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Related Experiment Videos

Reference states and reversals: undoing actions with verbs

E V Clark1, K L Carpenter, W Deutsch

  • 1Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, CA 94305-2150, USA.

Journal of Child Language
|October 1, 1995
PubMed
Summary

Children learn to describe action reversals, like untying or unwrapping, by first using general verbs and later mastering the

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Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Linguistics
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Children's understanding of action reversals is crucial for cognitive development.
  • Reversal actions restore objects to a prior state, such as untying shoes or unwrapping gifts.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate how children aged 1-5 years conceptualize and describe action reversals.
  • To examine the linguistic strategies children use to express reversals in English and German.

Main Methods:

  • Observational studies of children's language use.
  • Analysis of children's descriptions of reversal actions.

Main Results:

  • Young children initially use general verbs (e.g., 'open') or particles (e.g., 'off') to describe reversals.
  • English-speaking children gradually acquire the 'un-' prefix, learning its application to change-of-state verbs.
  • German-speaking children utilize verb particles to express reversals, mirroring English-speaking children's developmental trajectory.

Conclusions:

  • Children's acquisition of reversal language follows a predictable developmental path, moving from general terms to specific morphological devices.
  • Cross-linguistic comparison reveals both universal and language-specific patterns in the development of expressing action reversals.

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