Exploring noun bias in Filipino-English bilingual children

Researchers have suggested that there is a noun bias in children\u27s early vocabularies brought about by features of adults\u27 child-directed utterances, which may vary across languages (E. V. Bates et al., 1994; D. Gentner, 1982). In the present study, the authors explored noun bias in 60 Filipino-English bilingual children whose 2 languages differed in how they emphasized nouns and verbs in typical syntactic forms. The results revealed a noun bias, but only in the bilingual children\u27s English vocabulary. The noun bias in English was associated with the frequency of nouns in the caregivers\u27 utterances and the proportion of nouns in the initial positions of the caregivers\u27 utterances. The authors also found different associations between salient positions in the adult utterances and children\u27s vocabularies in English and Filipino. Copyright © 2008 Heldref Publications