferential noun types and tokens with the books than the toys (for Table 3. Percent of English and Korean-Speakers Object-Permanence

Passing Three Cognitive Tasks

Means-Ends

Exhaustive

Sorting

Language

Korean (N = 18) English (N = 30)

*p < .05 by chi-square test.

39% 17%

89% 60%*

11% 47%*

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Differences

Table 4. Mean Proportions of Total Utterances for English and Korean Speakers in the Cross-Sectional Study Comparison

Book

TOY

Referential noun types English Korean

.286 .199

,173 ,102

Referential noun tokens English Korean

.621 .550

,391 ,291

Non-ref noun types English Korean

,021 ,012

.036 .017

Non-ref noun tokens English Korean

.025 .015

.054 .030

Referential verb types English Korean

,078 ,084

.122 .I61

Referential verb tokens English Korean

,119 ,165

.275 .482

Non-ret verb types English Korean

.078 .029

.lOO .037

Non-ref: verb tokens English Korean

.292 ,150

,260 ,141

referential types, F = 45.54,~ < .OOOl; for nonreferential types, F = 6.72,~ < .OOl; for referential tokens, book F = 65.40, p < .OOOl; for nonreferential tokens, F = 13.26,~ < .OOOl). There were no interaction effects. There were main effects for the referential verb categories in the opposite direction. Korean mothers used significantly more referential verb types and tokens per utterance than English-speaking mothers (for referential types, F = 6.19,~ < .05; for referential tokens, F = 33.1 p < .OOOl). However, English speakers used more nonreferential verb types and tokens than Korean speakers (for nonreferential types, F = 101.05,p < .OOOl; for nonreferential tokens, F = 40.48, p < .OOOl). There were also significant differences between the two contexts (bookreading vs. toy). Both Korean and English mothers used more referential verb types and tokens, and more nonreferential verb types in the toy context than for the books (for referential types, F = 45.21,~ < .OOOl; for referential tokens, F = 116.01,~ < .OOOl; for nonreferential verb types, F 7.68, p < .OOl). Moreover, there was a significant interaction effect for the referential verb types and tokens. Korean speakers showed a stronger differentiation between the two contexts

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than English mothers, with a particularly strong tendency to use verbs in the toy context (for types, F = 3.44,~ < .05; for tokens, F = 13.28,~ < .OOOl). The pragmatic analyses yielded a similar picture (see Fig. 3). Overall, the Korean mothers used significantly more action-oriented utterances per utterance than the English speakers (English M = .198, Korean M = .320, F = 38.18,~ < .OOOl). In contrast, the English speakers used significantly more naming-oriented utterances per utterance than the Korean speakers (English mean = .392; Korean mean = .253, F = 34.32,~ < .OOOl). Similarly, for both groups, significantly more action-oriented utterances were produced with the toy than the book (Toy mean = .346; Book mean = .142, F = 184.2, p < .OOOl). More naming-oriented utterances were produced with the book than the toy (Toy mean = .195, Book mean = .486, F = 237.02,~ < .OOOl). There was a significant interaction effect for the action-oriented utterances, mirroring the interaction we found for referential verb types and tokens in the semantic analysis. Korean speakers were particularly likely to use many action-oriented utterances in the toy contexts (F = 38.07,~ < .OOOl).

General Discussion These results confirm the earlier suggestion that there are both similarities and differences in the patterns of semantic and cognitive development in the two linguistic groups. Like English speakers, Korean speakers develop words to encode disappearance, success, and failure, and they may manifest a naming spurt. However, the pattern for the English speakers is that all three areas of cognitive and semantic development, the understanding of plans, of disappearance, and of categories, emerge, on average, at roughly the same age. The Korean speakers show a different pattern. For them, means-ends abilities and the verbs that are relevant to them clearly and consistently emerge before categorization abilities and the names that are relevant to them.This pattern can be found in both the cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Moreover, when directly compared to English speakers, Korean-speaking children are relatively advanced in their acquisition of both words that encode aspects of actions and plans, and cognitive abilities that involve actions and plans. In contrast, they are relatively delayed in the acquisition of names and of spontaneous categorization abilities. This pattern of cognitive development was confirmed in the cross-sectional study. Korean speakers performed significantly better on means-ends tasks, and worse on categorization tasks, than English speakers. These data provide clear support for the claim that there are close and specific relations between specific semantic and cognitive developments, what has indeed been called “the specificity hypothesis” (Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1986). As in the within-language English-speaking studies, particular semantic developments and related cognitive developments appear to cluster together in development. When means-ends development is ad-

