Edited by: Debi Roberson, University of Essex, UK
Reviewed by: Joseph A. Vandello, University of South Florida, USA; Panos Athanasopoulos, Bangor University, UK
*Correspondence: Mutsumi Imai, Keio University at Shonan-Fujisawa, 5322 Endo, Fujisawa, Kanagawa 252-8520, Japan.; e-mail:
This article was submitted to Frontiers in Cultural Psychology, a specialty of Frontiers in Psychology.
This is an open-access article subject to an exclusive license agreement between the authors and the Frontiers Research Foundation, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.
This paper explores the effect of classifiers on young children's conceptual structures. For this purpose we studied Mandarin Chinese- and German-speaking 3- and 5-year-olds on non-lexical classification, novel-noun label extension, and inductive inference of novel properties. Some effect of the classifier system was found in Chinese children, but this effect was observed only in a non-lexical categorization task. In the label extension and property generalization tasks, children of the two language groups show strikingly similar behavior. The implications of the results for theories of the relation between language and thought as well as cultural influence on thought are discussed.
Language classifies the world in various ways. For example, a count-mass grammar system divides all entities – including abstract concepts (e.g.,
There are two major functions of numeral classifiers. First, classifiers provide a unit of quantification, like measure terms in English. However, while measure terms are required only for quantifying mass nouns (e.g., a
However, semantics of classifiers is largely different from that of nouns, because a major function of classifiers is to provide semantic information that nouns do not carry. Specifically, while the noun lexicon is structured hierarchically around taxonomic relations, classifier systems are usually organized around semantic features such as animacy, shape, function, size, rigidity, or social importance (Croft,
Given that the numeral classifier system classifies objects in the world in ways that are largely different from nouns, it is naturally interesting to ask whether the presence of classifiers affects concepts of people who speak a classifier language. This of course is a question of linguistic relativity. There are only a handful of empirical studies that investigated this question for adult speakers (Zhang and Schmitt,
The cognitive influence of classifiers has not been much explored in young children. In this research, we take the first steps toward exploring whether the use of a classifier system affects young children's concepts in any significant ways. Researchers have reported that the acquisition of classifiers is slow, especially in production (e.g., Carpenter,
Given these previous results and the semantic nature of classifier categories – the fact that classifiers classify objects in a way that largely cross-cuts taxonomic categories and the fact that shape is universally an important semantic feature across different classifier languages –, it is possible that classifier categories affect children's concepts in some ways. In fact, it has been widely known that young children project categories on labels, and consequently generalize novel properties to object sharing the same
To our knowledge, there has been only one study that directly examined the influence of a classifier system on children's object categories. Carrol and Casagrande (
One important issue when examining the potential influence of classifiers on children's cognition is how the influence, if any, is manifested in different cognitive tasks. Three kinds of relations, taxonomic relations, shape similarity, and thematic relations, have been described as major organizers of young children's concepts. However, different results have been reported and different conclusions have been drawn concerning
Saalbach and Imai (
To examine whether classifier categories affect young children's conceptual representation, we tested Chinese and German speakers in two age groups (3-year-olds, 5-year-olds) on a match-to-the standard generalization paradigm in three different contexts: non-lexical classification (Study 1), label extension (Study 2), and property inference (Study 3). We chose to include the label extension and property induction tasks in addition to the non-lexical categorization task because these two have been widely used to access young children's conceptual structure, and have often been noted to reveal young children's cognitive ability more sensitively than a non-lexical categorization task. If we find the influence of classifier categories in all three tasks, we could conclude that the classifier influence is very pervasive. Previous research in the literature suggests an important developmental change both in the proficiency and the comprehension of classifier use between 3 and 5 years of age (e.g., Uchida and Imai,
In all three contexts, a child was shown a picture of the standard object (e.g., banana), and was asked to make a choice out of the three test items: a taxonomic item (grape), a shape item (feather), and a thematic item (monkey). The shape item belonged to the same shape classifier category as the target. Thus, for Chinese children, the shape items can be considered as same-classifier items with a few exceptions (see the Stimuli section below). In Study 1, the participants were asked to form a category freely without invocation of any labels or classifiers. They were simply asked to select the item that best matched the standard object. In Study 2, the participants were asked to extend a novel label that was given to the standard. In Study 3, a novel non-perceptual property about the standard object was taught, and the participants were asked to select the item that would be most likely to have the same property.
