A Picture-Book Based Corpus Study on the Acquisition of wh-words in Japanese

Abstract

Abstract Clancy (1989. Form and function in the acquisition of Korean wh-questions. Journal of Child Language, 16(2), 323–47) claims that the developmental order of wh-questions in first language acquisition follows the order: what = where<who<how=why<when. Forner (1979. The mother as LAD: interaction between order and frequency of parental input and child production. In A. Hastings & F. R. Eckman (Eds.), Studies in first and second language acquisition (pp. 17–44). New York, NY: Newbury House Publishers) further argues that a mother’s order of introducing wh-questions might be influenced by her assumption of a child’s cognitive development. Similarly, the target age for picture books might also reflect an adult’s assumption of the child’s cognitive development. Accordingly, this study investigates a Japanese picture book corpus to determine whether the order of appearance for wh-words mirrors that of Clancy’s developmental order. As a result, the appearance of Japanese wh-words in the picture books were similar to Clancy’s (1989. Form and function in the acquisition of Korean wh-questions. Journal of Child Language, 16(2), 323–47) order except for the question dou ‘how’. Because dou and the English ‘how’ have different ranges of meaning, the data were reanalyzed which resulted in an order more similar to Clancy’s. These results suggest that the target age of picture books reflect the adult’s assumption of a child’s cognitive development. Picture books might also influence a caregivers’ order of introducing wh-words. In conclusion, this study implies external social factor such as picture books, together with other factors, might influence the children’s wh-developmental order.