ACQUISITION OF LANGUAGE FOR MENTAL EVENTS

这个为期三年的项目旨在调查 3-8岁儿童的复杂句型和意义。 它侧重于句子补语的习得，因为它们提供了 探索认知的相互联系的最有趣的竞技场 和语言发展。这些互联互通已被带入 最近致力于儿童的广泛研究活动让人松了一口气 发展“心理理论”。语法方面的发展，这是 讨论了互补的成熟语法，以及可以 区分儿童和成人关于 把小句附加到动词上。这些发展情况将与 尊重它们如何与认知发展相一致或相互作用，例如 因为孩子对错误信念或谎言的理解，或者他们的能力 用事实动词做出适当的推论。因此，这项研究将 考察动词的句法、语义和词汇特征是如何相互作用的 决定复句形式的发展。 该方法将包括理解或解释任务。 从以前关于儿童对wh疑问句的理解的工作中发展而来。 然而，它将得到引出的生产任务和 自然主义的观察，使方法论方法趋同。二 描述了长达一年的纵向实验研究，以及几个 对3至8岁的儿童进行横断面实验。结果是 将为发展复杂语法的理论工作提供信息，提供 关于认知和语言关系的新信息，并有助于 开发更复杂的语言诊断测试延迟 孩子们。

This three year project is designed to investigate the development of complex sentence forms and meanings in children between 3 and 8 years old. It focuses on the acquisition of sentence complements because they provide a most interesting arena for exploring the interconnections of cognitive and linguistic development. These interconnections have been brought into relief recently by the extensive research activity devoted to the child's developing "theory of mind". The grammatical developments necessary to a mature syntax of complementation are discussed, and subtle tests that can differentiate between children's and adults' knowledge about the attachment of clauses to verbs. These developments will be explored with respect to how they coincide or interact with cognitive developments, such as the child's understanding of false belief or lies, or their ability to draw appropriate inferences with factive verbs. Thus, the research will investigate how syntax, semantics and lexical features of verbs interact in determining the development of complex sentence forms. The methodology will include comprehension or intepretation tasks developed from previous work on children's understanding of wh-questions. However, it will be supplemented by elicited production tasks and naturalistic observations to allow a converging methodology approach. Two year-long longitudinal experimental studies are described, and several cross-sectional experiments with children 3 to 8 years old. The results will inform theoretical work on the development of complex syntax, provide new information on the relation of cognition and language, and aid in the development of more sophisticated diagnostic tests for language delayed children.