Noun Bias Research Articles

Poetic and theatrical occasionalisms: Creation of new morphologically complex words by Joseph von Eichendorff, Johann Nepomuk Nestroy, Peter Handke and Arno Schmidt

This contribution characterises and differentiates the poetic occasionalisms in the form of new morphologically complex words created by the early romantic German lyrical poet Joseph von Eichendorff, by the Austrian Nobel Prize winner for literature Peter Handke and by the extravagant German prosaic author Arno Schmidt and the occasionalisms created by the most famous Austrian comedy writer Johann Nepomuk Nestroy.The concept and term occasionalism has been founded by the Russian pioneer of stylistics Erik J. Chanpira (1996, see § 2) and defined as a newly created morphologically complex poetic word destined to be used with a literary function only once for a single passage and which is not taken over by anybody else. This definition holds for the authors investigated, except Eichendorff who reuses occasionalisms, which may be also reused by other lyrical poets of the same period or even later.The main part (§ 3) consists of the discussion of 17 criteria for characterising and differentiating the occasionalisms studied. These are productivity of word formation, literary functions, main content, single use vs. reuse of them, consequences of the noun bias of German and of the preference for binary relations, size of the word families of compound constituents (especially of the first constituent), the degree of poetic licence, semantically coherent vs. incoherent combination of words within a compound, embedding into the cotext and into the situational context, gapping constructions and their make-up, preference for compounding vs. derivational morphology.The conclusion and outlook (§ 4) present proposals how literary studies may profit from investigations of poetic and theatrical occasionalisms, which represent the highest degree of language creativity of literary authors. We urge that theatre productions should highlight occasionalisms and report that Nestroy’s German occasionalisms are generally better translated into English by programs of machine translation then by human translators.

Little evidence for a noun bias in Tseltal spontaneous speech

This study examines whether children acquiring Tseltal (Mayan) demonstrate a noun bias – an overrepresentation of nouns in their early vocabularies. Nouns, specifically concrete and animate nouns, are argued to universally predominate in children’s early vocabularies because their referents are naturally available as bounded concepts to which linguistic labels can be mapped. This early advantage for noun learning has been documented using multiple methods and across a diverse collection of language populations. However, past evidence bearing on a noun bias in Tseltal learners has been mixed. Tseltal grammatical features and child–caregiver interactional patterns dampen the salience of nouns and heighten the salience of verbs, leading to the prediction of a diminished noun bias and perhaps even an early predominance of verbs. We here analyze the use of noun and verb stems in children’s spontaneous speech from egocentric daylong recordings of 29 Tseltal learners between 0;9 and 4;4. We find weak to no evidence for a noun bias using two separate analytical approaches on the same data; one analysis yields a preliminary suggestion of a flipped outcome (i.e. a verb bias). We discuss the implications of these findings for broader theories of learning bias in early lexical development.

Expressive Language Profiles in a Clinical Screening Sample of Mandarin-Speaking Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

This cross-sectional study aimed to depict expressive language profiles and clarify lexical-grammatical interrelationships in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during the administration of the simplified Chinese Psychoeducational Profile-Third Edition screening. We collected naturalistic language samples from 81 (74 boys, seven girls) 2- to 7-year-old (Mage = 55.6 months, SD = 15.17) Mandarin-speaking children with ASD in clinician-child interactions. The child participants were divided into five age subgroups with 12-month intervals according to their chronological age. Computer-assisted part-of-speech tagging, constituency analysis, and dependency analysis addressed the developmental trajectories of early lexical and grammatical growth in each age subgroup. Significant within-ASD differences were observed in content words, function words, and lexical categories. Nouns and verbs were the predominant lexical categories, while noun types overwhelmed verb types in children over 3 years old. The grammatical development of 5- to 6-year-old Mandarin-speaking children with ASD was better than that of 3- to 4-year-old children. The trends of syntactic structures, grammatical relations, and grammatical complexity in each age group were similar. Mandarin-speaking preschoolers with ASD produce more lexicons with increasing age. They preserve the noun bias as a universal mechanism in early lexical learning. Moreover, their developmental trajectories of grammatical growth were comparable in each age subgroup. In addition, their lexicons and grammar were synchronically developed during early language acquisition.

