Non-signing children's assessment of telicity in sign language

Adults with no knowledge of sign languages can perceive distinctive markers that signal event boundedness (telicity), suggesting that telicity is a cognitively natural semantic feature that can be marked iconically (Strickland et al., 2015). This study asks if non-signing children (5-year-olds) can also link telicity to iconic markers in sign. Experiment 1 attempted three close replications of Strickland et al. (2015) and found only limited success. However, Experiment 2 showed that children can both perceive the relevant visual feature and can succeed at linking the visual property to telicity semantics when allowed to filter their answer through their own linguistic choices. Children's performance demonstrates the cognitive naturalness and early availability of the semantics of telicity, supporting the idea that telicity helps guide the language acquisition process.