The Development of Deictic Verbs.

This study investigated children's semantic development by examining their comprehension of the deictic verbs, come, go, bring and take. It attempted to measure children's comprehension of these verbs and the effects of certain semantic "features" of these verbs. The research addressed several previous theories by specifically testing the effect of (a) different senses of the deictic verbs, representing single versus dual reference points, (b) the so-called "polar" feature, and (c) causality features. The study also re-examined the existence of a "goal-choosing" strategy in the developmental processes. Eighty-six (86) children ranging from kindergarten to third grade were tested individually with sentences using deictic verbs in specific ways. These usages required underst and ing of different levels within the verbs, and relationships between speakers and addressees. The study replicated and exp and ed a study by Clark and Garnica (1974). The overall results showed that none of the previous theoretical explanations adequately account for children's response patterns because: (1) while children responded more accurately to positive verbs than negative verbs, they did not respond to the positive relationship between the speaker/addressee and the goal of the motion indicated by the verbs; (2) the different levels of meanings did not have an effect on children's performance; (3) the causative verbs were not always more difficult than the simple ambulatory verbs; and (4) children were not using a "goal-choosing" strategy. The results suggest that children were "processing" the utterances without necessarily comprehending the full meaning of the verbs. They seemed to be using (a) their practical knowledge of the daily conversational setting of "who is talking to whom"; (b) their underst and ing of the actor-action relationship or "who is doing what" in the sentences and (c) specific pragmatic knowledge in a permission-asking situation. This suggests the importance of and the need for information about other factors "extraneous" to the semantic content of individual words. These results also raise doubts whether any formal unidimensional model is adequate to explain the semantic development of children.PhDDevelopmental psychologyLinguisticsUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/159294/1/8304612.pd