Glottotheory 2020; 10(1-2): 85–102

Natsue Ito*, Katsuo Tamaoka and Michael Patrick Mansbridge

A Picture-Book Based Corpus Studyon the Acquisition of wh-words in Japanese
https://doi.org/10.1515/glot-2019-0004

Abstract: Clancy (1989. Form and function in the acquisition of Korean whquestions. Journal of Child Language, 16(2), 323–47) claims that the developmental order of wh-questions in first language acquisition follows the order: what =where < who < how = why < when. Forner (1979. The mother as LAD: interaction
between order and frequency of parental input and child production. In
A. Hastings & F. R. Eckman (Eds.), Studies in first and second language acquisition(pp. 17–44). New York, NY: Newbury House Publishers) further argues that amother’s order of introducing wh-questions might be influenced by her assumption of a child’s cognitive development. Similarly, the target age for picture books
might also reflect an adult’s assumption of the child’s cognitive development.
Accordingly, this study investigates a Japanese picture book corpus to determine
whether the order of appearance for wh-words mirrors that of Clancy’s developmental order. As a result, the appearance of Japanese wh-words in the picture
books were similar to Clancy’s (1989. Form and function in the acquisitionof Korean wh-questions. Journal of Child Language, 16(2), 323–47) order except
for the question dou ‘how’. Because dou and the English ‘how’ have different
ranges of meaning, the data were reanalyzed which resulted in an order moresimilar to Clancy’s. These results suggest that the target age of picture books
reflect the adult’s assumption of a child’s cognitive development. Picture books
might also influence a caregivers’ order of introducing wh-words. In conclusion,
this study implies external social factor such as picture books, together with otherfactors, might influence the children’s wh-developmental order.
Keywords: wh-developmental order, Japanese picture books, child’s cognitive
development, decision tree analysis, adult’s assumption*Corresponding author: Natsue Ito, Department of Humanities, Nagoya University, Furo-cho,
Chikusa-ku, Nagoya-shi, Aichi-ken 464-8601, Japan, E-mail: natsueito@aol.com
Katsuo Tamaoka, Department of Humanities, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoyashi, Aichi-ken 464-8601, Japan, E-mail: ktamaoka@gc4.so-net.ne.jp
Michael Patrick Mansbridge, Department of Humanities, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusaku, Nagoya-shi, Aichi-ken 464-8601, Japan; Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science,
Tokyo, Japan, E-mail: michaelp.mansbridge@gmail.com

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86Natsue Ito et al.

1 Introduction
The developmental sequence of wh-questions has long been studied in English(Bloom et al. 1982; Brown 1968; Ervin-Tripp 1970; Ingram 1971; Smith 1933;
Tyack and Ingram 1977), German (Wode 1971), Serbo-Croatian (Savić 1975),
Korean (Clancy 1989) and Japanese (Miyata 2009; Okubo 1967), and thesecross linguistic studies have found many similarities in the developmental
sequences for production. Furthermore, even when investigating the comprehension of wh-questions by children (Cairns and Hsu 1978; Clancy 1989; ErvinTripp 1970) and controlling for the level of syntax and vocabulary (Tyack andIngram 1977), certain developmental sequences or strategies were observed.
Accordingly, there appears to be a shared developmental sequence for childacquisition of wh-questions.
This developmental sequence has been explained from the framework ofseveral different perspectives: cognitive development (Ingram 1971; Okubo 1967);
syntax, semantics complexity and discourse (Bloom et al. 1982); and the frequency
and order of parental input (Clancy 1989; Forner 1979). While Rowland et al.
(2003) argued that the frequency and order of parental input were the strongest
factors determining wh-development, Savić (1975) investigated the utterances of
wh-questions by a child-parent pair and concluded that the order and frequencyof the adults were not related to the order and output frequency of the children,
thus creating disagreement regarding the role of the parents.
However, because Savić did not statistically analyze her data and instead
relied on subjective interpretations, Forner (1979) reanalyzed Savić’s data by
calculating correlation coefficients and added longitudinal data (German) takenfrom her own son. Thus, Forner (1979), in contrast to Savić, found that thechild’s output correlates with the mother. Specifically, the order in which themother first introduces a wh-questions and its frequency influence the child’s
production. Importantly, Forner (1979) also claimed that the mother’s order isinfluenced by the child’s cognitive development, as shown below in Figure 1. InChildren's cognitive development
Mother's order
Cumulative semantic complexity

Mother's frequency

Child's orderChild's frequency
Figure 1: Possible correlation determinants between mother-child speech and child speech(Forner 1979: 41).

