Comprehension and production of comparatives and superlatives

Layton, Thomas L.; Stick, Sheldon L.

doi:10.1017/s0305000900002518

Cited by 23 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Fraser, Bellugi and Brown (1963);Goldin-Meadow, Seligman and Gelman (1976);Layton and Stick (1979)). Thus how do we reconcile children's poor performance on comprehension tasks with their near-perfect production data?…”

Section: Strategies For Reconciling Experimental Results and Binding mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Usually, comprehension of a given form precedes 6 production of this form (Bates, Dale and Thal (1995); Benedict (1979); Clark (1993); Fraser, Bellugi and Brown (1963); Goldin-Meadow, Seligman and Gelman (1976); Layton and Stick (1979)). Thus how do we reconcile children's poor performance on comprehension tasks with their near-perfect production data?…”

Section: Strategies For Reconciling Experimental Results and Binding mentioning

confidence: 99%

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When Production Precedes Comprehension: An Optimization Approach to the Acquisition of Pronouns

Hendriks

Spenader

2006

Language Acquisition

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Data from child language comprehension shows that children make errors in interpreting pronouns as late as age 6;6, yet correctly comprehend reflexives from the age of 3;0. On the other hand, data from child language production shows that children correctly produce both pronouns and reflexives from the age of 2 or 3. Current explanations of this asymmetric delay in comprehension have either rejected the comprehension data outright or have argued that the problems are pragmatic or caused by processing limitations. In contrast our account, formulated in the framework of Optimality Theory, handles the comprehension data as well as the production data by arguing that children acquire the ability to reason about alternatives available to other conversation participants relatively late. It is this type of bidirectional reasoning, we argue, that is necessary for correctly interpreting pronouns. While our analysis is similar in spirit to the processing account given in Grodzinsky and Reinhart (1993) and Reinhart (to appear), it explains the data from the properties of the grammar, and is supported by related experimental evidence.. 1.Children's grasp of binding principles Children's comprehension of reflexives and pronounsThere is a well-known asymmetry in children's pattern of acquisition of the binding principles A and B. Children correctly interpret reflexives like adults from the age of 3;0 but they continue to perform poorly on the interpretation of pronouns even up to the age of 6;6 (Jakubowicz (1984); Koster and Koster (1986);Chien and Wexler (1990);McDaniel, Smith Cairns and Hsu (1990);McDaniel and Maxfield (1992); McKee (1992); see also Grimshaw and Rosen (1990) and Kaufman (1992) for a review). For example, presented in a context with two male referents, say Bert and Ernie, sentences like (1) are correctly understood from a young age (95% of the time according to some studies).However, children misinterpret the him in (2) as coreferring with the subject about half the time, which seems to be the result of chance performance.(1) Bert washed himself.(2) Bert washed him.For this Pronoun Interpretation Problem (also referred to as the Delay of Principle B Effect), a good explanation has yet to be given. 1.2Children's production of reflexives and pronouns 4Most experiments investigating the acquisition of the binding principles focus on comprehension. However, children's production data complicates the picture. The production research suggests that children do not have problems in producing reflexives or pronouns correctly.De Villiers, Cahillane and Altreuter (to appear) studied the production as well as the comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in 68 English speaking children between the ages of 4;6 and 7;2 (average age 6;2 years). Their study looked at two sentence types:two-sentence sequences like (3) and sentences with an embedded subordinate clause like (4). After being tested for comprehension with a truth-value judgment task, children were shown the pictures with the same type of content and aske...

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Section: Strategies For Reconciling Experimental Results and Binding mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Strategies For Reconciling Experimental Results and Binding mentioning

confidence: 99%

When Production Precedes Comprehension: An Optimization Approach to the Acquisition of Pronouns

Hendriks

Spenader

2006

Language Acquisition

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“…Although it is unlikely that adults would reinterpret the A one in this way, it is a possibility that must be seriously considered for children, as their interpretation and use of comparative morphology at this young age is not fully adult-like (cf. Donaldson & Wales 1970;Ehri 1976;Layton & Stick 1978;Gathercole 1979;Finch-Williams 1981;Gitterman & Johnston 1983;Graziano-King 1999;Moore 1999;Graziano-King & Cairns 2005).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meaning and Context in Children's Understanding of Gradable Adjectives

Syrett

Kennedy

Lidz

2009

Journal of Semantics

107

104

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This paper explores what children and adults know about three specific ways that meaning and context interact: the interpretation of expressions whose extensions vary in different contexts (semantic context dependence); conditions on the felicitous use of expressions in a discourse context (presupposition accommodation) and informative uses of expressions in contexts in which they strictly speaking do not apply (imprecision). The empirical focus is the use of unmodified (positive form) gradable adjectives (GAs) in definite descriptions to distinguish between two objects that differ in the degree to which they possess the property named by the adjective. We show that by 3 years of age, children are sensitive to all three varieties of contextmeaning interaction and that their knowledge of this relation with the definite description is appropriately guided by the semantic representations of the GA appearing in it. These findings suggest that children's semantic representations of the GAs we investigated and the definite determiner the are adult-like and that they are aware of the consequences of these representations when relating meaning and context. Bolstered by adult participant responses, this work provides important experimental support for theoretical claims regarding the semantics of gradable predicates and the nature of different types of 'interpretive variability', specifically semantic context dependence v. pragmatic tolerance of imprecision.

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“…friendlier, friendliest) inherently provide comparative information to adults who know the morphology of their language. By 2;6 children show comprehension of both -er and -est forms with some adjectives such as big and little (Layton & Stick, 1979), but it is not at all clear whether they understand that any -er or -est form provides information about comparison. Adult production of simpler forms such as more and most with the base form of the word can also provide comparative information for young children (e.g.…”

Section: Semantically Related Languagementioning

confidence: 99%