EVERYDAY MATH TALK: A STUDY WITH WICHI AND SPANISH-SPEAKING FAMILIES

TAVERNA, A. S.; SALSA, A. M.

Praga

Congreso; Congreso de la International Association for the Study of Child Language; 2024

IASCL

The influence of culture on mathematics is well established, but almost nothing is known about how different practices and languages in different cultures influence young children’s earliest mathematical knowledge and skills. In the present study, we report an analysis of 3989 utterances recorded at home in two diverse cultural settings in Argentina: two monolingual Wichi and two Spanish-speaking 2-year-old children and their families. A set of math talk categories was developed: Numeracy (labeling, enumeration, quantification, ordinal numbers, fractions), Geometry (space and shape), and Measurement. Although the overall frequency of utterances was similar in both cultural groups, Spanish-speaking dyads produced twice as many mathematical utterances as their Wichi counterparts. More precisely, in the Spanish-speaking families, utterances about numbers were more than twice as frequent as utterances about geometry and measurement, with quantification (focusing on exact and global cardinal values) clearly predominating. In the Wichi families, on the other hand, utterances about space predominated, due to the wealth of spatial demonstratives in the language, which are morphemes attached to nouns with a deictic function (they indicate the position, distance, orientation of the referent). In numeracy utterances, we registered the use of two differentiated systems of global quantifiers ('little, much') for continuous and discrete quantities, especially for liquids, semantic distinctions that are not lexicalized by Spanish quantifiers. Moreover, in Wichi families, math talk was produced spontaneously by children, whereas in Spanish-speaking families it was produced by parents and siblings as child-directed speech. In this way, family practices and languages enable the appropriation of informal mathematical knowledge, but with a focus on different domains of early mathematics in different cultural groups.