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A Picture-Book Based Corpus Study

87sum, the mother somehow senses the level of the child’s cognitive development,
which unconsciously affects her own order.
Clancy (1989) claimed that there appears to be a fixed pattern of whdevelopment in first language acquisition based on the previous studies ofEnglish (Bloom et al. 1982; Cairns and Hsu 1978; Ervin-Tripp 1970; Ingram 1971;
Tyack and Ingram 1977), German (Wode 1971, Serbo-Croatian (Savić 1975),
Japanese (Okubo 1967), and her own study on Korean wh-questions: what =where < who < how = why < when. In her study, Clancy (1989) recorded the conversations of two Korean child-parent pairs for one year and analyzed thecorrelation of parental input with the children’s acquisition; this revealed
that the children’s order of wh-questions was related to the parental frequency
and order. However, Clancy (1989: 342), making similarities to Forner (1979),
emphasized the importance of the cognitive state of the child for wh-acquisitionand de-emphasized the role of parental input as an independent factor influencing the developmental order. Instead, she argued that cognition and input work
together shape the order. In summary, Clancy supported Forner’s model (1979)
such that a mother’s order may be influenced by a child’s cognitive development.
There is a considerable amount of research regarding how picture bookreading benefits language growth and boosts vocabulary. For example,
Sénéchal, LeFevre, Hudson, and Lawson (1996: 520) state that “the language
used by mothers during shared book reading is richer and more varied than thatused during mealtime, toy play, or dressing”. Moerk (1985) also highlights theimportance of shared picture book reading because, via this activity where
attention is guided by the mother, children are able to initiate the process of
forming representations of the form and structure for linguistic knowledge prior
to formal language instruction.
Furthermore, for picture book reading, language growth has been found to
be related to the frequency of reading specific lexical items (Snow and Goldfield1983), the increased rate of asking open-ended questions (Whitehurst et al. 1988)
and the joint attention between the caregiver and the child. Moreover, forchildren approximately 1;6, 2;0, and 2;6, the percentage of distribution of speech
for story-reading time in a day was found to be 5.4%, 4.8%, and 5.0%, respectively (Wells and Gordon 1985: 116); Sénéchal and LeFevre (2001) even suggestthat children might learn two out of five new words a day from listening to astorybook. Whitehurst et al. (1988: 552) claimed that, by “asking questions,giving feedback, and adjusting questions to the developmental level of thechild”, parents are able to teach language via the process of reading picture
books to their children. If parents are adjusting their feedback and questions, it
can be ascertained that they must also be assessing their child’s developmental
level. Moreover, as Moerk (1985: 550) claimed, a young child understands

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88Natsue Ito et al.

language mainly in the here and now, with environmental nonverbal support.
Pictures provide such external cues in a nearly ideal form, and they are always
readily available. Therefore, picture books can be very beneficial for children tolearn language.
In summary, it can be assumed that the shared activity of reading a picturebook between a parent and child is a pillar of language development for thechild; as such, investigating wh-words in picture books might help better theunderstanding of wh-acquisition within the scope of Forner’s (1979) model (i. e.
cognitive perception).
While the target ages of picture books are decided by the authors and the
publisher, these suggested ages might also reflect an adult’s assumption of thecognitive development of children. Importantly, parents might also be susceptible to the influence of these picture books when gauging their own child’s
cognitive development. Accordingly, it is of empirical interest to investigate whwords in picture books to determine how target ages reflect adults’ assumptionsof children’s cognitive development and if these assumptions mirror Clancy’s(1989) acquisition order.

