{"pk":26518,"title":"A cross-linguistic investigation on the acquisition of complex numerals","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Complex numerals (e.g., four hundred) have a multiplicative\nstructure (four hundred = 4 x 100). This paper investigates\nwhether children are sensitive to the meaning of the\nmultiplicative structure. We designed a novel word learning\nparadigm and taught 4- to 6-year-old children the meaning of\na novel numeral phrase (e.g., ‘one gobi houses’ to mean a\ngroup of three houses). We then asked whether they could\ngeneralize it to a novel context (e.g., ‘two gobi butterflies’ to\nmean two groups of three). Experiment 1 showed that only\nEnglish-speaking children who received multiplier syntax\ntraining were able to generalize. Experiment 2 extended\nfindings from Experiment 1 to Cantonese-speaking children\nand found that they could also generalize a novel multiplier to\nnovel contexts. These results suggest that children as young\nas 4 can create a mapping between the structure of complex\nnumerals and a multiplicative meaning.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"complex numerals"},{"word":"digits"},{"word":"multipliers"},{"word":"Syntax"},{"word":"Semantics"},{"word":"preschoolers"},{"word":"cross-linguistic investigation"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5dr9j89d","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Pierina","middle_name":"","last_name":"Cheung","name_suffix":"","institution":"Wesleyan University","department":""},{"first_name":"Meghan","middle_name":"","last_name":"Dale","name_suffix":"","institution":"Queen’s University","department":""},{"first_name":"Mathieu","middle_name":"Le","last_name":"Corre","name_suffix":"","institution":"Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2016-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26518/galley/16154/download/"}]}