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Movement and location in the acquisition of deictic verbs*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Alison J. Macrae
Alison J. Macrae
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Abstract

Samples of spontaneous speech from seven two-year-olds were scanned for utterances containing the verbs go and come. Their distribution was extensive, and included many non-motional uses. No clear case of the wrong use of either verb was found and the children seemed to have a basis for discrimination. As verbs of motion, they were used in the context of describing the contour of movement rather than as means of relating end-points of a journey. This relation between systems of movement and location was taken to be crucial in explaining the child's long-standing difficulty in discriminating the verbs in experimental tasks.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , June 1976 , pp. 191 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

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