An Introduction to The National Language Research Institute: A Sketch of its Achievements
Third Edition(1988)/ HTML Version(1997)

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II.4.15 Grammatical Ability in Pre-School Children

(Report 58, 1977. 414 pages)
We predicted that acceleration in the development of the linguistic ability of pre-school children would occur with the spread of television, picture books, etc. This book reports on a survey conducted to evaluate grammatical ability. The survey was composed of the following three parts. 1. A survey on the ability of children to differentiate the usage of 41 verbs in specific sentences. These verbs were divided into 13 groups classified according to meaning, TOBU, 'X flies'/TOBASU, 'X flies Y'; WARU, 'divide'/KIRU, 'cut'; AGERU, 'give (to the out-group)'/KURERU, 'give (to the in-group)'/KASU, 'lend'/OSIERU, 'teach'/AZUKERU, 'place in another's charge'; etc. 2. A survey on sentence alternations, for example, alternations of active to passive sentences and passive to active sentences, alternation of a given sentence to a causative sentence, sentence alternations involving the auxiliary verbs AGERU/MORAU, etc. 3. An experiment based on Piagetian research which investigated the relation between ability to alternate sentences and the ability to remember numbers. Results of this research indicated the crucial need for research on the relation between development of grammatical ability and development of cognitive functions. This survey is particularly noteworthy for its control of conditions with picture cards. MURAISI Sho~zo~ and AMANO Kiyosi directed this survey and AMANO Kiyosi wrote the report.

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