Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-dk7s8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T04:56:31.963Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sizing things up: the acquisition of the meaning of dimensional adjectives*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Elsa Jaffe Bartlett
Elsa Jaffe Bartlett
Affiliation:
The Rockefeller University, New York
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Two tasks were used to test predictions of the Semantic Feature Hypothesis (SFH) about children's comprehension of the meaning of spatial adjectives. Our data support SFH predictions about the order of acquisition for dimensional features: more general features are acquired first. Predictions about polarity, however, were not supported: our data show that children do not acquire [+ pol] features prior to their [− pol] counterparts. Type of task made no difference in children's comprehension of [+ pol] terms but did affect comprehension of [− pol] terms. To account for this pattern of results, an acquisition hypothesis is offered which, contrary to the SFH, proposes that polar features are acquired prior to dimensionality and that semantic features may be added quite independently to [+ pol] and [− pol] terms.

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 205 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Bartlett, E. (1974). How young children comprehend some relational terms and comparative sentences. Ed.D. thesis, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Bierwisch, M. (1967). Some semantic universals of German adjectivals. FL 3. 1–36.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1958). How shall a thing be called? PsychRev 65. 14–21.Google Scholar
Carey, S. & Considine, T. (1973). The domain of comparative adjectives. Unpublished paper, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Google Scholar
Clark, E. (1972). On the child's acquisition of antonyms in two semantic fields. JVLVB 11. 750–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, E. (1973 a). What's in a word? On the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language. In Moore, T. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Clark, E. (1973 b). Non-linguistic strategies and the acquisition of word meanings. Cognition 2. 161–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. (1973). Space, time, semantics and the child. In Moore, T. (ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Donaldson, M. & Wales, R. (1970). On the acquisition of some relational terms. In Hayes, J. (ed.), Cognition and the development of language. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Ehri, L. & Ammon, P. (1972). The development of antonym adjective structures in children. Final report, Project No. 0-1-045. U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education.Google Scholar
Eilers, R., Oiler, D. & Ellington, J. (1974). The acquisition of word-meaning for dimensional adjectives: the long and short of it. JChLang 1. 195–204.Google Scholar
Klatzky, R., Clark, E. & Macken, M. (1973). Asymmetries in the acquisition of polar adjectives: linguistic or conceptual? JExpChPsychol 16. 32–46.Google Scholar
Kucera, H. & Francis, W. (1967). Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence: Brown University Press.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. (1973). Decrease in the understanding of the word ‘big’ in preschool children. ChDev 44. 747–52.Google Scholar
McNamara, J. (1972). Cognitive basis of language learning in infants. PsychRev 79. 1–13.Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (1970). The acquisition of language. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. (1974). Concept, word, and sentence: interrelations in acquisition and development. PsychRev 81. 267–85.Google Scholar
Wales, R. & Campbell, R. (1970). On the development of comparison and the comparison of development. In Flores D'Arcais, G. & Levelt, W. (eds), Advances in psycholinguistics. New York: American Elsevier.Google Scholar