Acquisition of Numerosity in One English-Spanish Bilingual Child: A Case Study

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2021
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Linguistics
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en
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Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
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This paper analyzes the development of numerosity in one English-Spanish bilingual two-year old. Using three of Wynn’s 1992 number experiments that have shaped the field of children’s number-learning, I compare my subject’s results to those found in Wynn’s original paper as well as studies that have since used her same methods, especially Wagner’s 2015 work with English-Spanish bilingual children. For this study, a series of sessions was conducted over a two-month span, and then another series of sessions happened after a two-month break. Between these two series, my subject showed a jump in ability that is common amongst children during the numerosity-learning process. At each of these stages, I explored whether my subject’s experience mirrored that of a typical number-learning process. Specifically, results of previous studies predicted that my subject would progress through specific stages in his number-learning process –– starting with being a one-knower, to a two-knower, to a three-knower, and eventually to a cardinal principle knower. Results of previous studies also suggested that my subject would learn his early numbers, one, two, and three, separately in each of his languages. Finally, it is expected that, once a child shows knowledge of the cardinal principle in one of his languages, he will jump to that same level of knowledge in his other language(s), “skipping” expected number-learning stages. I found that my subject generally mirrored these patterns, with some variation based on his age and specific number-learning process. Overall, this case study offers an opportunity to test whether results from previous group studies are replicated for one bilingual child as well as to gain more in-depth insights about this child’s acquisition of numerosity.
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