Soonja Choi

Learning to express motion events in English and Korean: the influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns.

English and Korean differ in how they lexicalize the components of motion events. English characteristically conflates Motion with Manner, Cause, or Deixis, and expresses Path separately. Korean, in contrast, conflates Motion with Path and elements of Figure and Ground in transitive clauses for caused Motion, but conflates motion with Deixis and spells out Path and Manner separately in intransitive clauses for spontaneous motion. Children learning English and Korean show sensitivity to language-specific patterns in the way they talk about motion from as early as 17-20 months. For example, learners of English quickly generalize their earliest spatial words--Path particles like up, down, and in--to both spontaneous and caused changes of location and, for up and down, to posture changes, while learners of Korean keep words for spontaneous and caused motion strictly separate and use different words for vertical changes of location and posture changes. These findings challenge the widespread view that children initially map spatial words directly to nonlinguistic spatial concepts, and suggest that they are influenced by the semantic organization of their language virtually from the beginning. We discuss how input and cognition may interact in the early phases of learning to talk about space.

Japanese/Korean Linguistics

Japanese and Korean are typologically quite similar, so a linguistic phenomenon in one language often has a counterpart in the other. The papers in this volume are intended to further collective and collaborative research in both languages. The contributors discuss aspects of language acquisition, discourse, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, phonology, morphology, typology, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics. The papers were presented at the Southern California Japanese/Korean Linguistics Conference in September 1991. Contributors to this volume are Patricia M. Clancy, Seiko Yamaguchi Fujii, Shoichi Iwasaki, Kyu-hyun Kim, Yoshiko Matsumoto, Shigeko Okamoto, Sung-Ock S. Sohn, Kyung-Hee Suh, Eunjoo Han, Jongho Jun, Ongmi Kang, David James Silva, Noriko Akatsuka, Shoji Azuma, Soonja Choi, Bruce L. Derwing, Yeo Bom Yoon, Sook Whan Cho, Tsuyoshi Ono, Hiroko Yamashita, Laurie Stowe, Mineharu Nakayama, Ruriko Kawashima, Masanori Nakamaura, Shin Watanabe, Dong-In Cho, Stanley Dubinsky, Hiroto Hoshi, Yasua Ishii, Hisatsugu Kitahara, Masatoshi Koizumi, Jae Hong Lee, Sookhee Lee, Young-Suk Lee, and Shigeo Tonoike.

Early Sensitivity to Language-Specific Spatial Categories in English and Korean

This study investigates young childrens comprehension of spatial terms in two languages that categorize space strikingly differently. English makes a distinction between actions resulting in containment (put in) versus support or surface attachment (put on), while Korean makes a cross-cutting distinction between tight-fit relations (kkita) versus loose-fit or other contact relations (various verbs). In particular, the Korean verb kkita refers to actions resulting in a tight-fit relation regardless of containment or support. In a preferential looking study we assessed the comprehension of in by 20 English learners and kkita by 10 Korean learners, all between 18 and 23 months. The children viewed pairs of scenes while listening to sentences with and without the target word. The target word led children to gaze at different and language-appropriate aspects of the scenes. We conclude that children are sensitive to language-specific spatial categories by 18–23 months.

Cross-linguistic Differences in Early Semantic and Cognitive Development.

Abstract In a longitudinal study, the early semantic and cognitive development of 11 Koreanspeaking and 12 English-speaking children was recorded. Three types of cognitive abilities, object-permanence, means-ends problem solving, and categorization, and three related semantic abilities, disappearance words, success/failure words, and a naming spurt emerged at about the same time in English speakers. However, categorization and the naming spurt were significantly delayed relative to other abilities in the Korean speakers. In absolute terms, categorization and the naming spurt emerged later in Korean speakers than in English speakers, and means-ends abilities and success/failure words emerged earlier in Korean speakers than in English speakers. In a cross-sectional study of 18 Korean speakers and 30 English speakers, the Korean-speaking mothers consistently emphasized actions, and the English-speaking mothers consistently emphasized names. The Korean-speaking children were consistently delayed in categorization and advanced in means-ends abilities relative to the English speakers. These findings suggest that differences in linguistic input may affect cognitive development.