1.1 Current study
Wh-words in Japanese picture books were investigated based on the recommended
target age using a Decision Tree Analysis (e. g. Breiman et al. 1984) to determine
whether adults’ assumptions of children’s cognitive development are represented
in picture books. In this study, children were not studied. Instead, we limited ourinvestigation how picture books with different target ages reflect the acquisition
order proposed by Clancy (1989). We hypothesize that the appearance of wh-words
in picture books will mirror the adults assumptions of children’s cognitive development and a result in an order similar to Clancy’s acquisition order.

2 Corpus study
2.1 Materials
The materials for this study were Japanese picture books with different target ages.
Fukuinkan Shoten is a Japanese publisher that publishes Japanese picture books.
The firm indicated recommended target ages on its picture books and has monthly
picture book magazines for the first to the third year of preschool and kindergarten

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A Picture-Book Based Corpus Study89

in Japan, approximately ages 3;0 4;0, and 5;0 at the start of the school year,
respectively. Therefore, both picture books and monthly picture book magazines
published from Fukuinkan Shoten were used. Because the recommended target ages
are often written as ‘from ages 2 to 4’, we grouped the books as for target age 2
because the publisher recommended them to children 2;0 and above.
Because (1) infants from approximately 7.5 months begin to segment words(Jusczyk 1999), (2) approximately slightly before 12 months, children can begin torecognize pictures as representations of lexical items or real world objects (Moerk
1985) and (3) at approximately 17 to 20 months, children can begin to discriminate
sounds in speech to connect sounds to meaning for vocabulary learning (Kajikawa
and Imai 2006), we limited the range or target ages to one-to-five.
We asked Fukuinkan Shoten how it determined the appropriate target ages for
its books. The publisher responded that it does not have a specific vocabulary listor specific rules for deciding target ages. Instead, the publisher occasionally
requests its authors to write books for a specific target age range or decides theage during meetings after a picture book is written. Accordingly, it appears that
Fukuinkan Shoten might assume that these books are suitable for certain ages andthat the target ages are simply approximate indicators. However, the publisher’s
judgments might also reflect how adults sense a child’s linguistic and cognitive
development, especially if an author or a publisher has experienced child-rearing.
Books introduced in Nihon Tosho-syuppan brochures, a wholesaler company
of books, were also used as a reference for picture books with different target
ages. Additionally, these brochures were used because Fukuinkan Shoten does
not regularly categorize ages beginning from age 1. Thus, picture books in thebrochures by Nihon Tosho-syuppan were primarily used to supplement the target
ages of Fukuinkan Shoten. Because books with a target age of 1 were difficult tofind, picture books belonging to the same series recommended for age 1 by
Nihon Tosho-syuppan were also included in this study.
A total of 345 picture books were included in the present corpus search. The
number of books per target age is as follows: age 1 = 47; age 2 = 82; age 3 = 71;
age 4 = 77; and age 5 = 68. Importantly, for a decision tree analysis, the numberof books in each age range does not need to be completely equal.

2.2 Methods
In this study, six wh-words belonging to Clancy’s (1989) suggested acquisition
order were investigated in a corpus search of Japanese picture books: nani
‘what’, doko ‘where’, dare ‘who’, dou ‘how’, naze ‘why’, and itsu ‘when’.
Additionally, wh-words in indirect interrogative questions in the picture books

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Natsue Ito et al.

were also counted. There are at least three wh-words that mean ‘which’: dore,
dochira, and dono, and the Japanese equivalent to ‘whose’ is dareno (theHepburn system of romanization of Japanese is used in this paper). However,
because Clancy argued that other wh-words’, such as ‘which’ and ‘whose’,appearance varies depending on the language, we decided to not include
them. Wh-words such as nanko ‘how many’, ikura/doredake ‘how much’, anddonna/donoyouna ‘what kind of’ were classified as different kinds and were notincluded in dou ‘how’ nor nani ‘what’ in this study.
The meanings of Japanese wh-words depend on the context in many cases.
For example, dochira can mean ‘which’, ‘who’ or ‘where’ depending on theusage and the context. Dochira as used in (1) means ‘which’, ‘who’ in (2), and‘where’ in (3) (note. COP means copula, INF means infinitive, VOL means volitional, DP means discourse particle and NPST means non-past, PLT means
polite, DP means discourse particle).
(1)Dochiranishiyou kana(dochira.which COP.INF do.VOL DP )‘Which one should (I) get?’(2)Dochira
sama
desu
ka
(dochira.who SUFFIX COP.PLT.NPST DP.Q)‘Who are (you)?’(3)Dochirae odekakedesuka(dochira.where to PLT go.out.INF COP.PLT.NPST DP.Q)‘Where (are) you going?’

