Lexical choice can lead to problems : what false-belief tests tell us about Greek alternative verbs of agency.

Maridaki-Kassotaki, Katerina and Lewis, Charlie N. and Freeman, Norman H. (2003) Lexical choice can lead to problems : what false-belief tests tell us about Greek alternative verbs of agency. Journal of Child Language, 30 (1). pp. 145-164. ISSN 1469-7602

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Abstract

Verbs of agency denote relations between behavioural and mental states. Thus, ‘Jim is looking for X’ goes beyond a behavioural description, to take a mentalistic construal whereby Jim's desire for success, and his beliefs about how to search, explain his observed actions. Greek has two verbs of agency that can be used somewhat interchangeably by adults to mean ‘to look for’. The hypothesis is that young children will obey the principle of contrast to diagnose that one verb is mentalistic and the other verb is to be construed behaviourally. Following a study of mothers' verb-use, two studies with 238 children aged three to five years confirmed that the verb preferred in home use gave below-chance performance on a false-belief test whilst the less-established verb gave above-chance success, with children giving appropriate justifications. Thus, Greek preschoolers seem sometimes to have an adult-type understanding and sometimes fail to match the adult understanding. The proposal is that the children initially convert an adult verb-use pragmatic difference into a semantic contrast.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Child Language
Additional Information:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=JCL The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Journal of Child Language, 30 (1), pp 145-164 2003, © 2003 Cambridge University Press.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3310
Subjects:
?? linguistics and languagelanguage and linguisticsgeneral psychologyexperimental and cognitive psychologydevelopmental and educational psychologypsychology(all)bf psychology ??
ID Code:
18776
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
08 Feb 2010 13:13
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
16 Jul 2024 08:15