When 5004 is Said "Five Thousand Zero Hundred Remainder Four": The Influence of Language on Natural Number Transcoding: Cross-National Comparison

Abstract

The Vietnamese language has a specific property related to the zero in the name-number system. This study was conducted to examine the impact of linguistic differences and of the zero's position in a number on a transcoding task (verbal number into Arabic number). Vietnamese children and French-speaking Belgian children, from grades 3 to 6, participated in the study. The success rate and the type of errors they made varied, depending on their grade and language. At Grade 4, Vietnamese children showed performances equivalent to Grade 6 Belgian children. Our results confirmed the support provided by language to the understanding and performances in a transcoding task. Results also showed that a syntactic zero is easier to manipulate than a lexical zero for Vietnamese children. The relative influence of language and the source of errors are discussed.