Study on the Vocabulary of Filipino- English Bilingual Children Outside the School Setting

In the field of language learning, language acquisition is an issue that is interesting to investigate since there are a number of theories that explain how language is acquired at an early age. Among early bilinguals, it is important to study the factors that affect their vocabulary. This study explores the word list among Filipino- English bilingual children outside the school setting. The goal was to determine which language, whether Filipino or English, was used predominantly. A second goal was to identify the category the predominant word list belonged to. Two groups of participants were selected randomly and were asked to identify familiar words. The findings revealed that the early bilingual children belonging to the lower-income strata prefer nouns over other English word categories. The findings support the theories of noun bias, stereotyping, and Social Interaction. The results of the study may further improve procedures being done in support of data-driven language learning theory.

Characteristics of Early Expressive Vocabulary in Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants.

The aim of this study is to evaluate whether Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) demonstrated early lexical composition similar to their hearing peers who were at the same vocabulary level and the extent to which children with CIs were sensitive to linguistic and conceptual properties when developing early lexicon. Participants were 77 Mandarin-speaking children with CIs who received CIs before 30 months of age. Their expressive vocabulary was documented using the Infant Checklist of the Early Vocabulary Inventory for Mandarin Chinese 9 or 12 months after CI activation. Percent social words, common nouns, predicates (verbs, adjectives), and closed-class words in total vocabulary were computed for children at different vocabulary levels. Common nouns and verbs were further coded for their word class (noun, verb), word frequency, word length, and imageability to predict how likely a given noun or verb would be produced by children with CIs. Like children with typical hearing, social words were the most dominant category when vocabulary size in children with CIs was smaller than 20 words; common nouns became the most dominant category when the vocabulary size reached 21 words. The difference in percent common nouns and percent predicates (i.e., noun bias) was similar in children with CIs and their hearing peers. In addition, verbs, common words, monosyllabic words, and more imageable words were more likely to be produced by children with CIs than their counterparts. Mandarin children with CIs showed language-specific patterns in early lexical composition like their hearing peers. They were able to use multiple linguistic and conceptual cues when approaching early expressive vocabulary despite perceptual and processing constraints. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21357723.

The Acquisition of Basic Word Order by Children with Autism Spectrum Syndrome

Purpose. This paper reports on an investigation of Arabic word order acquisition by twelve Jordanian children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and the reasons for this order of acquisition. This study researched the following questions: (1). Which word order do Jordanian Arabic speaking children with ASD prefer? (2). Why do children with ASD prefer this word order?
 Methods and Procedure. The study sample consisted of 12 autistic children (mean age of nine, two females, ten males) attending Tawasul Center for Autism, Amman, Jordan. Such a ratio is logical since there are more male than female autistic children, as concluded in multiple studies. In the present study, the participants’ native language is JA, which facilitated communication between the children and researchers since the latter are also JA native speakers. The sample’s ASD severity level was moderate with a nonverbal IQ of around 45. These 12 children were selected because their L1 proficiency was approximately the same and their mental age was around 6, based on an annual test conducted by the center. In addition, none of these children had any specific language impairments, suggesting that the sample was homogenous and heterogeneous regarding language skills. Concerning ethical approval, consent was obtained from the center and the children’s parents to conduct the tests on the children in the center. Participants from the Tawasul Center for Autism in Amman, Jordan, were asked to describe what they saw in ten different pictures and their responses were recorded. These responses can be divided into two types: SV word order and VS word order.
 Results. The results indicate that SV word order structures were used more often than VS structures. The results of the t-test revealed a statistically significant difference between the two in favor of subject-verb-object (SVO) order. We argue that the SVO word order is used more frequently by children with ASD due to the noun bias principle. 
 Conclusions. Based on the analysis, SVO sentences were used more than VSO sentences for many reasons; namely, the basic word order of the linguistic input in the surrounding community, the noun bias principle, and the type of message being conveyed, i.e., entity-oriented messages. After administering a t-test, statistically significant differences were found between the results of the two word orders in favor of SVO word order.

Contrasting lexical biases in bilingual English-Mandarin speech: Verb-biased mothers, but noun-biased toddlers.

Is noun dominance in early lexical acquisition a widespread or a language-specific phenomenon? Thirty Singaporean bilingual English-Mandarin learning toddlers and their mothers were observed in a mother-child play interaction. For both English and Mandarin, toddlers' speech and reported vocabulary contained more nouns than verbs across book reading and toy playing. In contrast, their mothers' speech contained more verbs than nouns in both English and Mandarin but differed depending on the context of the interaction. Although toddlers demonstrated a noun bias for both languages, the noun bias was more pronounced in English than in Mandarin. Together, these findings support early noun dominance as a widespread phenomenon in the lexical acquisition debate but also provide evidence that language specificity also plays a minor role in children's early lexical development.