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vanced, so are words that refer to actions and plans; when categorization development is delayed, so is the naming spurt. We also found a closely related pattern in the maternal input to the children. Even when they were placed in very similar contexts the Korean-speaking mothers used significantly more referential verbs to their children than English speakers, whereas English speakers used significantly more referential nouns. The difference in nouns emerged both with a syntactic and semantic analysis; English speakers used more nouns to refer to objects that were in the immediate environment, but they also used more nonreferential nouns. In contrast, the verb differences only emerged in the semantic analysis. Koreanspeaking mothers used more referential verb types and tokens than the English speakers but fewer nonreferential verbs. It appears that the relevant factor in the Korean children’s cognitive development may not be verbs per se, but verbs that are used to refer to ongoing activities. (This may, of course, also be true for nouns; because both referential and nonreferential nouns were more frequently used in English, it is difficult to tell from the present study). Moreover, a pragmatic analysis showed that Korean speakers used more activity-oriented utterances, whereas English-speaking mothers used more naming-oriented utterances. A final point is that both groups of mothers used nouns and verbs differently in different contexts. This underscores the importance of controlling the contexts in which input data are collected. There are, of course, many possible differences between the two language groups that may lead to the differences in semantic and cognitive development.The present findings only suggest correlations between patterns of maternal input in the two groups and patterns of linguistic and cognitive development. However, it is important to note the pattern of double dissociation of specific linguistic and cognitive abilities-the fact that Korean-speaking children are advanced in means-ends abilities but delayed in classification abilities, and that Korean mothers use more referential verbs than English speakers but fewer referential nouns. This pattern rules out certain explanations based on general differences between the two groups.Thus, it is clearly not the case that one group shows general cognitive or linguistic delay relative to the other. Nor could general differences in, for example, the overall amount of maternal input or motivation be at the root of these differences. Whatever the differences are, they are differences that affect verbs and nouns, and means-ends and categorization abilities, in opposite ways. Two general possibilities are particularly relevant. Korean-speaking children may be relatively advanced in an understanding of means-ends relations and delayed in categorization because of some language-independent factor, such as the cultural or pedagogical practices of the two groups. This pattern of cognitive development would then be reflected in their semantic development. The semantic properties of the children’s language would then affect the mother’s speech to the children. This might partly correspond

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to the Piagetian possibility we raised in the introduction-cognitive development would drive linguistic development-but there would be differences in the cognitive development of the two groups. A more intriguing, and to our minds considerably more likely, possibility is that the clear differences in the maternal input to the two groups might actually lead to the differences in semantic and cognitive abilities. Two different aspects of the input might be relevant. First, the general syntactic differences between the two languages might lead to differences in semantic and hence cognitive development. Children hearing any form of Korean or English input will receive quite different information about the relative significance of nouns and verbs, and the concepts they typically encode. However, it is also possible that there is something about the specific maternal input, the special register sometimes called “motherese, “that exaggerates these syntactic differences. Korean-speaking “motherese” might be specifically different from English-speaking “motherese” in this regard. Because we only studied “motherese” language, both interpretations of our data are possible. It should be pointed out, however, that our study suggests that the input differences are not merely consequences of cultural differences in the kinds of activities mothers engage in with their children, as Fernald and Morikawa (1993) suggested. Korean- and English-speaking mothers use different types of language even when they engage in very similar activities with their children. Something about language, in particular, is different in the two groups. Our studies suggest that these linguistic differences in maternal input immediately affect the structure of the child’s semantics. This is similar to the Choi and Bowerman (1991) findings concerning locative expressions. In addition, however, our studies also suggest that specific differences in linguistic input can affect nonlinguistic cognitive development. Of course, different factors may interact in determining the child’s early semantic and cognitive development. These include the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic character of the input to the child, as well as the child’s own internally driven cognitive and linguistic capacities. As yet, we lack the data to completely differentiate the role of each of these factors. The job is likely to be difficult because all these causal influences might be involved and might be mutually facilitative: The syntax of the adult language might influence motherese, the nature of motherese might influence the nature of the mother’s interactions with the infant, maternal input might affect the infant’s language and cognition, and in turn, the infant’s language and cognition might then further influence the mother’s speech. Ideally, further cross-linguistic studies of a range of languages might help to clarify these issues. It is, of course, important to study a wide typological variety of languages and not to make universal claims on the basis of one or two languages other than English. The current studies of Korean and English include data on maternal input, on the children’s semantic development