If there is an influence of classifier categories, Chinese children are expected to pay more attention to shape similarity than German children, given that shape is a prominent semantic feature in classifier categories. Among the three tasks, the non-lexical classification task places the weakest constraints on the kind of knowledge that should be accessed. In our previous study with Chinese- and German-speaking adults (Saalbach and Imai,
The present research is also important in light of the relation between culture and cognition. Some researchers have proposed that the philosophy, values and customs that have been nursed in a culture throughout its history lead to a “culturally specific” style of cognition (e.g., Nisbett et al.,
It is again important to examine the cultural effect with multiple tasks in order to evaluate the hypothesis in a global picture of cognition. If the cultural effect is pervasive and alters people's conceptual structure fundamentally, as proposed by Nisbett (
The present study provides us with a unique opportunity to directly compare the influence of linguistic categories (i.e., classifiers) and that of culture. If the classifier influence is stronger, we should expect preference for shape over thematic response in Chinese children; if the influence of culture is stronger, the reverse preference would be expected.
Native Mandarin-speaking children and native German-speaking children from two age groups were recruited through preschools they were attending, and were tested at their preschools with parental consent. In the Chinese sample, there were 16 3-year-olds (mean age: 3;6, ranging from 3;0 to 4;1, eight girls and eight boys) and 16 5-year-olds (mean age: 5;7, ranging from 5;1 to 6;2, eight girls and eight boys). In the German sample, there were 15 3-year-olds (mean age: 3;5, ranging from 2;11 to 4;2, 11 girls and 4 boys) and 15 5-year-olds (mean age: 5;5, ranging from 4;11 to 6;0, eight girls and seven boys). The children in both language groups in this and the other two studies reported in this paper were living in big cities (Beijing and Berlin) and were mostly from middle class families. The range and mean age of children in each age group were comparable across the two language groups. This research was approved by the ethics committees at Keio University at Shonan-Fujisawa Campus and at ETH Zurich.
Twelve item sets of four color drawings of familiar objects were prepared. Each set consisted of a standard item, a taxonomic item, a shape item, and a thematic item. Of the 12, four sets represented animal categories, four represented plants, and four represented artifacts (see Table
Set | Standard | Taxonomic | Shape | Thematic |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Snake | Turtle | Jump.rope | Glass cage |
2 | Eel | Guppy | Belt | Water tank |
3 | Salamander | Frog | Scarf | Pond |
4 | Beaver | Cat | Tie | Logs |
5 | Banana | Grape | Feather | Monkey |
6 | Apple | Cucumber | Ball | Knife |
7 | Carrot | Tomato | Match | Rabbit |
8 | Onion | Peppers | Candle | Frying pan |
9 | Hat | Turban | Tent | Head |
10 | CD | Tape | Pizza | Stereo |
11 | Necklace | Ring | Ribbon | Neck |
12 | Comb | Brush | Knife | Hair |
The participants with parental consent in both language groups were individually tested by a trained native speaker in a quiet room in their preschool or in a university laboratory. The children were shown each set of the pictures, one set at a time, and were asked to select the object that “best matches” the standard object. The instruction was given in the participants’ language by a native speaker. As often pointed out, it is extremely difficult to assure that the instructions are perfectly equivalent across different languages (e.g., Boroditsky,
