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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
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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.

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

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References

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