Identifying Areas of Overlap and Distinction in Early Lexical Profiles of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Late Talkers, and Typical Talkers

This study compares the lexical composition of 118 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) aged 12 to 84 months with 4626 vocabulary-matched typically developing toddlers with and without language delay, aged 8 to 30 months. Children with ASD and late talkers showed a weaker noun bias. Additionally, differences were identified in the proportion of nouns and verbs, and in the semantic categories of animals, toys, household items and vehicles. Most differences appear to reflect the extent of the age differences between the groups. However, children with ASD produced fewer high-social verbs than typical talkers and late talkers, a difference that might be associated with ASD features. In sum, our findings identified areas of overlap and distinction across the developing lexical profiles.

The ASL-CDI 2.0: An updated, normed adaptation of the MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory for American Sign Language.

Vocabulary is a critical early marker of language development. The MacArthur Bates Communicative Development Inventory has been adapted to dozens of languages, and provides a bird's-eye view of children's early vocabularies which can be informative for both research and clinical purposes. We present an update to the American Sign Language Communicative Development Inventory (the ASL-CDI 2.0, https://www.aslcdi.org ), a normed assessment of early ASL vocabulary that can be widely administered online by individuals with no formal training in sign language linguistics. The ASL-CDI 2.0 includes receptive and expressive vocabulary, and a Gestures and Phrases section; it also introduces an online interface that presents ASL signs as videos. We validated the ASL-CDI 2.0 with expressive and receptive in-person tasks administered to a subset of participants. The norming sample presented here consists of 120 deaf children (ages 9 to 73 months) with deaf parents. We present an analysis of the measurement properties of the ASL-CDI 2.0. Vocabulary increases with age, as expected. We see an early noun bias that shifts with age, and a lag between receptive and expressive vocabulary. We present these findings with indications for how the ASL-CDI 2.0 may be used in a range of clinical and research settings.

The Origins of Verb Learning: Preverbal and Postverbal Infants' Learning of Word-Action Relations.

This experiment examined English- or Spanish-learning preverbal (8-9 months, n = 32) and postverbal (12-14 months, n = 40) infants' learning of word-action pairings prior to and after the transition to verb comprehension and its relation to naturally learned vocabulary. Infants of both verbal levels were first habituated to 2 dynamic video displays of novel word-action pairings, the words /wem/ or /bæf/, spoken synchronously with an adult shaking or looming an object, and tested with interchanged (switched) versus same word-action pairings. Mothers of the postverbal infants were asked to report on their infants' vocabulary on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 1994). The preverbal infants looked longer to the switched relative to same pairings, suggesting word-action mapping, but not the postverbal infants. Mothers of the postverbal infants reported a noun bias on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories; infants learned more nouns than verbs in the natural environment. Further analyses revealed marginal word-action mapping in postverbal infants who learned fewer nouns and only comprehended verbs (post-verb comprehension), but not in those who learned more nouns and also produced verbs (post-verb production). These findings on verb learning from inside and outside the laboratory suggest a developmental shift from domain-general to language-specific mechanisms. Long before they talk, infants learning a noun-dominant language learn synchronous word-action relations. As a postverbal language-specific noun bias develops, this learning temporarily diminishes. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5592637.

The Role of Zero-Derivation in Lexical Processing

The Role of Zero-Derivation in Lexical Processing

Investigating the shape bias in typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorders.

Young typically developing (TD) children have been observed to utilize word learning strategies such as the noun bias and shape bias; these improve their efficiency in acquiring and categorizing novel terms. Children using the shape bias extend object labels to new objects of the same shape; thus, the shape bias prompts the categorization of object words based on the global characteristic of shape over local, discrete details. Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) frequently attend to minor details of objects rather than their global structure. Therefore, children with ASD may not use shape bias to acquire new words. Previous research with children with ASD has provided evidence that they parallel TD children in showing a noun bias, but not a shape bias (Tek et al., 2008). However, this sample was small and individual and item differences were not investigated in depth. In an extension of Tek et al. (2008) with twice the sample size and a wider developmental timespan, we tested 32 children with ASD and 35 TD children in a longitudinal study across 20 months using the intermodal preferential looking paradigm. Children saw five triads of novel objects (target, shape-match, color-match) in both NoName and Name trials; those who looked longer at the shape-match during the Name trials than the NoName trials demonstrated a shape bias. The TD group showed a significant shape bias at all visits, beginning at 20 months of age while the language-matched ASD group did not show a significant shape bias at any visit. Within the ASD group, though, some children did show a shape bias; these children had larger vocabularies concurrently and longitudinally. Degree of shape bias elicitation varied by item, but did not seem related to perceptual complexity. We conclude that shape does not appear to be an organizing factor for word learning by children with ASD.

