A CHILDES Analysis of Mental State Verbs in Japanese and English

摘要

This study compares Japanese-speaking mother-child dyads to English-speaking ones in terms of their use of mental state verbs. An analysis of spontaneous speech samples in the CHILDES archives revealed that finite clauses embedded under mental state verbs were used less frequently in Japanese than in English, both in terms of input frequency to children and children's spontaneous production. We argue that this could be a contributing factor underlying the developmental delay of Theory of Mind in Japanese-speaking children.