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and on their cognitive development, and all these indicators point in the same direction. There are interesting suggestions of cross-linguistic differences in the literature on early semantic development. Mandarin Chinese speakers show a similar pattern of semantic development to Korean speakers, with verbs appearing earlier and more frequently than in English speakers (Tardiff, in press), and as previously mentioned there are similar indications for Japanese-speaking children. In contrast, Caselli et al. (1995) found that the early semantic development of Italian-speaking children, as recorded on a lexical inventory, was closer to that of English speakers. It may be noted that, although Caselli at al. relied on a lexical inventory, unlike Au et al. (1994), they did do preliminary norming to ensure that the inventory was reasonably representative of the language. They also used a much larger sample. Although there may still be questions about the relative validity of checklists, questionnaires, and spontaneous speech recordings, the preferred technique would seem to be a combination of different types of methods in a longitudinal design (see Choi & Gopnik, 1995; Pine & Lieven, in press). However, the checklist methods used by Caselli et al., unlike those used by Au et al., do seem to follow the basic principles that validate checklist studies. Like Korean, both Italian and Chinese allow more noun ellipsis than English. However, it is important to be sensitive to details of grammatical structure in comparing languages. In Italian and English, in addition to tense and aspect, the finite verb of the clause inflects according to the person and number of the subject nominal/argument (e.g., “walks” as in “He walks” denotes that the subject is first person singular). In other words, the verbs in these languages encode information about subjects, and so about object categories. These inflections are, in fact, much more extensive in Italian than in English. Thus, in Italian, even when the subject argument is deleted, the verb carries large amounts of information about it. In contrast, in Korean, the obligatory inflections on the finite verb are tense, aspect, and mood/modality which relate to events, states, or the whole proposition. There is no information about the nominal arguments of the sentence (e.g., “mek-ess-tay” expresses eat-Past-Reported speech, i.e., “Somebody said that the person [retrievable from preceding discourse] ate.“) In other words, inflected verbs in Korean only include information about actions and relations and not about objects, whereas Italian verbs do carry information about objects. (In Korean, there is one honorific suffix “-si-” that refers to the subject. But this suffix can be attached to the verb only when the subject is older or in a higher position than the speaker. Even this honorific suffixation is optional). Also, in Italian, whereas subject arguments can be completely deleted from an utterance, object arguments are not. When it is mentioned in prior discourse, the object noun phrase is pronominalized/cliticized and occurs

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before the verb rather than being completely deleted. In contrast, in Korean both subject and object noun phrases can be completely deleted from the utterance. Finally, Italian, unlike Korean, is not gramatically verb-final. These grammatical differences between the two languages suggest that Italian children may hear about nominal arguments of the clause more explicitly than Korean children. This suggests that one should be cautions about considering the two languages to be equivalent in terms of the degree of saliency of verbs. Before assuming that the two languages are equivalent, we need to systematically compare caregivers’ input in the two languages. Moreover, from a broad typological perspective Korean and Japanese are much more closely related to each other than to English, and Italian and English are much more closely related to each other than to Korean, whereas Mandarin Chinese is typologically very different from both Korean and English. As noted, however, these broad typological and grammatical similarities and differences, need to be translated into specific input patterns to children, and we do not yet have appropriate data on the nature of input in either Chinese or Italian, Moreover, we do not yet have the relevant data on cognitive development in either language group. Finally, care must be taken to ensure that our measures are appropriate to the specific languages we study. In particular, we need studies (preferably longitudinal studies) that include both maternal report and free speech measures, and include contextual information about the meaning and use of early words as well as information about the presence or absence of lexical items. In addition to further cross-linguistic studies, studies of individual differences in input among speakers of the same language would also be valuable. There are some studies suggesting that individual differences in input may be related to differences in children’s early semantic development (Goldfield, 1986; Hampson & Nelson, 1993). We have found some indications that these differences may also be related to patterns of cognitive development (Baumberger, 1995; Gopnik & Meltzoff, 1993). Moreover, we need to know exactly which aspects of input are causally relevant to cognition. Our current data, for example, suggest that the relevant factor may not be verb use overall but the use of verbs to refer to ongoing activities. It may be that, in fact, the effect is even narrower than this, and that the relevant aspect of the input is whether the adult language makes clear reference to activities and objects that are relevant to the child’s ongoing cognitive concerns. Korean-speaking mothers not only use many verbs; they also use verbs that encode particularly relevant aspects of the child’s situation, such as success, failure, and location. In contrast, the English-speaking mothers used more abstract nonreferential verbs, such as stative verbs or mental state verbs, that were not related to 18-month-old’s cognitive concerns in this way. This would fit with the general interactive “theory theory” perspective we outlined earlier. Input may only have an