The mean proportion for the shape, taxonomic, and thematic responses are given in Table
Chinese | German | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Taxonomic | Shape | Thematic | Taxonomic | Shape | Thematic | |
3-Year | 31.8% (18.8) | 52.6% |
16.7% |
42.8% (17.8) | 25.6% (13.5) | 33.3% (18.7) |
5-Year | 15.6% |
47.4% (40.2) | 37.0% (39.5) | 19.4% |
17.8% (26.1) | 62.8% |
3-Year | 28.2% (16.5) | 63.4% |
8.3% |
27.8% (24.5) | 57.8% |
14.4% |
5-Year | 27.9% (24.5) | 61.3% |
10.8% |
32.2% (17.8) | 56.7% |
11.1% |
3-Year | 41.7% (26.9) | 37.5% (29.3) | 20.8% |
41.7% (19.9) | 34.4% (19.1) | 23.9% (17.5) |
5-Year | 64.1% |
27.6% (20.4) | 8.3% |
65.0% |
18.3% |
18.9% |
*
+
Chinese children, both 3- and 5-year-olds, made the shape (the same-classifier) response most frequently. German 3-year-olds showed no particular preference across the three items. In contrast, German 5-year-olds showed clear preference for thematic relations (62.8%) in this non-lexical classification. In each Age/Language group, we classified the participants into four categories according to the response dominance (Table
TAX | SHAPE | THEME | NON | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
CH | 16 | 1 (6.3%) | 6 (37.5%) | 2 (12.5%) | 7 (43.8%) |
GER | 15 | 4 (26.7%) | 0 (0%) | 2 (13.3%) | 9 (60.6%) |
CH | 16 | 2 (12.5%) | 8 (50.5%) | 4 (25.0%) | 2 (12.5%) |
GER | 15 | 1 (6.7%) | 2 (13.3%) | 9 (60.0%) | 3 (20.0%) |
CH | 18 | 1 (5.6%) | 11 (61.1%) | 0 (0%) | 6 (33.3%) |
GER | 15 | 0 (0%) | 8 (53.3%) | 0 (0%) | 7 (46.7%) |
CH | 17 | 3 (17.6%) | 9 (52.9%) | 0 (0%) | 5 (29.4%) |
GER | 15 | 2 (13.3%) | 9 (60.0%) | 0 (0%) | 4 (9.1%) |
CH | 16 | 5 (31.3%) | 5 (31.3%) | 2 (12.5%) | 4 (25.0%) |
GER | 15 | 4 (26.7%) | 2 (13.3%) | 1 (10.0%) | 8 (53.3%) |
CH | 16 | 12 (75.0%) | 2 (12.5%) | 0 (0%) | 2 (12.5%) |
GER | 15 | 11 (73.3%) | 2 (13.3%) | 0 (0%) | 2 (13.3%) |
Eighteen 3-year-old and 17 5-year-old Chinese children participated. As in Experiment 1, they were all from Beijing, and were native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. Fifteen German 3-year-olds and 15 5-year-olds also participated. They were living in Berlin and were native speakers of German.
The stimulus materials and the procedures were the same as those in Experiment 1 except for the instructions. Preschoolers were told that they were helping a puppet who was learning new words in Puppet language.
For each set, the experimenter assigned a novel label to the standard and asked the child which of the three choice alternatives the label should be applied to (see Section
In sharp contrast to Experiment 1, the children's behavior was surprisingly similar across the two language groups. Chinese and German children, both 3- and 5-year-olds, selected the shape alternatives most frequently and at above chance level. The mean proportion for the shape, taxonomic, and thematic responses are given in Table
As in Experiment 1, we classified children into four categories of Shape Dominant, Taxonomic Dominant, Thematic Dominant, and No Dominance individuals (Table
To summarize, first, consistent with previous results found in English-speaking children (e.g., Markman and Hutchinson,
Again, we found no evidence for the culture-specific cognition hypothesis: There was no difference between German and Chinese children.
In the Chinese sample, there were 16 3-year-olds and 16 5-year-olds, all living in Beijing and native speakers of Mandarin-Chinese. In the German sample, there were 15 3-year-olds and 15 5-year-olds. They were living in Berlin, and their native language was German.
