Relative and absolute gradable adjectives in child

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From age 3, children determine different standards for relative and absolute gradable adjectives [Q1]. 0% ... a) explicit, i.e. expressed by the noun b) implicit, i.e. ...
Relative and absolute gradable adjectives in child comprehension: same or different? Merle Weicker & Petra Schulz Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany [email protected]

Graduate School “Nominal Modification”

• Gradable adjectives are interpreted relative to a standard of comparison • The standard is computed with respect to a comparison class (C), which can be a) explicit, i.e. expressed by the noun b) implicit, i.e. provided by the context Relative (big/small) and absolute (clean/dirty) gradable adjectives differ regarding  the degree constituting the standard (midpoint vs. endpoint)  relevance of the comparison class (contextdependent vs. -independent interpretation) But differences not encoded in the semantics of gradable adjectives

〚pos〛(〚A〛)= λx.ⱻd.[standard(d)(〚A〛)(C)∧〚A〛(d)(x)] (Cresswell 1976, Kennedy 2007, Kennedy & McNally 2005; von Stechow 1984)

Participants

Research questions

Background

43 children (3;02 – 5;09 years) and 26 adults (Q1) Do children determine different standards for relative (RA) and absolute (AA) gradable adjectives? (Q2) Is children‘s interpretation of relative and absolute gradable adjectives influenced by changing the All children are typically developing monolingual German speakers attested via SETK 3-5 (Grimm 2001) noun, i.e. the explicit comparison class? (Q3) Do interpretation patterns change with age?

Procedure

Part 2 and 3 (Q2)

• Forced-picture choice task (adaption of Barner & Snedeker 2008): Participants had to choose the cards matching the test prompt • Within-subjects design in 2 sessions • Session 1 (positive adjectives): groß ‘big’ (RA), sauber ‘clean’ (AA) • Session 2 (negative adjectives): klein ‘small’ (RA), dreckig ‘dirty’ (AA) • Each session divided into 3 parts

8 cards (as in Part 1) + 4 additional cards from different basic-level category, but from the same superordinate-level category (= toys); additional objects extended the scale at the positive or negative end Example for Part 2 and 3

Part 1 (Q1)

5

8 cards displaying objects from the same basic-level category (e.g. water balloons) Results Percentage of choices per object

RA: Please give me the big water balloons.

3- to 5-year-old children master • distinction between relative and absolute gradable adjectives regarding standard degree • distinction between relative and absolute gradable adjectives regarding relevance of implicit comparison classes (cf. Barner & Snedeker 2008; Syrett et al. 2010)

But • it is unclear whether children use information provided by the noun (explicit comparison class) • only restricted set of adjectives

Selected references: Barner, D. & Snedeker, J. (2008). Compositionality and Statistics in Adjective Acquisition: 4-Year-Olds Interpret ''Tall'' and ''Short'‘ Based on the Size Distributions of Novel Noun Referents. Child Development, 79 (3), 594-608. Kennedy, C. (2007). Vagueness and grammar: the semantics of relative and absolute gradable adjectives. Linguistics and Philosophy, 30, 1-45. Syrett, K., Kennedy, C. & Lidz, J. (2010). Meaning and Context in Children's Understanding of Gradable Adjectives. Journal of Semantics, 27, 1-35.

BUCLD 42, November 3-5, 2017

8

1

5

60% 40% 3

4

6

2

AA: Please give me the clean balls.

Relative gradable

1 3

8

2

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

100% 80% 60%

6

7 3-year-olds 4-year-olds 5-year-olds adults

2

11

7

1

10

9

4

8

Relative (big/small) 22.7% 40.0% 42.7% 45.2%

Absolute (clean/dirty) 18.2% 3.3% 7.4% 1.0%

Difference (Wilcoxon) n.s. ** *** ***

20% 0%

1

6

Part 2: Please give me the big toys. (adjective + superordinate-level noun ‘toys’) Part 3: Please give me the big water balloons. (Adjective + basic-level nouns)

Age 3 4 5 Adults

80%

7

12

How often was the standard adjusted correctly between superordinate-level and basic-level noun?

100%

Previous acquisition findings

3

5 4 positive negative 40%

Significant effect of age regarding percentage of standard adjustments for AAs (χ²(3) = 13.87, p = .003) [Q3]  More standard adjustments for RAs than for AAs from age 4 [Q2]

Conclusion Absolute gradable

20% 0% 1

2

3

4 5 Object

6

7

8

• ‘big’ and ‘small’: Standard around the midpoint of the scale for children and adults • ‘clean’: Standard = maximal degree for children and adults • ‘dirty’: Standard = non-zero degree for children and adults  From age 3, children determine different standards for relative and absolute gradable adjectives [Q1]

Q1: Starting at age 3, children have different standards of comparison for relative and absolute gradable adjectives. Q2: As of age 4, linguistically encoded comparison classes influence the interpretation of relative but not of absolute gradable adjectives. In 3-year-olds, interpretation of both absolute and relative gradable adjectives is affected by the comparison class. Q3: Knowledge about the standard degree develops before knowledge about the role of the comparison class. Children start with the same interpretation for all gradable adjectives, lexical information is included later.