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Acquisition and generalization of Japanese locatives by English-speakers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Marcia Weber-Olsen  and
Kenneth F. Ruder
Marcia Weber-Olsen
Affiliation:
Central Michigan University
Kenneth F. Ruder*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
*
Kenneth F. Ruder,Bureau of Child Research, 1043 Indiana St., Lawrence, KS 66044
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Abstract

American 5-year-olds and adults learned to label various spatial relationships using four Japanese locatives that coincided or partially overlapped in meaning with the locative prepositions into, onto, out of, and off.

Subjects' generalization of the Japanese words was pre- and post-tested to determine if locatives that were semantically (and to a small extent phonemically) similar to their English equivalents would yield better transfer than terms that deviated in meaning and phonemic structure from English. Results confirmed for children only that generalization was differentially affected following lexical training. Adults generalized all four Japanese words with equal accuracy and showed significantly better transfer than children on all but one locative.

Lexical interference initially accounted for many adult and child substitution errors, but did not explain child errors on the post-test. Findings did not agree with predictions that semanticphonemic differences between English and Japanese locatives would adversely affect transfer of the Japanese lexicon to novel exemplars of these terms. Results did confirm, however, that adults learned the Japanese lexicon faster and better than the 5-year-olds.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , May 1980 , pp. 183 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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