Both (2) and (3) are polite ways to express dare ‘who’ and doko ‘where’. In the samemanner, doushite was counted depending on the context. Doushite usually means
naze ‘why’ because doushite is used for requesting a reason. In some exceptional
cases, doushite was counted as ‘how’ if doushite means the same as douyatte ‘how’.
Additionally, nande usually means ‘why’, but in the case such as (4) below, it wascounted as ‘what’ because in this case from the context of the story, nande was a
combination of nani and de which had phonetic change making it nande. Therefore,
it was important to count wh-words within a given context.
(4)

demo nan-de
koshiraerun desu
kane
(But what-with make.NPST COP.PLT.NPST DP.Q)‘but with what (should we) make?’

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A Picture-Book Based Corpus Study91

In the picture books which were used in this study, other usages of the whwords were the polite form, impolite form, dialectal and older expressions. The
polite form of ‘how’ is ikaga and ‘who’ is donata along with dochira. The
impolite forms of ‘who’ are nanimono and doitsu. In Kansai dialect, ‘how’ canbe expressed as donai and it is commonly known by Japanese public. Anotherrare case was doko and which has a phonetic change to dokee which means‘to where’ (dialectal speech). Older expressions were nashite and nantoshite
meaning ‘why.’ Moreover, some Japanese wh-words such as nani ‘what’, doko
‘where’, dare ‘who’ and even dou ‘how’ can be omitted if the speaker or writer
thinks listeners or readers understand the question by the context (i. e. sharedunderstanding). In this research, those elliptical sentences without wh-words
were not counted and only wh-words which appeared in the sentences werecounted. As we can see in Table 1, there were many varieties of Japanese whwords in the picture books.
Table 1: Japanese wh-word categories and token examples.
wh

words

examples

nani
doko
dare

what
where
who

dou
naze
itsu

how
why
when

nani, naani, nan~, nani ~ …
doko, dochira (polite)
dare, daare, donata (pilite), dochira (polite), nanimono (impolite), doitsu(imploite)
dou, dou~, ikaga(polite), donai (dialect)
nande, naze, doushite, dooshite, nandatte, nashite (old), nantoshite (old)itsu

For the corpus search, wh-words were only counted if they appeared in the
picture book (i. e. 0 or 1) and were not counted as individual tokens in the books.
As stated above, a total of 345 picture books were included in the corpus search.
Therefore, 2,070 columns of data were collected from these texts.

2.3 Results
The results of the appearance of wh-words in each age group are shown in Table 2.
A decision tree analysis (a classification tree analysis) using the target age
and wh-words as factors was conducted (IBM SPSS Statistics Version 22) using
the chi-squared automatic interaction detector (CHAID) algorithm. In this analysis, if a factor is statistically significant, the line will branch and look like an

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Natsue Ito et al.

Table 2: The appearance of wh-words per age group.
target
age






nani
‘what’

doko‘where’

dare
‘who’

dou
‘how’

naze
‘why’

istu
‘when’

