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Semantics in Language Acquisition
Editors
This volume presents the state of the art of recent research on the acquisition of semantics. Covering topics ranging from infants' initial acquisition of word meaning to the more sophisticated mapping between structure and meaning in the syntax-semantics interface, and the relation between logical content and inferences on language meaning (semantics and pragmatics), the papers in this volume introduce the reader to the variety of ways in which children come to realize that semantic content is encoded in word meaning (for example, in the event semantics of the verbal domain or the scope of logical operators), and at the level of the sentence, which requires the composition of semantic meaning. The authors represent some of the most established and promising researchers in this domain, demonstrating collective expertise in a range of methodologies and topics relevant to the acquisition of semantics. This volume will serve as a valuable resource for students and faculty, and junior and seasoned researchers alike.
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 24] 2018. vi, 391 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 13 July 2018
Published online on 13 July 2018
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1. The historical emergence and current study of semantics in acquisitionKristen Syrett | pp. 2–18
- Section I. Lexical meaning
- Chapter 2. Word meanings and semantic domains in acquisitionEve V. Clark | pp. 22–43
- Chapter 3. The influence of linguistic temporal organization on children’s understanding of temporal terms and conceptsLaura Wagner | pp. 46–65
- Chapter 4. Semantic features of early verb vocabulariesSabrina Horvath, Leslie Rescorla and Sudha Arunachalam | pp. 68–92
- Section II. Event semantics
- Chapter 5. On the acquisition of event culminationAngeliek van Hout | pp. 96–121
- Chapter 6. Telicity in typical and impaired acquisitionPetra Schulz | pp. 124–150
- Section III. Syntactic structure and semantic meaning
- Chapter 7. Not all subjects are agents: Transitivity and meaning in early language comprehensionRose M. Scott, Yael Gertner and Cynthia Fisher | pp. 154–176
- Chapter 8. Analogical structure mapping and the formation of abstract constructions: A novel construction learning studyBen Ambridge, Micah B. Goldwater and Elena V. M. Lieven | pp. 178–196
- Chapter 9. The labeling problem in syntactic bootstrapping: Main clause syntax in the acquisition of propositional attitude verbsAaron Steven White, Valentine Hacquard and Jeffrey Lidz | pp. 198–220
- Chapter 10. Perspectives on truth: The case of language and false belief reasoningJill de Villiers | pp. 222–245
- Section IV. Logical interpretations
- Chapter 11. The meaning of question words in statements in child MandarinStephen Crain and Peng Zhou | pp. 250–274
- Chapter 12. Overt, covert, and clandestine operations: Ambiguity and ellipsis in acquisitionKristen Syrett | pp. 276–298
- Section V. The relation between semantics and pragmatics
- Chapter 13. Developmental insights into gappy phenomena: Comparing presupposition, implicature, homogeneity, and vaguenessLyn Tieu, Cory Bill, Jérémy Zehr, Jacopo Romoli and Florian Schwarz | pp. 302–324
- Chapter 14. Four-year-old children compute scalar implicatures in absence of epistemic reasoningDavid Barner, Lara K. Hochstein, Miriam P. Rubenson and Alan Bale | pp. 326–349
- Chapter 15. The acquisition path of near-reflexivityValentina Brunetto and Tom Roeper | pp. 352–377
- List of Topics | pp. 379–386
- List of Languages | pp. 387–388
- List of Authors | pp. 389–391
Cited by (5)
Cited by five other publications
Zhang, Elizabeth Qing, Edward Ruoyang Shi & Michael Pleyer
Urrutia, Mabel, Soraya Sanhueza, Hipólito Marrero, Esteban J. Pino & María Troncoso-Seguel
García-del-Real, Isabel & Angeliek van Hout
Clark, Eve V.
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