THE ACQUISITION OF UNIVERSAL QUANTIFIERS IN INDONESIAN (ISO 639-3: IND): A PRELIMINARY REPORT

Abstract

Current study specifically concerns with the acquisition of universal quantifiers inIndonesian, e.g., masing-masing/setiap “each/every”, semua “all”. Previous studiese.g., Vendler (1967), Ioup (1975), Brooks & Braine (1996), Brooks et al. (2001)showed that all and each/every have innate collective, e.g., All the boys are riding anelephant, and distributive, e.g., Each boy is riding an elephant, representationsrespectively. This study mainly aims to reinvestigate the innateness of the twomeanings. The study used picture selection tasks. Five different sets of stimuli wereemployed. Three different groups of subjects participated: 20 younger children (4-to-6year old), 30 older children (7-to-12-year old), and 30 adults (17-to-22-year old). The results indicated that there was no evidence that the younger children were able torestrict the use of quantifiers to its domain, i.e., the noun it modifies. Furthermore, there was even no evidence that they could assign the distributive and collectivemeanings to masing-masing “each” and semua “all” respectively. In contrast, over95% of the older children’s and adults’ use of the quantifiers was correct. Additionally,their assignment to the distributive meaning of masing-masing “each” was over 90%correct. For semua “all”, nevertheless, only about 50% of their responses representedthe canonical meaning, i.e., collective. Moreover, the results from quantifier spreadingtests informed that half of the younger children preferred a symmetrical relation between masing-masing “each” and its domain, while the other half preferred anasymmetrical relation. Thus, their preference to the symmetrical response, as suggested by Philip (1995), is not observed here. To conclude, all the evidence suggeststhat children’s universal quantifier acquisition is delayed until they are approximatelyat age 7. The learning process, in the sense of Bowerman (2001), and Borer andWexler’s Maturation Hypothesis (1987) might factor in the delay. In other words, theinnate collective and distributive meanings of all and each/every are not confirmed in this study.