Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-rj9fg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-11T03:34:46.624Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Commentary on “copular acquisition” – a response to Silva-Corvalán and Montanari

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

MARIA D. SERA
MARIA D. SERA*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota, Institute of Child Development, 51 East River Road, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0345, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Studies of copular forms are extremely relevant to issues in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics. Psychologists have recently argued that the most distinctive aspect of human language is its combinatorial nature (e.g., Gentner, 2003; Spelke, 2003). They argue that this linguistic component might be what separates human from animal cognition. As combinatorial elements, copular forms have no equal. However, as the quote from Bertrand Russell implies, copular forms are multi-dimensional and complex. A full understanding of their use, linguistic variation, acquisition, and relation to cognition is a formidable task. While other papers in this special-issue volume of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition will address the different syntactic and semantic functions carried by these forms, in this commentary, I will focus on the relation between the acquisition of copular forms and cognitive development, or more specifically on the development of categorization.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 11 , Issue 3: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, BILINGUALISM AND COPULA CHOICE IN SPANISH , November 2008 , pp. 361 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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

Bales, D. & Sera, M. D. 1995. Children's understanding of stable and changeable characteristics. Cognitive Development 10, 69–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Grady, C., Chau, W., Ishii, R., Gunji, A. & Pantev, C. 2005. Effect of bilingualism on cognitive control in the Simon task: Evidence from MEG. NeuroImage, 24, 40–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Flavell, J., Green, F. & Flavell, E. 1987. Development of knowledge about the appearance–reality distinction (Monograph of the Society for Research in Child Development). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fraiberg, S. 1977. Insights from the Blind. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gentner, D. 2003. Why we're so smart. In Goldin-Meadow & Gentner (eds.), 195–236.Google Scholar
Goldin-Meadow, S. & Gentner, D. (eds.) 2003. Language and mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Keil, F. 1979. Semantic and conceptual development: An ontological perspective. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, G. 2002. The big book of concepts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, T. & McClelland, J. 2004. Semantic cognition: A Parallel Distributed Processing Approach. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, B. 1919. Introduction to mathematical philosophy. New York: The Macmillan Company.Google Scholar
Sera, M. D. 1992. To be or to be: Use and acquisition of the Spanish copulas. Journal of Memory and Language, 31 (3), 408–427.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sera, M. D., Gathje, J. & Castillo, J. 1999. Language and ontological knowledge: The contrast between objects and events made by English and Spanish speakers. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 303–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spelke, E. 2003. What makes us smart: Core knowledge and natural language. In Goldin-Meadow & Gentner (eds.), pp. 277–312.Google Scholar
Vygotsky, (1934; translation 1962). Thinking and speech. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar