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CATEGORIES IN THE MAKING: Assessing the role of semantics in the acquisition of noun and verb categories1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2012

CAROLINE ROSSI  and
CHRISTOPHE PARISSE
CAROLINE ROSSI*
Affiliation:
Université Lyon 2. Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage
CHRISTOPHE PARISSE*
Affiliation:
MoDyCo, INSERM, CNRS, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense
*
Addresses for correspondence: Caroline Rossi, (Centre de Recherche en Terminologie et Traduction), Université Lumière Lyon 2, 86, rue Pasteur, 69007 Lyon, France e-mail: [email protected]
Christophe Parisse, Modyco, Bat A, Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, 200 Avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre cedex, France e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Little is known about what guides children in their acquisition of grammatical categories. This paper investigates how semantic knowledge could be involved in discovering these categories, thus confronting two competing hypotheses: are semantic categories innate, or are they developed in a piecemeal fashion? We tested for regular associations between basic semantic dimensions and the development of the founding categories of noun and verb. Six perceptually based semantic dimensions (Parisse and Poulain, 2010), shared by nouns and verbs but potentially distinctive, are coded in the productions of three children aged 1;06 to 2;06. Our results suggest that semantic dimensions do not offer an entry into the early differentiation of noun and verb categories.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 22 , Special Issue 1: First language acquisition of French grammar (from 10 months to 4 years old) , March 2012 , pp. 37 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

1

This work was supported by two grants from the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche, France (ANR COLAJE and ANR POLYCAT).

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