The same materials were used as in the previous experiments. In each set, the experimenter taught a novel internal property about the standard object and asked the children to select the item that also had this property (see Section
The response pattern was again very similar across the two language/culture groups (see Tables
The cross-linguistic
Both Chinese and German 5-year-olds generalized a novel property on the basis of taxonomic category membership. This finding confirms the widely accepted notion that young children, just like adults, assume that taxonomic categories carry higher inductive potential than perceptual similarity (e.g., Gelman and Markman,
In this research, we investigated whether the classifier system in the Chinese language influences young children's conceptual structure in three cognitive tasks, i.e., (non-lexical) categorization, label extension and inductive generalization of a property. The structure of the stimuli also allowed us to test a specific hypothesis proposed from cultural psychology (e.g., Nisbett et al.,
We found a complex interplay between the effect of classifiers and children's task-specific biases. We found some support for linguistic relativity, as Chinese preschoolers used shape similarity as a basis for non-lexical categorization at a higher rate than German preschoolers. At the same time, however, this cross-linguistic difference was not observed in the label extension or property inference tasks. In the former case, not only Chinese- but also German-speaking children predominantly extended novel labels on the basis of shape similarity, replicating the results with English-speaking children in previous similar studies (e.g., Baldwin,
In contrast to the effect of classifiers, in no task, we found the cross-cultural difference between Westerners (German) and East Asians (Chinese) predicted by the culture-specific cognition hypothesis proposed by Nisbett and colleagues (Nisbett et al.
The finding that the influence of classifiers interacts with task-specific biases is important not only for understanding linguistic relativity but also for understanding the nature of young children's concepts and categories itself. The fact that children relied on different relations across three kinds of categorization contexts suggests that children's categorization behavior strongly depends on the task at hand rather than on a particular general conceptual preference (cf., Waxman and Namy,
The difference across label extension and property generalization is particularly noteworthy and requires further exploration. Why should children rely on shape when making inferences about what other object can be labeled by the novel label, even though they are able to access taxonomic relations when making inferences as to which other objects the novel property can be generalized?
Young children constantly encounter new words, and often need to extend newly heard words even when they do not have much knowledge about the referent objects. In such cases, among the features that children have access to even without rich domain knowledge, shape is the best predictor for taxonomic categories, and in particular, for basic level categories (Imai et al.,
Shape similarity is not as useful for inductive generalization of properties as it is for label generalization. Not every property of an object can be generalized to other objects, and even when a property is generalizable, the scope of generalization depends on the nature of the property. For example, some properties are true for all animals, but other properties are true only for a particular species. In other words, one needs a fair amount of the domain knowledge about the object and the property in question to be able to make a meaningful inference (cf., Gelman et al.,
The result that an influence from the classifier system is found only in the non-lexical categorization task is consistent with the results from previous research examining classifier influence in adults (Saalbach and Imai,
Thus, just like adults, children flexibly shift the basis for categorization according to the task, and the influence of the classifier system is manifested differently across different tasks. In fact, the cross-linguistic/cultural similarity of the Chinese and German children in the label extension and property generalization tasks is striking. Any cognitive bias due to classifiers may be too weak in the face of task-specific biases (such as the shape bias for label extension and taxonomic bias for property inference) that have been identified across many different language/culture groups. This in turn suggests that, if any evidence for linguistic relativity is found, it is important to specify the magnitude and scope of the effect within a larger picture of universally prominent tendencies in cognition.
The timing of the emergence of the language-specific classifier influence in the non-lexical categorization should be interpreted with caution. The results of the statistical analyses in Experiment 1 revealed main effects of Language with Chinese children showing a stronger preference for shape response and of Age with an increase of thematic response compensated by decrease of shape response, with no interaction between the two factors. Thus, we may conclude that the classifier influence in the non-lexical categorization is seen even at age 3, that is, even before Chinese children start to use classifiers proficiently. However, the distributions of the means in Tables
To some readers, the fact that German 5-year-olds showed a thematic (but not a taxonomic) bias in the non-lexical categorization (Experiment 1) may seem puzzling. However, this result is not so surprising in light of previous results in the adult concept literature. Recently, researchers have noted that taxonomic relations do not capture the full spectrum and richness of human concepts and categories, and they have pointed out that thematic relations are also an integral and important part of our conceptual structure (e.g., Wisniewski and Bassok,
Great caution is necessary to interpret the lack of evidence in this research for the culture-specific cognition hypothesis proposed by Nisbett and colleagues (Nisbett,
That said, our research is important in that it allowed us to directly compare the influence of language (although limited to the influence of the classifier system) and influence of culture. The results from the non-lexical categorization task suggest that the effect of language is stronger than the effect of culture on children's categorization.
