That Doesn't Count: The Interference of Language in the Development of Counting Mechanisms in English-Speaking Preschoolers

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2010
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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Thesis (B.A.)
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en_US
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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Abstract
Phenomena in the development of counting principles alongside language acquisition in preschoolers provide insight into mechanisms for quantifying entities in English. In particular, research has sought to discover the relationship between language acquisition and two phenomena – the ability to distinguish between parts and wholes and the ability to use containers to quantify substances like sand – in quantification tasks. I sought to discover how mastery of measure words like “cup” (in cup of sand) and “piece” (in piece of a fork) improve a child’s ability to correctly quantify substances and broken objects. Shipley and Shepperson (1990), Sophian and Kailihiwa (1998) and Melgoza, Pogue & Barner (2008) showed that preschoolers do not discriminate between parts and wholes in counting broken objects. Huntley-Fenner (2001) showed that preschoolers cannot use containers to help differentiate amounts of substance-mass nouns like “sand” in difficult ratios. Instead, preschoolers prefer to count each discrete physical object as a count-noun unit (“fork”) regardless of its whole/piece status (“whole fork” or “piece of a fork”). These findings beg further questions. Does mastery of either measure words or counting principles foster the development of the other? And if so, which one comes first? I collected original data to compare preschooler responses in three tasks and show that mastery of measure words does not improve performance in quantification tasks. Some subjects failed at a language-based quantification task but were successful in a non-linguistic quantification task, which suggests language as a constraining factor in the ability to effectively communicate about number.
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