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The development of vague modifiers in the language of pre-school children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Rita Sloan Berndt  and
Alfonso Caramazza
Rita Sloan Berndt
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
Alfonso Caramazza
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Abstract

Pre-school children's comprehension of the adverbial modifiers very and sort of, when combined with two pairs of polar dimensional adjectives (big/little and tall/short) was experimentally investigated in 64 children (three, four and five years of age). The task involved the choice of an item from a graduated array of nine objects in response to questions combining the modifiers and adjectives. Results suggested that comprehension of very begins in the third year and is understood consistently by the four- and five-year-olds in combination with all four adjectives. Sort of is not understood by the three-year-olds, but appears to be available to the four- and five-year-olds. Results are interpreted as a reflection of an early appreciation that linguistic categories are not well bounded.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , June 1978 , pp. 279 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was undertaken and completed while the first author was supported by NIMH Training Grant Number 5 TOI MH06742-17. A shorter version of this paper was delivered atthe annual meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, 1976. The authors are grateful to the directors, staff, parents and children of Cathedral Kindergarten, the Johns Hopkins Co-op Nursery School and the Homewood Day Care Center, of Baltimore, Maryland, for their cooperation in this project, and to Michele Davis, Charlene Suojanen and Joyce Goldberger for their help in collecting the data. We would especially like to thank Bert Green, Jr., Ellen Grober and Harry Hersh for their encouragement and helpful comments during all phases of this research. Address for correspondence: R. S. Berndt, Department of Psychology, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. 21218, U.S.A.

References

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