Do Girls Outperform Boys in Early Syntactic Development? Negative Evidence from Mandarin-Speaking Preschoolers
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Early Syntactic Development in Chinese Children
1.2. Gender Differences in Early Language Development
1.3. The Context of This Study
- Are there significant age differences in Beijing preschoolers’ syntactic development?
- Are there significant sex differences in Beijing preschoolers’ syntactic development?
- Are there significant sex-by-age differences in Beijing preschoolers’ syntactic development?
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Participants
2.2. Videotaped Communication Task
2.3. Transcription
2.4. Data Analysis
2.5. Utterance Analysis
- The sentence types observed include interrogatives, declaratives, imperatives, exclamations, and sentences containing English words.
- The sentence types most often used are declarative and contain more syntax elements. Therefore, understanding sentence structure requires analysis of declarative structures; other categories include single-word sentences, sentences with no subject, subject-predicate sentences, and compound sentences.
- Modifiers must be considered to understand how complex the syntax of a declarative is. For example, a declarative may be categorized as a sentence with no modifier, a simple modifier, complex modifiers, and modified by subject-predicate. In particular, according to Dryer (2007), simple modifiers include articles, adjectives, demonstratives, or numerals, whereas complex modifiers include genitive or possessive modifiers and relative clauses.
- Understanding declarative verb patterns requires studying how verbs are used. For example, a declarative may be categorized as a sentence without a verb, an intransitive verb, a transitive verb, a co-verb, and a copula verb. For each item in each area, frequency and percentage are calculated.
3. Results
3.1. Mean Length of Utterance
3.2. Sentence Type
3.3. Sentence Structure
3.4. The Use of Modifiers
3.5. Verb Patterns
4. Discussion
4.1. Age Differences in Syntactic Development
4.2. Sex Differences in Syntactic Development
4.3. Conclusions, Limitations, and Implications
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A
Variable | Attribute |
---|---|
Length of utterances | — Number of utterances |
— MLU | |
Sentence types | — Declarative sentence |
— Interrogative sentence | |
— Exclamation sentence | |
— Negation sentence | |
— Imperative sentence | |
— Incomplete sentence | |
— English and other words | |
Structures of declaratives | — Single-word sentence |
— Simple declarative | |
— Subjectless sentence | |
— Subject-predicate sentence | |
— Compound sentence | |
Syntactic complexity of simple declaratives | — Without modifier |
— With simple modifier | |
— With complex modifier | |
— With subject-predicate (SP) as subject or object | |
Verb patterns in declaratives | — With intransitive verb |
— With transitive verb | |
— With co-verbs or verbs in serial expression modifier | |
— Link verb | |
— Without verb |
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Total Utterances | MLU | Boys’ MLU (n = 96) | Girls’ MLU (n = 96) | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sample | Mean | SD | Mean | SD | Mean | SD | Mean | SD |
2.5 years | 73.75 | 63.71 | 3.68 | 1.34 | 3.80 | 1.34 | 3.56 | 1.35 |
3.5 years | 87.88 | 88.23 | 4.45 | 1.21 | 4.55 | 1.04 | 4.36 | 1.38 |