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effect on cognitive development when it is particularly relevant to the children’s cognitive concerns. However, the studies described here do suggest that, however complex the interactions may be, specific features of the language we hear affect our cognitive development from a very early stage. The results are an empirical demonstration that Vygotsky (1962) and Whorf (1956) were at least partly right. Our interpretation of these effects is, however, somewhat different from theirs. We do not wish to suggest that conceptual structure is simply determined by the linguistic patterns we hear around us. Rather, language is an important medium through which children get specific, and usually accurate, information about cognitive problems. This information is then put to use in the child’s problem solving and theory formation. Differences in the kinds of information children get make a difference to the kinds of problems they attempt to solve and the kinds of solutions they consider. We would again return to the metaphor of learning a scientific theory. Just as our conceptual development is influenced by the specific types of language we hear from our physics teachers, so children’s conceptual development is apparently influenced by the specific types of language they hear from their mothers.

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Lifter,

226

Nouns Referential Animals Baby Bathtub Bed Book Boy Car Chicken Clock cows Doggie Door Farm Garage Garbage can Geese Girl Guy Hat House Kitchen Kitty People Piggies PO01 Refrigerator Sheep Sink Stove Table Toilet/Potty Window

A. Gopnik,

S. Choi, and 1. Baumberger

TVerbs Nonreferential Back Backyard Bath Bunch Color terms Difference Dinner Favorite Friends Game Halloween Home Inside Kiss Line Lunch Middle Minute Morning NaP Noise Part Row Song story Time Trail TOP Upstairs View woo1 Words

Referential Beat Close cook Come Crash Do* Disappear Drive Fall Find Finish Give GO**

Lie down Lift Hold Hop Juggling Lose Open Pull Push Put Reach Ride Show Sit Stand Swim Take Turn Wash

Nonreferential Bet Do* Fit Get/Have GO** Guess Happen Hear Hold Know Like Look Look like Need Remember Rest Say See Sing Sleep Start Stay Suggest Talk Taste Tell IThink Try ;Wait ~Want IWatch IWear

I

*“DO"is coded as referential if the action is specific or completed, otherwise it is nonreferential. **“Go” is coded as referential except when it means “belong” or “say,” in which case it is nonreferential.

Cross-Linguistic

Cognitive

Appendix

227

Differences

B: Examples of Activity-oriented, and Other Utterances

Naming-oriented,

Activity-oriented 1. You wanna give him a kiss? 2. Is she drinking? 3. Turn the page. 4. What are they doing? 5. The doggies are playing baseball. 6. Push the car. 7. Put the man in the car? 8. Oh, it fell. 9. What are you gonna do with her? 10. And close it up. Naming-oriented 1. That’s a kitty. 2. What’s that? 3. Here’s the piggies. 4. See the ducks? 5. That’s a horsie on top of a house. 6. That looks like Dada. 7. Basketball. Look at the basketball. 8. There’s a man in the car. 9. There’s the bathroom. 10. What’s in there? Other 1. That’s where it goes! Does that go up here? 2. It doesn’t fit in there, does it? What fits in there? 3. You’re bored with that book. 4. I don’t know what that is. 5. Are you done with that page? 6. Is somebody in there? 7. There! (child succeeds in doing something) 8. Not bad. 9. Let’s see what else. 10. What goes there?

No&. Examples

1-5 are from book transcripts,

and examples

6-10 are from toy transcripts.