How children express caused motion events in Chinese and English: Universal and language-specific influences

Ji, Yun; Hendriks, Henriëtte; Hickmann, Maya

doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2011.07.001

Cited by 41 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Conversely, preschool-aged speakers of both languages were very likely overall (and more likely than adults) to mention only one subevent in their descriptions of causative events. These developmental differences are reminiscent of previous research that has found non-adult levels of informativeness in children’s event descriptions (e.g., Bunger et al, 2012; Ji et al, 2011; Özyürek et al, 2008; Papafragou & Selimis, 2010). …”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 53%

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How children and adults encode causative events cross-linguistically: implications for language production and attention

Bunger

Skordos

Trueswell

et al. 2016

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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This study investigates the implications of language-specific constraints on linguistic event encoding for the description and on-line inspection of causative events. English-speaking and Greek-speaking adults, 3-year-olds, and 4-year-olds viewed and described causative events, which are composed of Means and Result subevents, in an eyetracking study. The results demonstrate cross-linguistic differences in the informational content of causative event descriptions: Greek speakers across age groups were more likely than English speakers to mention only one causative subevent. Developmental changes in the tendency to encode information about causative events in language were also evident: in both language groups, adults were more likely than children to mention both Means and Result subevents. Finally, for both adult and child speakers of both languages, preparing different types of event descriptions changed the way that events were visually inspected, shifting attention toward to-be-encoded subevents. These findings offer some of the first evidence about the development of the language production system, the attentional mechanisms that it employs, and its workings in speakers of different languages.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 53%

“…However, the cross-linguistic description of causative events has been the topic of only a few studies – and those mostly in adults (Klettke & Wolff, 2003; Wolff, Jeon, Klettke & Yu, 2010; Wolff, Jeon & Yu, 2009; Wolff & Ventura, 2009; but cf. Ji, Hendriks & Hickman, 2011). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How children and adults encode causative events cross-linguistically: implications for language production and attention

Bunger

Skordos

Trueswell

et al. 2016

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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“…Our analyses of both the elicited Frog Story narratives and the spontaneous speech data confirm the basic findings from prior studies with regard to both typological bootstrapping (e.g., Ochsenbauer and Hickmann 2010;Ochsenbauer and Engemann 2011;Slobin 2003Slobin , 2004 and gradual development (e.g., Bamberg 1994;Bryant 2012;Ji et al 2011;Ochsenbauer and Hickmann 2016), but go beyond. Regarding typological variation in lexicalization patterns, our analyses confirm that as early as age 2;6, German children verbally encode the relevant conceptual building blocks of spatial language utterances -the figure, the path and ground, the motion and manner of motion components -in language-specific, S-framed conflation patterns of information packaging.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…Taking into account all constructional slots, is there evidence that " [d]ue to the impact of general developmental factors, the semantic information expressed in children's responses should increase with age" (Ochsenbauer and Engemann 2011: 108; cf. also Ji et al 2011;Ochsenbauer and Hickmann 2016)? 3 Hypotheses and predictions…”

Section: Interim Summary and Open Questionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…degree of complexity of the linguistic means of expression put to use. Note also that this study takes into account only the densest/most complex of a participant's utterances in response to each stimulus/video clip (Ji et al 2011(Ji et al : 1802 and none of the other productions. The study thus tracks the levels of maximal complexity displayed by the different age groups in response to the stimuli, but does not provide information as to what the preferred and typical patterns are for each age group, nor the exact course of development.…”

Section: Typological Bootstrappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Gradual development of constructional complexity in German spatial language

Madlener

Skoruppa

Behrens

2017

Cognitive Linguistics

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In this paper, we assess the developmental trajectories by which children approach adult levels of complexity and informativeness in the linguistically and conceptually challenging domain of spatial language. To this end, we look at three types of spatial relations (localization, spontaneous and caused motion) in spontaneous German child speech (age 2;6 to 2;11 and 4;6 to 4;11), and in elicited Frog Story narratives from German child and adult speakers (3-, 5-, 9-year-olds, and adults. Children are generally sensitive to typological preferences. From early on, their productions reflect target-languagespecific lexicalization patterns. Our analyses show that they still approach adult-like levels of information complexity and density only gradually. This concerns the local complexity (structural repertoire for the conceptual slots figure, verb, path/ground), as also established in previous research, but in particular the global complexity, as investigated in this study. Global complexity measures the structural integration of information, or the combinatorial complexity that surfaces at the utterance level. As predicted by usage-based theories, adult-like degrees of informativeness and information density are only reached gradually, although the component parts at the local level are available earlier in development.

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Early spatial language development and education: a scoping review

Degotardi

2021

SN Soc Sci

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Early spatial language plays an important role in facilitating cognition and thoughts thus deserves empirical studies. This scoping review aims to synthesis the empirical evidence to identify the key topics, major findings, and research gaps regarding early spatial language development and education. The search has identified 19 studies published in the international peer-reviewed journals during 2000–2021, converging into three common topics: the developmental patterns of early spatial language, its role in child development, and parental influences. First, the synthesis of evidence revealed a significant age effect but an inconclusive gender effect in early spatial language. Second, the modeling or regression results jointly indicated that early spatial language could facilitate or predict spatial skills and/or spatial cognition. Third, the existing evidence supported that parental language input and parental involvement could enhance early spatial language. However, this study also found the major research gaps: no Chinese studies, very few naturalistic studies, the understudied ‘motion events’, and no studies on ‘frames of reference’. Implications for future studies and practical improvements are also discussed.

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How children express caused motion events in Chinese and English: Universal and language-specific influences

Cited by 41 publications

References 18 publications

How children and adults encode causative events cross-linguistically: implications for language production and attention

How children and adults encode causative events cross-linguistically: implications for language production and attention

Gradual development of constructional complexity in German spatial language

Early spatial language development and education: a scoping review

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