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

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.

Do linguistic differences lead to cognitive differences? A cross-linguistic study of semantic and cognitive development

Semantic and cognitive development were studied in eight Korean and French-speaking children, and these results were compared with results for 12 English-speakers. The children received object- permanence, means-ends and categorization tasks and their develop ment of related linguistic forms, disappearance and success/failure words and a naming spurt, was recorded. There were close and specific relations between these semantic and cognitive developments. However, non-English-speakers used very different forms from English-speakers to encode disappearance, success and failure; in particular, Korean-speakers used verbs. This suggests that children may have been motivated to acquire these words because of their cognitive significance. Moreover, both categorization and naming developed later in the Korean-speakers than in English-speakers and French-speakers. This may be due to the fact that verbs are more perceptually salient in Korean than nouns. This difference between the language groups also suggests that linguistic development may influence and motivate cognitive development. Thus, there appears to be a thorough-going two-way interaction between language and cognition in this period.

Influence of language-specific input on spatial cognition: Categories of containment

This study examines whether language-specific input influences childrens nonlinguistic spatial cognition as they acquire their first language. Recent research on infant cognition has shown that preverbal infants can make a distinction between tight-fit and loose-fit containment relations. This distinction is systematically made in Korean (kkita‘fit tightly’), but not in English (in). Using a preferential-looking method, this study tested sensitivity to the distinction in English and Korean learners at different ages: English learners were tested at 18, 24, 29 and 36 months, and Korean learners at 29 and 36 months of age. Results showed that while English learners weaken their sensitivity to the distinction by 29 months of age, Korean learners maintain high sensitivity to the distinction throughout the age periods tested. Language surveys of the English learners indicate that weakening of the sensitivity occurs as the children use the relevant spatial terms and increase their vocabulary level.

Relative Contribution of Perception/Cognition and Language on Spatial Categorization

This study investigated the relative contribution of perception/cognition and language-specific semantics in nonverbal categorization of spatial relations. English and Korean speakers completed a video-based similarity judgment task involving containment, support, tight fit, and loose fit. Both perception/cognition and language served as resources for categorization, and allocation between the two depended on the target relation and the features contrasted in the choices. Whereas perceptual/cognitive salience for containment and tight-fit features guided categorization in many contexts, language-specific semantics influenced categorization where the two features competed for similarity judgment and when the target relation was tight support, a domain where spatial relations are perceptually diverse. In the latter contexts, each group categorized more in line with semantics of their language, that is, containment/support for English and tight/loose fit for Korean. We conclude that language guides spatial categorization when perception/cognition alone is not sufficient. In this way, language is an integral part of our cognitive domain of space.

Early acquisition of epistemic meanings in Korean: a study of sentence-ending suffixes in the spontaneous speech of three children

This study investigates the form and function of sentence-ending suffixes in the speech of three Korean children between 1;8 and 2;11. The major findings are that before 2;0 years Korean children make a clear morphological distinction between requests and statements, and that when they make statements they distinguish among three types of propositions, each with a distinct form: (1) the information has been recently acquired by the child through direct experience, and it is in the process of being assimilated to the childs knowledge system (-TA); (2) the information has been assimilated to his/her knowledge system (-E); (3) the information is established and, in addition, it is certain and is shared by the interactant (-CI). These denote different types of epistemic meaning in that they mark various degrees of integration of knowledge in the childs mind. Our data also suggest that Korean children make these epistemic distinctions before deontic ones, e.g., desire, intention.

How children perceive fractals: Hierarchical self-similarity and cognitive development

Highlights • Visual recursion becomes available around the same age as iteration (9–10 years-old).• Acquisition of visual recursion is facilitated by previous experience with iteration.• Both visual recursion and iteration correlate with grammar comprehension.• Representing hierarchies recursively improves detection of nested mistakes.• Recursion in vision follows learning constraints similar to language.