Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-m9pkr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T23:23:27.495Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The development of vague modifiers in the language of pre-school children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Rita Sloan Berndt  and
Alfonso Caramazza
Rita Sloan Berndt
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
Alfonso Caramazza
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Pre-school children's comprehension of the adverbial modifiers very and sort of, when combined with two pairs of polar dimensional adjectives (big/little and tall/short) was experimentally investigated in 64 children (three, four and five years of age). The task involved the choice of an item from a graduated array of nine objects in response to questions combining the modifiers and adjectives. Results suggested that comprehension of very begins in the third year and is understood consistently by the four- and five-year-olds in combination with all four adjectives. Sort of is not understood by the three-year-olds, but appears to be available to the four- and five-year-olds. Results are interpreted as a reflection of an early appreciation that linguistic categories are not well bounded.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 279 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[*]

This research was undertaken and completed while the first author was supported by NIMH Training Grant Number 5 TOI MH06742-17. A shorter version of this paper was delivered atthe annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, 1976. The authors are grateful to the directors, staff, parents and children of Cathedral Kindergarten, the Johns Hopkins Co-op Nursery School and the Homewood Day Care Center, of Baltimore, Maryland, for their cooperation in this project, and to Michele Davis, Charlene Suojanen and Joyce Goldberger for their help in collecting the data. We would especially like to thank Bert Green, Jr., Ellen Grober and Harry Hersh for their encouragement and helpful comments during all phases of this research. Address for correspondence: R. S. Berndt, Department of Psychology, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. 21218, U.S.A.

References

REFERENCES

Andersen, E. S. (1975). Cups and glasses: learning that boundaries are vague. JChLang 2. 79–103.Google Scholar
Bierwisch, M. (1967). Some semantic universals of German adjectivals. FL 3. 1–36.Google Scholar
Brown, R. W. & Lenneberg, E. H. (1958). Studies in linguistic relativity. In Maccoby, E., Newcomb, T. M. & Hartley, E. L. (eds), Readings in social psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V. (1973). What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In Moore, T. E. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hersh, H. M. & Caramazza, A. (1976). A fuzzy set approach to modifiers and vagueness in natural language. JExpPsych (General), 105. 256–76.Google Scholar
Inhelder, B. & Piaget, J. (1964). The early growth of logic in the child. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Katz, J. & Fodor, J. (1963). The structure of a semantic theory. Lg 39. 170–210.Google Scholar
Klatzky, R. L., Clark, E. V. & Macken, M. (1973). Asymmetries in the acquisition of polar adjectives: linguistic or conceptual? JExpChPsych 16. 32–46.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1974). The boundaries of words and their meanings. In Bailey, R. & Shuy, R. (eds). New ways of analyzing variation in English. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown U.P.Google Scholar
Lakoff, G. (1972). Hedges: a study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. Papers from the Eighth Regional Meeting,Chicago Linguistic Society, 183–228.Google Scholar
Lehrer, A. (1970). Indeterminacy in semantic description. Glossa 4. 87–109.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. & Benedict, H. (1974). The comprehension of relative, absolute and contrastive adjectives in young children. JPsycholingRes 3. 333–42.Google Scholar
Postal, P. M. (1966). Review article: André Martinet, Elements of general linguistics. FL 2. 151–86.Google Scholar
Rosch, E. H. (1973). On the internal structure of perceptual and semantic categories. In Moore, T. E. (ed), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Wales, R. (1971). Comparing and contrasting. In Morton, J. (ed.), Biological and social factors in psycholinguistics. London: Logos.Google Scholar
Zadeh, L. A. (1973). Outline of a new approach to the analysis of complex systems and decision processes. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, Cybernetics, SMC-3 1. 28–44.Google Scholar