How Two- and Four-Year-Old Children Interpret Adjectives and Count Nouns

Object Properties and Object Kind: Twenty‐One‐Month‐Old Infants' Extension of Novel Adjectives

“…In addition, as we have discussed, young word learners are more likely to map a novel adjective to an object property (as opposed to an object category) if the object under consideration is one for which the child has already acquired a basic level label Markman & Wachtel, 1988). Furthermore, there is evidence that in both linguistic (Gelman & Markman, 1985;Hall et al, 1993;Macnamara, 1986;Smith, 1984;Soja, 1994;Waxman, 1990Waxman, , 1995 and nonlinguistic tasks (Gentner & Rattermann, 1991;Kemler Nelson, 1983;Smith, 1984;Soja, 1994), preschoolers are more likely to attend to properties of objects when the objects are drawn from the same basic level kind. These observations suggest that there may be a linguistic and/or conceptual priority for establishing an object's kind before marking its properties.…”

“…At issue is whether infants' success in mapping adjectives to object properties is dependent upon the support of familiar basic level kinds. (See Hall, 1994;Hall et al, 1993;Macnamara, 1986;, for evidence regarding the importance of a familiar basic level kind in word learning. )…”

“…The results of the current experiments are relevant to both theoretical and practical concerns regarding the acquisition of adjectives. Interestingly, much of the developmental research on the acquisition of adjectives has capitalized on conditions in which the adjective picks out a property within, but not across, basic level kinds (see Au & Markman, 1987;Gelman & Markman, 1985;Hall et al, 1993;Prasada, 1992;Taylor & Gelman, 1988;Waxman, 1990). These results, coupled with those reported here, may offer some insight into the acquisition of the color lexicon, for they suggest that children's well-documented difficulty mapping color terms may derive, at least in part, from the conditions under which adults typically attempt to "teach" these terms.…”

“…This raises an intriguing question: How do infants interpret a novel property term (e.g., hot), applied to an individual object, if they have not already acquired a basic level count noun (e.g., pot) for that object? We predict that in such situations, infants will interpret the novel word as a label for the object category (pot) rather than the object property (hot) (see Hall et al, 1993;Macnamara, 1986;Markman & Wachtel, 1988;Waxman, 1994). This prediction is consistent with anecdotal evidence that in such situations, young word learners tend to extend hot to categories of objects (i.e., to other pots, hot or otherwise), rather than to properties of objects (i.e., to other hot objects).…”

The Role of Semantic Context and Memory in the Acquisition of Novel Nouns

“…However, if no determiner was used to label a doll, they treated it as a proper name. Studies have also shown that slightly older children (2-year-olds) can use syntactic context to determine whether a novel term refers to a noun or an adjective (Gelman & Markman, 1985;Hall, Waxman, & Hurwitz, 1993;Taylor & Gelman, 1988;Waxman & Kosowski, 1990). In addition, 2-year-olds can use syntactic frames to constrain the meanings of novel verbs in terms of their being transitive or intransitive or describing manner or path (Landau & Gleitman, 1985;Naigles, 1990Naigles, , 1996Naigles, Gleitman, & Gleitman, 1992;Naigles & Kako, 1993).…”