4.5 years | 155.35 | 81.96 | 5.48 | 1.01 | 5.51 | 1.06 | 5.46 | 0.97 |
5.5 years | 222.44 | 101.06 | 5.97 | 1.08 | 6.15 | 1.13 | 5.80 | 1.02 |
Total | 134.85 | 102.99 | 4.90 | 1.46 | 5.00 | 1.45 | 4.79 | 1.48 |
MLU | Boys’ MLU (n = 64) | Girls’ MLU (n = 64) | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sample | Mean | SD | Mean | SD | Mean | SD |
2.5 years (n = 32) | 3.70 | 0.95 | 3.72 | 0.93 | 3.68 | 1.01 |
3.5 years (n = 32) | 4.52 | 1.17 | 4.69 | 1.11 | 4.34 | 1.23 |
4.5 years (n = 32) | 5.52 | 0.82 | 5.44 | 0.82 | 5.59 | 0.84 |
5.5 years (n = 32) | 5.95 | 1.07 | 6.14 | 1.10 | 5.75 | 1.03 |
Total (N = 128) | 4.92 | 1.33 | 5.00 | 1.33 | 4.84 | 1.34 |
2.5 Years | 3.5 Years | 4.5 Years | 5.5 Years | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | |
Declarative | 64.76 | 63.99 | 62.93 | 65.48 | 61.83 | 66.34 | 62.54 | 63.11 |
Interrogative | 14.96 | 15.12 | 23.24 | 20.57 | 20.68 | 17.79 | 18.73 | 18.24 |
Imperative | 5.60 | 5.97 | 6.73 | 7.71 | 9.24 | 7.76 | 9.72 | 11.24 |
Exclamation | 14.65 | 10.70 | 5.59 | 6.06 | 7.84 | 7.92 | 8.84 | 7.34 |
With English | 0.03 | 0.05 | 0.52 | 0.17 | 0.42 | 0.17 | 0.17 | 0.07 |
2.5 Years | 3.5 Years | 4.5 Years | 5.5 Years | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | |
Subjectless sentence | 26.47 | 23.28 | 25.42 | 24.40 | 25.34 | 23.60 | 24.72 | 25.80 |
Subject-predicate | 33.68 | 30.80 | 39.77 | 38.12 | 47.65 | 49.76 | 47.86 | 46.40 |
Single word sentence | 39.10 | 41.08 | 32.27 | 36.48 | 24.02 | 23.30 | 21.85 | 23.21 |
Compound sentence | 0.75 | 0.67 | 2.53 | 1.00 | 2.99 | 3.34 | 5.57 | 4.60 |
2.5 Years | 3.5 Years | 4.5 Years | 5.5 Years | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | |
Without modifier | 75.47 | 73.76 | 73.03 | 76.51 | 67.45 | 70.84 | 65.26 | 66.08 |
With simple modifier | 23.43 | 19.64 | 23.60 | 20.98 | 26.30 | 23.98 | 25.67 | 27.19 |
With complex modifier | 0.93 | 2.01 | 3.11 | 2.39 | 5.90 | 4.56 | 8.15 | 5.70 |
With SP as subject or object | 0.16 | 0.42 | 0.25 | 0.12 | 0.35 | 0.62 | 0.92 | 1.03 |
2.5 Years | 3.5 Years | 4.5 Years | 5.5 Years | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | Boys | Girls | |
Without verb | 41.94 | 44.24 | 44.32 | 47.64 | 37.36 | 35.43 | 31.10 | 34.37 |
Intransitive verb | 22.98 | 19.93 | 18.26 | 18.56 | 22.89 | 21.51 | 25.90 | 24.63 |
Transitive verb | 23.36 | 21.01 | 24.07 | 18.81 | 25.28 | 26.86 | 29.61 | 27.77 |
Co-verb | 2.06 | 1.06 | 2.67 | 2.73 | 3.68 | 5.19 | 4.19 | 3.86 |
Copula verb | 9.67 | 9.60 | 10.67 | 12.26 | 10.80 | 11.01 | 9.20 | 9.38 |
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Tong, N.-Y.; Li, H. Do Girls Outperform Boys in Early Syntactic Development? Negative Evidence from Mandarin-Speaking Preschoolers. Languages 2022, 7, 281. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040281
Tong N-Y, Li H. Do Girls Outperform Boys in Early Syntactic Development? Negative Evidence from Mandarin-Speaking Preschoolers. Languages. 2022; 7(4):281. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040281
Chicago/Turabian StyleTong, Nga-Yui, and Hui Li. 2022. "Do Girls Outperform Boys in Early Syntactic Development? Negative Evidence from Mandarin-Speaking Preschoolers" Languages 7, no. 4: 281. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040281
APA StyleTong, N. -Y., & Li, H. (2022). Do Girls Outperform Boys in Early Syntactic Development? Negative Evidence from Mandarin-Speaking Preschoolers. Languages, 7(4), 281. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7040281