number of
books











































inverted tree. The strongest factors are displayed higher up in the tree, and nonsignificant factors are not shown (see Tamaoka et al. 2016 for the use of classification tree analyses applied for the Japanese language). The present decision
tree was conducted in the way that appearance (0 or 1) is predicted by the
independent factors of target-ages from 1 to 5 and six wh-words. Because targetage is the major focus, the target-age was specified as the first branch. The
results of the decision tree analysis are shown below in Figure 2.
The risk of this decision tree analysis was 18.10, where risk is the percentage
of possible errors made by decision tree analysis. This number indicates that81.90% (100%−18.10%) of data were correctly classified in this analysis.
The highest order factor was set to be the target age as represented by the
first split in the tree. When the target age of picture books was ages 4 or older,
the appearance of wh-words was significantly higher than those of ages 1, 2 and3. In the delineation of target ages 1, 2 and 3, nani ‘what’ appeared most often.
This finding was followed by doko ‘where’, dare ‘who’, and dou ‘how’, which allcame together with similar frequency. This finding was then followed by naze
‘why’ and lastly itsu ‘when’, which rarely appeared. In the delineation of target
ages 4 and 5, nani ‘what’ appeared most often, then dou ‘how’ came second
most often. These observations were followed by doko ‘where’. Then dare ‘who’
and naze ‘why’ appeared together at approximately the same frequency. Again,
itsu ‘when’ appeared as the least frequent. In the delineation of doko ‘where’, thepercentage of appearance was significantly different between age 4 and age 5.
Temporal questions, such as nanji ‘what time’, were not viewed in any of thebooks in this study. See Figures 3 below for the percentage of the wh-words
appearance and a comparison with Clancy’s (1989) findings (Order I).
Order I: Clancy (1989) and the result of first decision tree analysis
a. Utterances by children (Clancy) what = where < who < how = why < whenb. Picture books
Age 1,2,3
what < where = who = how < why < whenAge 4,5what < how < where < who = why < when

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93

A Picture-Book Based Corpus Study

Appearance of wh -words
node 0%nNo80.4 1664
Yes
19.6
406
Total 100.0 2070

Present

Target Age of Picture Book
χ2(1)=104.97, p <.001.

Ages 1, 2, 3
Present

No
Yes
Total

node1
%
88.0
12.0
58.0

Ages 4, 5

n
1056
144
1200

Present

No
Yes
Total

wh -words
χ2(3)=59.75, p <.001.

what
Present

No
Yes
Total

node3
%
78.0
22.0
9.7

Present

No
Yes
Total

node4
%
85.0
15.0
29.0

what
Present

No
Yes
Total

node7
%
39.3
60.7
7.0

why

n
510
90
600

Present

No
Yes
Total

when

node5
%
95.5
4.5
9.7

Present

No
Yes
Total

how
n
57
88
145

n
191
9
200

node6
%
99.5
0.5
9.7

Present

No
Yes
Total

where

node8
%
54.5
45.5
7.0

n
608
262
870

wh -words
χ2(4)=149.01, p <.001.

where who how
n
156
44
200

node2
%
69.9
30.1
42.0

n
79
66
145

Present

No
Yes
Total

node9
%
66.9
33.1
7.0

n
199
1
200

who:whynode10
%
No
80.7
Yes
19.3
Total 14.0

n
97
48
145

Present

when
n
234
56
290

node11
%
No
97.2
Yes
2.8
Total
7.0

Present

Target Age of Picture Book
χ2(1)=7.02, p <.001.

Age 4

Age 5

node12Present
%
No
76.6
Yes
23.4
Total
3.7

node13Present
%
No
55.9
Yes
44.1
Total
3.3

n
59
18
77

n
38
30
68

Figure 2: Decision tree analysis.

Figure 3: Graph of the appearance for wh-words.

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n
141
4
145

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Natsue Ito et al.

When this order is compared with Clancy’s order, dou meaning ‘how’ appears
very often in this sample of Japanese picture books. However, the Japanese dou
and English ‘how’ have different ranges of meaning, which might explain the
difference in order. While the Japanese nani is nearly equivalent to English ‘what’,
the Japanese dou can have both the meaning of ‘what’ or ‘how’, depending on
the context. For instance, if one inquiries about the quantity or procedure ofsomething, dou has an equivalent meaning to the English ‘how’. However, dou
could mean the English ‘what’ as in example (6) and ‘how’ and ‘what’ dependingon the context as in example (7a) and (7b).
(6)

Dou
omou.
(dou.what think.NPST)‘What do (you) think?’ / ‘How do (you) think?’ (lit.)