One issue that also warrants some discussion is whether the results from Experiments 2 and 3 are relevant to linguistic relativity. Some researchers argue that linguistic relativity should be tested only in purely non-linguistic tasks (e.g., Boroditsky,
In our view, the distinction between linguistic relativity and thinking for speaking may not be so critical. Recent studies have revealed that labels existing in the lexicon are automatically recruited during the course of perceptual processing in which no use of language is required (e.g., Roberson et al.,
This research provides important implications for the field of language and thought as well as for the field of cultural psychology. In traditional discussions of linguistic relativity, if a cross-linguistic difference is found between a language having a certain grammatical categorization system and one without it
Yet to be seen is whether the classifier effect found in Chinese children is also seen in other classifier languages. Imai and Saalbach (
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Das ist JOJO. JOJO ist ein kleiner Wolf. Er möchte ganz viel lernen. ollen wir Ihm helfen? Kannst Du dem JOJO sagen welches dieser Dinge (TAXONOMIC, SHAPE, THEMATIC ITEMS) am besten mit diesem (TARGET) zusammen passt?
This is Jojo. Jojo is a little wolf. He really wants to study a lot. Let's help him, ok? Can you tell JOJO which one of these (TAXONOMIC, SHAPE, THEMATIC ITEMS) matches this one (TARGET) the best?
Das ist JOJO. JOJO ist ein kleiner Wolf. Er möchte ganz viel lernen. Wollen wir Ihm helfen? Wir haben ein Herz innen drin, weißt du das schon? Du weißt doch sicher auch, dass wir Blut innen drin haben, oder? Alle Dinge haben andere Dinge innen drin, stimmt's? Ich werde Dir jetzt verraten, was das hier (TARGET) innen drin hat. Das hier (TARGET) hat IDOFORM innen drin. Kannst Du dem JOJO sagen, welches von denen hier (TAXONOMIC, SHAPE, THEMATIC ITEMS) auch IDOFORM innen drin hat?
This is JOJO. JOJO is a little wolf. He really wants to study a lot. Let's help him, ok? We have a heart inside. Do you know this already? You also know that we have blood inside, right? All things have something inside, right? I will tell you what is inside this (TARGET). This (TARGET) has LIAN4 AN1*/IDOFORM inside. Can you tell JOJO which one of them (TAXONOMIC, SHAPE, THEMATIC ITEMS) has also IDOFORM inside?
Das ist JOJO. JOJO ist ein kleiner Wolf. Er möchte unbedingt Wolfssprache lernen. Wollen wir Ihm helfen? Guck mal! Das (TARGET) ist ein FEP. Kannst du dem JOJO sagen, welches von denen (TAXONOMIC, SHAPE, THEMATIC ITEMS) auch ein FEP ist?
This is JOJO. JOJO is a little wolf. He really wants to study wolf language. Let's help him, ok? See! This (TARGET) is a FIN/FEP. Can you tell JOJO which one of them (TAXONOMIC, SHAPE, THEMATIC ITEMS) is also a FIN/FEP?
This research was supported by Ministry of Education grant-in-aid for Scientific Research (#15300088) and research grants from Keio University (Keio Gijuku Academic Development Funds and Keio Gijuku Mori Memorial Research Fund) awarded to Mutsumi Imai, fellowships from the Japan Society of the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung awarded to Saalbach. We are deeply indebted to Zhou Xiaolin, Lennart Schalk, Li Lianjing, Zou Ling, and Miho Nagumo for help for data collection and discussion.