Word Magic Revisited: Monolingual and Bilingual Children's Understanding of the Word-object Relationship

We examined the claims that preschool children regard an object's name as being inseparable from its intrinsic properties and that bilingual children relinquish this notion earlier than monolingual children. 12 monolingual and 12 bilingual children of equivalent SES, nonverbal intelligence, talkativeness, and willingness to consider counterfactual situations were asked whether various objects could be renamed and then asked to identify objects by nonsense names and names for other objects. Virtually all the children performed the renaming tasks without error, and the monolinguals and bilinguals were equally likely to assent to renaming objects. However, monolinguals were more likely to mention an object's properties when justifying an answer, whereas bilinguals were more likely to mention the social context of the renaming act. These findings suggest that neither bilingual nor monolingual children are necessarily subject to "word magic"; rather, monolinguals have learned that an object can have more than 1 name by virtue of its various attributes, whereas bilingual children have learned, in addition, that an object can have more than 1 name by virtue of the different social contexts in which its name is used.