Aquisição lexical inicial e verificação da hipótese do viés nominal

OBJETIVO: verificar de que modo se dá a aquisição lexical inicial de crianças com desenvolvimento típico, em termos de tipos e ocorrências dos itens lexicais e se a hipótese do viés nominal realmente ocorre, e em qual versão, forte ou fraca. MÉTODOS: a amostra foi composta por 20 crianças de ambos os sexos, com desenvolvimento típico de linguagem. Este estudo abrangeu a faixa etária de 1:0 a 1:11 (ano : meses) dividida em três subfaixas (1:0 - 1:3;29, 1:4 - 1:7;29, 1:8 - 1:11;29). Foram realizadas gravações da fala espontânea de cada sujeito, e após, análise lexical quanto aos tipos e ocorrências dos itens lexicais produzidos. Empregou-se a estatística Mann Whitney; Kruskal - Wallis e Wilcoxon, com nível de significância p< 0.05. RESULTADOS: não houve diferença estatística para nenhuma das variáveis em relação ao sexo, porém, há diferença entre as subfaixas etárias 1 em relação a 2 e a 3 para a maioria das variáveis, além disso, verificou-se o predomínio das palavras de conteúdo nas subfaixas etárias 2 e 3 e por fim, verificou-se o predomínio de substantivos sobre os verbos em todas as faixas etárias. CONCLUSÃO: a aquisição lexical inicial em crianças com desenvolvimento típico dá-se de forma progressiva de acordo com o aumento da faixa etária e neste período, a variável sexo não influencia na produção linguística. Além disso, a existência da hipótese do viés nominal foi confirmada em sua versão fraca, corroborando a tese que inspirou essa pesquisa.

Cross-situational Learning of Foreign Vocabulary Reveals a Possible Noun Bias in Adulthood

While the debate continues into its third decade over why toddlers across languages tend to acquire nouns quicker than verbs, surprisingly few studies have re-directed this same question at adult. Does such a word class learning bias exist among adult second language learners? In the present study, 48 participants were taught foreign (Hebrew) vocabulary as short phrases in either cross-situational or single-situational learning contexts to test for a noun bias and whether it would be reduced through exposure to multiple contexts. Separate, non-interacting effects were found for word class (nouns better) and the number of contexts used (two better than one). How these results support the referential clarity hypothesis and other theories is discussed.

Object and action naming in Russian- and German-speaking monolingual and bilingual children

The present study investigates the influence of word category on naming performance in two populations: bilingual and monolingual children. The question is whether and, if so, to what extent monolingual and bilingual children differ with respect to noun and verb naming and whether a noun bias exists in the lexical abilities of bilingual children. Picture naming of objects and actions by Russian–German bilingual children (aged 4–7 years) was compared to age-matched monolingual children. The results clearly demonstrate a naming deficit of bilingual children in comparison to monolingual children that increases with age. Noun learning is more fragile in bilingual contexts than is verb learning. In bilingual language acquisition, nouns do not predominate over verbs as much as is seen in monolingual German and Russian children. The results are discussed with respect to semantic-conceptual aspects and language-specific features of nouns and verbs, and the impact of input on the acquisition of these word categories.

Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL): Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

One of the defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is difficulty with language and communication.1 Children with ASD's onset of speaking is usually delayed, and many children with ASD consistently produce language less frequently and of lower lexical and grammatical complexity than their typically developing (TD) peers.6,8,12,23 However, children with ASD also exhibit a significant social deficit, and researchers and clinicians continue to debate the extent to which the deficits in social interaction account for or contribute to the deficits in language production.5,14,19,25Standardized assessments of language in children with ASD usually do include a comprehension component; however, many such comprehension tasks assess just one aspect of language (e.g., vocabulary),5 or include a significant motor component (e.g., pointing, act-out), and/or require children to deliberately choose between a number of alternatives. These last two behaviors are known to also be challenging to children with ASD.7,12,13,16We present a method which can assess the language comprehension of young typically developing children (9-36 months) and children with autism.2,4,9,11,22 This method, Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (P-IPL), projects side-by-side video images from a laptop onto a portable screen. The video images are paired first with a 'baseline' (nondirecting) audio, and then presented again paired with a 'test' linguistic audio that matches only one of the video images. Children's eye movements while watching the video are filmed and later coded. Children who understand the linguistic audio will look more quickly to, and longer at, the video that matches the linguistic audio.2,4,11,18,22,26This paradigm includes a number of components that have recently been miniaturized (projector, camcorder, digitizer) to enable portability and easy setup in children's homes. This is a crucial point for assessing young children with ASD, who are frequently uncomfortable in new (e.g., laboratory) settings. Videos can be created to assess a wide range of specific components of linguistic knowledge, such as Subject-Verb-Object word order, wh-questions, and tense/aspect suffixes on verbs; videos can also assess principles of word learning such as a noun bias, a shape bias, and syntactic bootstrapping.10,14,17,21,24 Videos include characters and speech that are visually and acoustically salient and well tolerated by children with ASD.

Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (IPL): Investigating Language Comprehension in Typically Developing Toddlers and Young Children with Autism

One of the defining characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is difficulty with language and communication.1 Children with ASD's onset of speaking is usually delayed, and many children with ASD consistently produce language less frequently and of lower lexical and grammatical complexity than their typically developing (TD) peers.6,8,12,23 However, children with ASD also exhibit a significant social deficit, and researchers and clinicians continue to debate the extent to which the deficits in social interaction account for or contribute to the deficits in language production.5,14,19,25 Standardized assessments of language in children with ASD usually do include a comprehension component; however, many such comprehension tasks assess just one aspect of language (e.g., vocabulary),5 or include a significant motor component (e.g., pointing, act-out), and/or require children to deliberately choose between a number of alternatives. These last two behaviors are known to also be challenging to children with ASD.7,12,13,16 We present a method which can assess the language comprehension of young typically developing children (9-36 months) and children with autism.2,4,9,11,22 This method, Portable Intermodal Preferential Looking (P-IPL), projects side-by-side video images from a laptop onto a portable screen. The video images are paired first with a 'baseline' (nondirecting) audio, and then presented again paired with a 'test' linguistic audio that matches only one of the video images. Children's eye movements while watching the video are filmed and later coded. Children who understand the linguistic audio will look more quickly to, and longer at, the video that matches the linguistic audio.2,4,11,18,22,26 This paradigm includes a number of components that have recently been miniaturized (projector, camcorder, digitizer) to enable portability and easy setup in children's homes. This is a crucial point for assessing young children with ASD, who are frequently uncomfortable in new (e.g., laboratory) settings. Videos can be created to assess a wide range of specific components of linguistic knowledge, such as Subject-Verb-Object word order, wh-questions, and tense/aspect suffixes on verbs; videos can also assess principles of word learning such as a noun bias, a shape bias, and syntactic bootstrapping.10,14,17,21,24 Videos include characters and speech that are visually and acoustically salient and well tolerated by children with ASD.

Language-specific noun bias: evidence from bilingual children

Most evidence concerning cross-linguistic variation in noun bias, the preponderance of nouns in early expressive lexicons (Gentner, 1982), has come from comparisons of monolingual children acquiring different languages. Such designs are susceptible to a number of potential confounders, including group differences in developmental level and sociodemographic characteristics. The aim of this study was to quantify noun bias in bilingual Mandarin-English toddlers whose expressive lexicons in each language contained 50-300 words. Parents of fifty children (1;10-2;6) reported separately on their English and Mandarin expressive lexicons. The mean percentage of Mandarin nouns (38%) was significantly lower than the percentage of English nouns (54%) and was robust to analyses of twelve potential covariates. Analyses of the most frequently reported words suggested that lexical reduplication could be considered as a potential influence on vocabulary composition in future studies. Results suggest that characteristics of the input significantly shape early lexicons.

De productieve woordenschat van jonge Nederlandstalige kinderen

The productive vocabulary of young typically developing Dutch children aged 1;08 to 3;04 has been investigated. In the lexicon of the children nine categories of word types and tokens are examined. For types, a noun bias can be reported in children up to 2;01 years of age. About one third of the lexicon consists of nouns. The number of verbs and function words increases with age. The number of onomatopoeic words decreases. Personal-social words decrease only in types, not in tokens.

Nouns and verbs in Chintang: children's usage and surrounding adult speech

Analyzing the development of the noun-to-verb ratio in a longitudinal corpus of four Chintang (Sino-Tibetan) children, we find that up to about age four, children have a significantly higher ratio than adults. Previous cross-linguistic research rules out an explanation of this in terms of a universal noun bias; instead, a likely cause is that Chintang verb morphology is polysynthetic and difficult to learn. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that the development of Chintang children's noun-to-verb ratio correlates significantly with the extent to which they show a similar flexibility with verbal morphology to that of the surrounding adults, as measured by morphological paradigm entropy. While this development levels off around age three, children continue to have a higher overall noun-to-verb ratio than adults. A likely explanation lies in the kinds of activities that children are engaged in and that are almost completely separate from adults' activities in this culture.