(7)

Dou
suru.
(dou.what/how do.NPST)(7a) ‘What should (we) do it?’(7b) ‘How should (we) do it?’
Other languages also have a different range of meaning for wh-words. For
instance, Forner (1979: 27) noted that the English phrase ‘What does the cow
say?’ is expressed as Wie macht die Kuh? in German, and the exact translation
would be ‘How makes the cow?’. While Clancy (1989: 325) also noted that, in
Korean, ettehkey is usually translated into English as ‘how’, occasionally it could
mean ‘what’ in English. For instance, ettehkey twaysse ‘What happened then?’(lit. ‘How did it become’).
While Clancy’s order was based upon the previous studies of many languages, those languages had a more one-to-one translation with that of themeanings in English than did Japanese. Accordingly, dou was recounted to also
include the English meaning ‘how’. Expressions meaning ‘what’ were included
with nani. The second decision tree was conducted in the same manner as thefirst decision tree. The results of appearance of wh-words in each age group areshown below in Table 3, and the results of decision tree analysis are shown in
Figure 4 below. The risk of this decision tree analysis was 15.60. This number
indicates that 84.40% (100%−15.60%) of data were correctly classified in thisanalysis.
Again, the highest order factor was set to be the target age as represented by
the first split in the tree. After the target age reached 4, appearances of wh-words

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A Picture-Book Based Corpus Study

Table 3: Reanalyzed appearance of wh-words per age group.
target
age






nani
‘what’

doko‘where’

dare
‘who’

dou
‘how’

naze
‘why’































itsu number of‘when’
books












Figure 4: Reanalyzed decision tree analysis.

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95

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Natsue Ito et al.

were significantly higher than those under 3. In the delineation of target ages 1,
2 and 3, nani ‘what’ appeared most often. This was followed by doko ‘where’ anddare ‘who’ which appeared at approximately the same rate. This observation
was followed by dou ‘how’ and naze ‘why’, which also appeared at approximately the same rate, these were different from previous decision tree analysis.
Again, itsu ‘when’ rarely appeared. In the delineation of target ages 4 and 5, theresults changed. This time, nani ‘what’ appeared most often as it did previously.
This occurrence was then followed by doko ‘where’ then dare ‘who’, naze ‘why’,and dou ‘how’, which all appeared at approximately the same frequency. Again,
itsu ‘when’ had the lowest frequency. The graph of results for the second
decision tree analysis is shown in Figure 5 below.

Figure 5: Graph of the reanalyzed appearance for wh-words.

Order II: Clancy (1989) and result of second decision tree analysis
a. Utterances by children (Clancy) what = where < who < how = why < whenb. Picture books
Age 1,2,3
what < where = who < how = why < whenAge 4,5what < where < who = how = why < when
Overall, although the result is not exactly the same as the wh-acquisition orderproposed by Clancy (1989), the order of wh-words in the second analysis
appeared similar to it. The ordering position of dou ‘how’ has changed (seeOrder I and Order II).

3 Post-hoc analysis
In the present study, because wh-words include some form of polite, impolite,
dialectal, old expressions, a post-hoc analysis was conducted for wh-words in

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A Picture-Book Based Corpus Study

97

picture books. Only basic wh-words were coded as 0, whereas other wh-words’
forms (polite, impolite, dialectal, old expressions) were coded as 1 to determine
any age difference effects. In the post-hoc decision tree was conducted in theway that appearance of basic and non-basic wh-words (0 or 1) is predicted by the
independent factors of target-ages from 1 to 5.
The result of this analysis is shown in Figure 6. Picture books with target age
under 2 differed significantly with those for 3 or above. Only 0.8% of the picture
books with target ages under 2 had non basic wh-words, while for those above
Age 3 appeared in 8.8% of the books. The risk of this post-hoc decision tree
analysis was 5.80. This number indicates that 94.20% (100% −5.80%) of data
were correctly classified in this analysis.

Figure 6: Post-hoc analysis of appearance for non-basic Japanese wh-words.

As such, children older than 3 are exposed to a greater variety of Japanese whwords and their usages and they might begin to acquire these non-basic whwords and usages around this time.

