TY - JOUR
T1 - Providing Support for ‘Support’
T2 - Parents’ Use of Verbs and Prepositions When Describing Support Configurations to Their Children
AU - Lakusta, Laura
AU - Wodzinski, Alaina
AU - Landau, Barbara
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by NSF grant 1650861 awarded to Laura Lakusta and Barbara Landau. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Gabrielle Moya who helped code and analyze the data.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Taylor & Francis.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Support (one object preventing another from falling) is linguistically encoded by adults and children in a highly structured and differentiated way, with basic locative expressions or Light verbs (e.g., in English, the block is on/put on the box) encoding Support-from-Below, and lexical verbs (e.g., she stuck the block on the box) encoding Mechanical Support. We ask whether parents use such highly differentiated language when describing support configurations to their young children and whether the age of the child moderates this effect. We found that when parents of children 6-months to 3.5 years of age described events of Support-from-Below and Mechanical Support to their children, they did use distinct linguistic expressions, encoding Support-from-Below with Light verbs (e.g., put on) and Mechanical Support with other lexical verbs (e.g., stick on/to). This differentiation was especially prominent for parents of the oldest children, who used more lexical verbs (stick), and fewer Light verbs (put), to encode Mechanical Support. These findings are the first to demonstrate that parents’ spatial language to their young children distinguishes between two distinct types of support and suggest that parent input may play an important role in helping children learn to linguistically carve up the semantic domain of support. This sets the stage for future research to test the causal connection between the two.
AB - Support (one object preventing another from falling) is linguistically encoded by adults and children in a highly structured and differentiated way, with basic locative expressions or Light verbs (e.g., in English, the block is on/put on the box) encoding Support-from-Below, and lexical verbs (e.g., she stuck the block on the box) encoding Mechanical Support. We ask whether parents use such highly differentiated language when describing support configurations to their young children and whether the age of the child moderates this effect. We found that when parents of children 6-months to 3.5 years of age described events of Support-from-Below and Mechanical Support to their children, they did use distinct linguistic expressions, encoding Support-from-Below with Light verbs (e.g., put on) and Mechanical Support with other lexical verbs (e.g., stick on/to). This differentiation was especially prominent for parents of the oldest children, who used more lexical verbs (stick), and fewer Light verbs (put), to encode Mechanical Support. These findings are the first to demonstrate that parents’ spatial language to their young children distinguishes between two distinct types of support and suggest that parent input may play an important role in helping children learn to linguistically carve up the semantic domain of support. This sets the stage for future research to test the causal connection between the two.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85103917697&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85103917697&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/15248372.2021.1908292
DO - 10.1080/15248372.2021.1908292
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85103917697
SN - 1524-8372
VL - 22
SP - 491
EP - 500
JO - Journal of Cognition and Development
JF - Journal of Cognition and Development
IS - 3
ER -