Cebu International EFL Conference

Abstract of paper

Author

Junfeng Xin, (China)
Department of English and Applied Linguistics,
De La Salle University,
Manila,
Philippines

Title
Noun Versus Verb Bias in Mandarin-English Bilingual Pre-school Children and The Influence of Salient Positions of Their Bilingual Caregivers’ Language Input

Abstract
This study investigated the noun versus verb bias among 15 Mandarin-English bilingual pre-school children in the Philippine context by tape-recording a 30-minute conversation for each child and his / her caregiver and also addressed the relationship between children’s lexical bias and the salient positions of their bilingual caregivers’ language input in terms of nouns and verbs. The t-test was used to test the difference between the frequency of nouns and verbs in Mandarin and English they used in the naturalistic interaction. The results showed that in overall data there was no significant difference between the frequency of nouns and verbs in Mandarin-English bilingual children’s language input. In each language, children’s English utterance was noun biased; however, more verbs were significantly produced in children’s Mandarin production as compared to that of English.

A Two-Way Analysis of Variance was used to determine if there is a correlation between salient positions of nouns and verbs in bilingual caregivers’ language input and the prevalence of nouns or verbs in children’s production. The results indicated that except the Mandarin words on initial position, other caregivers’ salient positions like final Mandarin, initial English and final English do influence noun versus verb bias in bilingual children’s language production in general. Specifically, in Mandarin, caregivers’ frequency of nouns in the final position of utterances seems to be of great importance of influencing children’s noun bias. In English, the frequency of nouns in the final position of caregivers’ language input was a robust variable best conditioning children’s noun bias.