4 Discussion
Wh-words in Japanese picture books with different target ages were analyzed todetermine whether they reflect adults’ assumption of children’s cognitive

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development. By classifying wh-words, it was seen that there were considerable
variations among the kinds of the words, such as, polite, impolite, dialectal andold wh-word usages. From the post-hoc -analysis (Figure 6), picture books
targeting children older than age 3 contained a great variety of these nonbasic Japanese wh-words.
From the first decision tree analysis (Figure 2), the frequency order of whwords in picture books with target ages 1, 2, and 3 was nani ‘what’ < doko
‘where’ = dare ‘who’ = dou ‘how’ < naze ‘why’ < itsu ‘when’. In picture bookswith target ages 4 and 5, the frequency order was nani ‘what’ < dou ‘how’ < doko
‘where’ < dare ‘who’ = naze ‘why’ < itsu ‘when’; this was somewhat similar to
Clancy’s order, except with dou ‘how’. One explanation might be that dou has
a different range of meaning in Japanese than in English. As such, dou wasreanalyzed in accordance with the English wh-words ‘what’ and ‘how’. From thesecond decision tree analysis, the frequency order of wh-words in picture
books with target ages 1, 2, and 3 was what < where = who < how = why < when.
In picture books with target ages 4 and 5, the frequency order was what < where< who = how = why < when. From the result of the second analysis, even thoughnani ‘what’ always appeared more than doko ‘where’ as with the fist analysis,dare ‘who’ appeared at the same frequency as doko ‘where’ for ages 1,2,3, anddare ‘who’ appeared at the same frequency as dou ‘how’ and naze ‘why’ in age 4
and 5, the re-analysis resulted in an order more similar to that of Clancy’s.
This study suggests that external social factors, such as picture books, mustmatch with the developmental order of wh-questions, and in turn, this ordermight reflect adults’ assumption of children’s cognitive development. In accordance with Rowland et al. (2003), the parental frequency and the order of whquestions relate to acquisition. However, as Forner (1979) claimed, the child’s
cognitive development is influencing the mother’s order of using wh-questions.
In accordance with these premises, we agree with Slobin (1973) that cognitive
development and linguistic complexity are interrelated factors for the generallanguage development of the child. Specifically, as a child develops, their higher
cognitive abilities allow for the form-to-meaning mapping of more complex
grammar. Consequently, it is important for parents (or caregivers) to modify
their output based upon the continuous assessment of their child’s cognitive
development. Thus, parents should be able to better activate their child’s language development.
If we assume that children’s wh-acquisition order reflects children’s cognitive ability, it is interesting that picture books with different target ages werealso similar to children’s cognitive development. Specifically, the wh-words inpicture books for different ages were found to order from concrete to abstract.
Interestingly, ‘when’ questions appeared very late and were very rare. As such,

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A Picture-Book Based Corpus Study99

understanding time might be cognitively challenging to younger children. For
instance, Hudson and Mayhew (2011) note that there is a general pattern for thelearning of temporal expressions, and their meanings with younger children are
only capable of being understood when using basic temporal terms (e. g. yesterday, tomorrow and today) and are not capable of being understood with more
complex cyclical temporal expressions.
Because caregivers, the authors of the picture books and the publishers
might unconsciously notice the difficulty children have with certain temporal
expressions; thus, they may not ask ‘when’ questions to younger children. In
turn, children receive fewer inputs for ‘when’ questions, which might also delay
the usage of these questions by children as well. As such, this possibility might
be one example of a publisher or picture-book author assuming/perceiving what
may be cognitively demanding for children of younger ages, which then influences the child’s order.
While this study is able to make a specific claim that picture books mirror
the order of acquisition for wh-words by children in Japanese, we also suggestthat the order found in picture books might also influence the caregiver but witha lesser degree of certainty as we did not investigate this directly. However, in
accordance with our assumptions, while caregivers are influenced directly fromtheir own assumptions of the child’s cognitive state (Forner 1979), they may also
be indirectly influenced by this via picture books. Specifically, because authors
and publishers must also assume the cognitive differences between children ofvarying ages to determine appropriate age ranges for their books, caregivers are
exposed to the language used in the picture books during story-time (i. e. thesequential order of introduction). Accordingly, this finding may reinforce caregivers’ inclinations regarding what language should be used for children atcertain developmental stages. While this study only investigates certain whwords in picture books, language complexity may also not be independent
from cognitive assumptions. The publishers, authors of picture books and caregivers might also adjust language or grammatical complexity depending on thedevelopmental stages of children. However, there is disagreement regardingwhether grammatical complexity is affecting the developmental order of whquestions. For instance, Rowland et al. (2003: 629) claimed that input frequency
is a more powerful factor for influencing children’s wh-developmental order, andwh-complexity and verb semantic generality (see Bloom et al. 1982) were notsignificant determinants. In addition, Forner (1979: 42) stated that “children
produce what mothers say in the same relative order and with the same relative
frequency. Neither the adult language, chance, or grammatical complexity could
account for this relationship.” Conversely, Bloom et al. (1982) stated that thesyntactic functions of wh-questions, verb semantic generality and discourse

