Are language-acquisition strategies universal?

Abstract

A universality hypothesis of language acquisition was tested. The hypothesis states that the order of acquisition of verifying four types of statements is true affirmatives (e.g., "You are a child"), false affirmatives (e.g., "You are a baby"), false negatives (e.g., "You aren't a child"), and true negatives (e.g., "You aren't a baby"). Young monolingual native speakers were asked to verify these statements. The Englishspeaking children found true negatives most difficult and the hypothesis was supported. The Japanese-speaking children, however, found false negatives most difficult, and the hypothesis was not supported. A theory of cross-linguistic language acquisition is proposed.In the past two decades, linguists and psycholinguists have observed a shift in emphasis in dealing with language universals. Previously, researchers were interested only in those language universals that are common to all languages (e.g., Greenberg, 1963) or in languageuniversal acquisition patterns that are common to all language groups (Bever, 1970;McNeill, 1966;McNeill, 1975;Slobin, 1970). Against this simplistic view, linguists are increasingly interested in more careful linguistic generalizations across languages (e.g., Greenberg, 1978;Lehmann, 1978). Developmental psycholinguists are interested in explaining different rates of acquisition in different language The study described in this article was presented at the Biannual Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, March 15-18, 1979, San Francisco, California. The verification model proposed for Japanese was developed in collaboration with Ed Shoben for an unpublished paper.The author wishes to thank Tom Bemdt and Frank Durso for their careful reading of earlier drafts and Andrea Guillory and Belinda Biscoe for their assistance in data analysis The author also wishes to thank the principals, directors, teachers, caretakers, staff, and children for their cooperation and participation in this study.

Denials in Young Children from a Cross-Linguistic Perspective

“…The first issue is whether the findings support the Carpenter and Just model (1975) and the knowl-edge derivational model (Akiyama, 1984;Akiyama et al, 1982) and respond wrong since the two representations do not match. The first issue is whether the findings support the Carpenter and Just model (1975) and the knowl-edge derivational model (Akiyama, 1984;Akiyama et al, 1982) and respond wrong since the two representations do not match.…”

“…Given the fact that syntactic denial responses appear at age 2 in both language groups (Brown, 1973;McNeill, 1968) and verification responses appear relatively late (Akiyama, 1984;Akiyama & Guillory, 1983) it is unlikely that denial strategies directly affect verification. Although the present study has clearly shown that the cross-linguistic difference in denial corresponds to that in verification, the nature of the relationship remains unclear.…”

“…The study of statement verification (Akiyama, 1984;Akiyama & Guillory, 1983;Akiyama, Takei, & Saito, 1982) is one area in which both universal and specific strategies are proposed based on clearly distinguishable patterns of development in statement verification. The study has shown contrasting patterns: young English-speaking children of ages 3-5 find it more difficult to verify true negative statements (e.g., You are not a baby.…”

“…The study has shown contrasting patterns: young English-speaking children of ages 3-5 find it more difficult to verify true negative statements (e.g., You are not a baby. Japanese-speaking children's performance is explained by a negative knowledge derivational model (Akiyama, 1984;Akiyama et al, 1982). than false negative statements (e.g., You are not a child); Japanesespeaking children of ages 3 and 4 find it more difficult to verify false negative statements than true negative statements.…”

The Political Dimension: Added Value for Cross-Cultural Analysis. Nozawa and Smits, Two CEOs and Their Public Statements

“…Members of the same group share responsibility for each other. When a person is partly accountable for any wrongdoing, he is willing to take overall responsibility and expects others to do the same (Akiyama, 1984). Cooperation generally consists of defining an appropriate process to deal with a given task.…”