Origins of Children's Semantic Categories of Spatial Relations: A Cross-Linguistic Study of English, Korean and Dutch

根据目前有影响力的观点，儿童通过将语言形式映射到先前通过非语言认知发展建立的概念上开始语言习得。该项目将通过比较学习英语、韩语和荷兰语的儿童对拓扑空间动作（例如PUT IN/ON）的早期语义分类来评估这一假设。为了表达语言的目的，这些语言以截然不同的方式对空间行为进行分类。然而，在某种程度上，儿童依靠非语言概念而不是对语言输入的分析来获得单词的意义，他们的空间语义类别应该是相似的，或者至少不应该根据语言系统地不同。将对每种语言的80名儿童（年龄范围1；0-3;6）进行两项横断面研究。在生产实验中，鼓励幼儿告诉实验者如何在空间上安排物体。理解研究用“优先观察范式”评估对语言特定语义区分的敏感性。对这些数据的分析将：(1)确定幼儿在学习每种语言时如何发展出特定于语言的空间行为分类原则；(2)通过对正确和错误的归纳模式的分析，评估儿童在学习不同的空间分类原则时的相对难度。我们的结论应该使我们能够比现在更准确地描述早期语言习得中非语言分类倾向与儿童对输入语言语义类别的敏感性之间相互作用的本质。

ABSTRACT According to a currently influential view, children begin language acquisition by mapping linguistic forms onto concepts previously established through nonlinguistic cognitive development. The project will evaluate this hypothesis by comparing the early semantic categorization of topological spatial actions (e.g., PUT IN/ON) by children learning English, Korean, and Dutch. These languages classify spatial actions in strikingly different ways for purposes of linguistic expression. However, to the extent that children rely on nonlinguistic concepts rather than analysis of the linguistic input for the meanings of words, their spatial semantic categories should be similar, or at least should not differ systematically according to language. Two cross-sectional studies will be carried out with 80 children in each language (age range 1;0-3;6). In the production experiment, children are encouraged to tell the experimenter how to spatially arrange objects. The comprehension study assesses sensitivity to language-specific semantic distinctions with the "preferential looking paradigm". The data will be analyzed (1) to determine how early children learning each language develop language-specific principles of categorizing spatial actions, and (2) to aassess, through analysis of correct and incorrect patterns of generalizations, the relative difficulty for children of alternative principles of spatial classification. Our conclusions should enable us to characterize more precisely than is now possible the nature of the interaction in early language acquisition between nonlinguistic categorization predispositions and children's sensitivity to the semantic categories of the input language.