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Caregiver input in English and Korean: use of nouns and verbs in book-reading and toy-play contexts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2000

SOONJA CHOI
SOONJA CHOI
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
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Abstract

This study investigates structural and pragmatic aspects of caregiver input in English and Korean that relate to the early development of nouns and verbs. Twenty mothers in each language were asked to interact with their one-and-a-half-year-old children in two contexts: book-reading and toy-play. Overall, English-speaking mothers use more nouns than verbs, and focus more on objects than on actions. In contrast, Korean-speaking mothers provide a balanced treatment of nouns and verbs, and focus on objects and actions to a similar degree. A significant context effect indicates that whereas English-speaking mothers emphasize nouns in both contexts, Korean-speaking mothers do so only in the Books context. In the Toys context, they provide more verbs and focus more on actions. These data suggest that systematic comparisons of caregiver input within and across different contexts provide a richer and more accurate account of the variability that can occur across languages and cultures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , February 2000 , pp. 69 - 96
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Therese Baumberger, Junko Ikeda, Miyong Kim and Monica Steichen for their assistance in data collection and coding. Also, special thanks to Alison Gopnik for supervising the data collection in English at UC Berkeley. In addition, I wish to thank Sandra Marshall for her invaluable advice on statistical issues, and Patricia Clancy, Laraine McDonough, Letty Naigles, Twila Tardif and the editors for their helpful comments on previous versions of this paper. Most of all, I am grateful to all the mothers and children who participated in this study.