Abstract
Three experiments document that 14-month-old infants' construal of objects (e.g., purple animals) is influenced by naming, that they can distinguish between the grammatical form noun and adjective, and that they treat this distinction as relevant to meaning. In each experiment, infants extended novel nouns (e.g., "This one is a blicket") specifically to object categories (e.g., animal), and not to object properties (e.g., purple things). This robust noun-category link is related to grammatical form and not to surface differences in the presentation of novel words (Experiment 3). Infants' extensions of novel adjectives (e.g., "This one is blickish") were more fragile: They extended adjectives specifically to object properties when the property was color (Experiment 1), but revealed a less precise mapping when the property was texture (Experiment 2). These results reveal that by 14 months, infants distinguish between grammatical forms and utilize these distinctions in determining the meaning of novel words.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 357-381 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Journal of Cognition and Development |
| Volume | 4 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2003 |
Funding
This research was supported by NIH grant #HD–08595–02 to the first author and NIH grant #HD–28730 to the second author. Portions of this research were presented at the July, 2000 meeting of the International Conference on Infant Studies in Brighton, UK. We are grateful to the infants and caretakers who participated in these studies. We are also indebted to Irena Braun for her assistance in data collection and to Elizabeth Nelle Bacon, Yi Ting Huang, and Jill Rushkewicz for their assistance in coding.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Psychiatry and Mental health
