Bigger or smaller? How children learn the meaning of comparative words

The ability to link words to the concepts they represent is a fundamental part of language learning. While this may seem relatively straightforward for concrete objects (mapping the word cat to the concept of meowing, four-legged creatures), not all words that children learn refer to concrete objects. Words that describe abstract concepts, like relations between objects, appear to be more difficult to learn because the referent is not as salient (e.g., Gentner 1982; 2006). Here, I will present an ongoing line of research that investigates how children learn the meanings of abstract words that describe size comparisons between objects (e.g., bigger, smaller, taller). These words are potentially tricky to learn because they require the learning to extract the relations, outside of the objects that make up the relation. A cat might by bigger than a mouse, but smaller than a dog; the same object can play opposite roles in the relational structure. Across a series of studies of 3- to 8-year-olds, I demonstrate that children show a protracted understanding of the meanings of comparative words and that they learn the meanings of words in a gradual manner, initially understanding that the words are about size comparisons, then distinguishing between relative increases or decreases in size, and finally tracking when words refer to particular dimensions (e.g., taller). I will also discuss ongoing research that examines the link between words and concepts by examining how children’s understanding of the meaning of these words links with their ability to represent these concepts. These studies shed light on how children’s abstract word-to-concept mappings change over development and how language learning shapes the ability to represent abstract concepts.

A first glimpse of pronunciation acquisition among Hul’q’umi’num’ learning children

Much of what we know about early sound (and language) acquisition is based on majority languages like English. This means that our capacity is limited in terms of describing the developmental trajectory of human speech, and also in terms of supporting minority language communities to set expectations around pronunciation acquisition and learning. In this talk, I will present findings from a collaborative project to document the acquisition of Hul’q’umi’num’ (Central Salish) sounds among young Hul’q’umi’num’ children (3;00-7;11 years old) whose first language (L1) is English. Hul’q’umi’num’ has a rich consonant inventory, and complex sequences of consonants are common. In our study, we made recordings of children repeating sets of words (e.g., the numbers 1-10) after their caregivers, who are themselves Hul’q’umi’num’ learners. We then looked at how the children’s pronunciation differed from their caregivers’ and from the expected pronunciation. In general, we found that their pronunciation reflected a combination of L1-like and L2-like patterns, with both similarities to and differences from their adult models. These findings have interesting implications for our understanding of early bilingualism and also for our ability to best support this new generation of Hul’q’umi’num’ speakers.