Preschool children’s sensitivity to the generic and non-generic distinctions

Marti Palla

Newbold College of Higher Education, UK

Marti Palla holds a BA in English Philology and is pursuing an MA in Translation Studies. Her research interests include: cognitive linguistics and language acquisition.


https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4480-8437


Abstrakt

Generics convey generalizations about kinds e.g., “fish swim,” or “birds have wings”. In contrast, non-generics express facts about specific individuals or groups of individuals, e.g., “my cat has caught two mice” or “two birds are sitting in that tree”. To interpret utterances generically or non-generically, speakers of Polish use morphosyntactic features (e.g. determiners, plurality, tense and aspect), contextual cues, as well as world knowledge (Grzegorczykowa 2001; Karczewski & Wajda 2015; Karczewski 2016). The aim of the present study is to determine the extent to which preschool children are sensitive to one morphological cue in particular, i.e. the demonstrative determiner te (these) in Polish.

Słowa kluczowe:

generic sensitivity, generics and non-generics, morphological cue, demonstrative determiner

Brandone, A. C. & Gelman, S. A. 2013. Generic language use reveals domain differences in young children’s expectations about animal and artifact categories. Cognitive Development 28(1): 63–75.

Cimpian, A. & Markman, E. M. 2008. Preschool children’s use of cues to generic meaning. Cognition 107: 19–53.

Cimpian, A. & Cadena, C. 2010. Why are dunkels sticky? Preschoolers infer functionality and intentional creation for artifact properties learned from generic language. Cognition 117: 62–68.

Cimpian, A. & Cadena, C. 2011. The generic⁄non-generic distinction influences how children interpret new information about social others. Child Development 82(2): 471–492.

Cimpian, A. & Scott, R. M. 2012. Children expect generic knowledge to be widely shared. Cognition 123: 419–433.

Gelman, S. A. & Goetz, P. J. 2008. Generic Language in Parent-Child Conversations. In: C. Fisher (ed.), Language Learning and Development. Michigan: University of Michigan.

Gelman, S. A. & Goetz, P. J. 2003. Preschool Children Use Linguistic Form Class and Pragmatic Cues to Interpret Genetics. Child Development 74(1): 308–325.

Graham, S. A. & Nayer, S.L. 2011. Two-year-olds use the generic/nongeneric distinction to guide their inferences about novel kinds. Child Development 82 (2): 493–507.

Grzegorczykowa, R. 2001. Wprowadzenie do semantyki językoznawczej. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Hollander, M. A. & S. A. Gelman. 2002. Children’s Interpretation of Generic Noun Phrases. Developmental Psychology 38 (6): 883–894.

Karczewski, D. & Wajda, E. 2015. Perceptions of different syntactic forms of generics: An experimental study. Białostockie Archiwum Językowe 15: 233–245.

Karczewski, D. & Buivolova, O. 2015. Sensitivity to extralinguistic cues to identify generic and non-generic meaning. Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies 10: 4–14.

Karczewski, D. 2016. Generyczność w języku i w myśleniu. Studium kognitywne. [Genericity in language and thought. A cognitive study]. Kraków: Universitas.

Sobel, D. M. & Jipson, J. L. 2015. Cognitive Development in Museum Settings: Relating Research and Practice. London: Routledge.

Yoshida, H. & Smith, L. B. 2005. Linguistic Cues Enhance the Learning of Perceptual Cues. Psychological Science 16(2): 90–95.


Opublikowane
2019-03-30


Palla, M. (2019) „Preschool children’s sensitivity to the generic and non-generic distinctions”, Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies, (24), s. 98–110. doi: 10.15290/cr.2019.24.1.07.

Marti Palla 
Newbold College of Higher Education, UK

Marti Palla holds a BA in English Philology and is pursuing an MA in Translation Studies. Her research interests include: cognitive linguistics and language acquisition.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4480-8437