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Natsue Ito et al.

context are affecting the developmental sequence of wh-questions. Because thisstudy only investigated wh-words in the picture books and did not investigate indetail language complexity for each wh-question, these aspects might be worthyof being investigated in future studies detailing language acquisition from picture
books. For example, language complexity, whether it is syntax, semantics or both,might influence the determination of target ages of picture books as well.
Moreover, because this study only investigated Japanese picture books,
future research in other languages is needed to confirm the general pattern ofresults found here supporting Clancy’s order. It would be particularly interesting
to investigate languages that have different ranges of meaning from English.
Another possible issue is the grouping of target ages in the decision tree
analyses. For both, the analyses divided the target ages into two groups (i. e. thetarget ages 1, 2, 3 and 4, 5) instead of five individual separate target age groups.
It goes without saying that the children’s cognitive level of 1;0 and 3;0 should bevery different as it can be seen in past studies focusing on the developmental
sequence of wh-questions which found significant gains by the children within
few years (e. g. Bloom et al. 1982; Okubo 1967; Tyack and Ingram 1977; Wode1971). However, in this analysis, the differences of the appearance for wh-words
were not significantly different between the target ages 1, 2, 3 and age 4, 5. A
simple explanation for this is that the target ages are usually classified as “ages3 to 5” or “ages 4 and above”; however, we classified the former as “age 3” andthe later as “age 4.” Therefore, there is possible overlapping of ages among ourselected target ages. Moreover, as we asked the publisher, the target age is anapproximate indicator. Accordingly, this finding might explain why in our study
only two age groups were observed in each decision tree analysis, although thecognitive level of children should be somewhat different among the children
within each age group. At the very least, the results also imply that, despite
these overlapping ages, after the target age of 4, the appearance of wh-words inthe picture books are significantly different than those under age 3.
Because it is understood that many children are read picture books bycaregivers, (i. e. not only parents but also teachers at day care, preschool andkindergarten), the frequency of wh-words in picture books might also affect thelanguage development of children. Thus, many factors appear to be interrelated,which influences wh-acquisition order, and external social sources, such as
picture books, appear to be one of these factors. Therefore, in Forner’s model(1979: 41), external social factors that affect the caregiver’s order should be
added. However, these external social factors should be included such thatthey are also affected by the children’s cognitive development. This inclusion
would allow influence from the child’s cognitive development directly to acaregiver and indirectly from external sources. Additionally, Forner’s model

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A Picture-Book Based Corpus Study101

includes the term “cumulative semantic complexity”; however, as we discussed
here, it might not only be semantic complexity but also syntactic complexity.
Therefore, “cumulative language complexity” might be a better means to
express this term (and warrants investigation describing which factors compriseit). In conclusion, external social sources, such as picture books, should beconsidered factors that influence wh-development.
Acknowledgements: This paper is based on the proceeding and presentation
presented at the 61st annual conference of the mathematical linguistic society ofJapan in September 2017 and the language acquisition workshop CSLA #8 at
Nanzan University in August 2018. We really appreciate valuable feedback andcomments from many people.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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