Mapping properties to individuals in language acquisition
Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: In this research, I investigate the onset of children’s recognition that certain predicates -- predicates that are frequent and/or familiar to young children -- obligatorily apply at the individual level. The findings demonstrate that this knowledge is nascent at least by 3 years of age, and that it applies to groups of individuals referred to not only by count nouns, which have overt plural morphology, but also by object mass nouns, which lack it. Thus, I argue that children are driven by their conceptualization of the mereology of groups, rather than surface morphosyntax, and are sensitive to the fact that the lexical semantic representations of predicates may also tap into this structure.
DOI: 10.7282/t3kd20xc
Author: Syrett, Kristen
Institution: Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2580659247