Semantics in Acquisition [Paperback]

This volume contains writings focusing on semantic phenomena and their interpretation in the analysis of the language of a learner. The variety of phenomena that are addressed is substantial: temporal aspect and tense, specificity, quantification, scope, finiteness, focus structure, and focus particles. These phenomena are investigated is many languages. The volume creates a theoretical as well as an empirical bridge between semantic research on the one hand and psycholinguistic acquisition studies on the other.

This book is unique in that it relates two linguistic subfields: Semantics and Language Acquisition. The volume contains a collection of writings that focuses on semantic phenomena and their interpretation in the analysis of the language of a learner.

A good deal of work in language acquisition has been devoted to childrens interpretation of sentences that contain the universal quantifier, e. g. , every in English. It has been observed in several experimental studies and across several languages that some school-age children experience difficulty in interpreting such sentences (e. g. , Inhelder & Piaget, 1964; Roeper & de Villiers, 1991; Philip, 1995). Non-adult responses from children have been found in various conditions, including the circumstance exemplified in the picture in Figure 1, where three boys are each riding an elephant and a fourth elephant (referred to as the extra-object) is not being ridden. Some children who are shown such a picture sometimes respond No to the question in (1) relative to this picture: (1) Is every boy riding an elephant? Figure 1. The Extra-Object Condition To justify their negative answer to the question in (1), children often point to the extra object, i. e. , the elephant that is not being ridden. This reply has been called the symmetrical response or the exhaustive pairing response since children who give this kind of response seem to interpret the question tlóâ