Individual differences in preschoolers' spatial thinking: Comprehension of dimensional adjectives and their relation to children's performance on non-verbal spatial tasks

The current study explores whether individual differences in the dimensional adjectives (e.g., big, tall) children understand, relates to individual differences in two non-verbal spatial abilities, an extrinsic spatial task (i.e., spatial scaling) and an intrinsic spatial task (i.e., mental rotation) in two studies that looked at spatial scaling and mental transformations respectively. Ninety-two Spanish-English bilingual children between 37.65 and 71.87 months (42 male) participated in Study 1 and with 79 of the children aged 48- to 72-months (40 male) also participating in study 2. Results show number of dimensional adjectives preschool children comprehend utilizing a new interactive, tablet-based task relates to performance on non-verbal spatial tasks. Children may use language when solving spatial tasks, or language may be indicative of overall stronger understanding of spatial relations.

MEANS OF EMOTIVITY EXPRESSION IN THE TUVAN LANGUAGE (ON THE EXAMPLE OF DIMINUTIVES)

The article is devoted to the specifics of the emotional aspect in language. The author considers diminutives of the Tuvan language as linguistic means having emotional expression. The research material shows that diminutives, except their main meaning, can transmit different emotional and expressive significations. The primary way of diminutive word formation in the Tuvan language is an affixation. Diminutives formed with the help of dimensional adjectives and their combinations also have an emotional meaning. It is noted that in semantics of diminutives the positive emotional signification is the most clearly manifested together with affixes of belonging and is closely related to semantics of the derived stem. It is revealed that the negative emotional connotation primarily depends on communicative situation, on general meaning of the statement. Therefore, formation of diminutives’ emotional meaning in the Tuvan language is influenced by conditions of internal and external context.

A cross-dialectal analysis of Nuosu adjectival comparative constructions

Current analyses (Hu 2005; Gerner 2013; Liu et al. 2013) of Nuosu adjectival comparative constructions are not observationally adequate because they are only based on the semantic distinction between dimensional adjectives and other adjectives. A better analysis should make a further morphological consideration by dividing the Nuosu adjectives into root-sharing prefixed adjectives, non-root-sharing prefixed adjectives and simplex adjectives. Moreover, the existing analyses are not consistent. Some unacceptable comparative sentences in Hu (2005) are acceptable in Gerner (2013) and Liu et al. (2013). I have found out that the inconsistency results from different rigorousness to adjectival morphosyntactic restrictions among different varieties or dialects of Nuosu. After a cross-dialectal investigation with three major dialects of Nuosu, i.e. Shynra, Yynuo and Suondi, it is concluded that Nuosu comparative constructions have a restricted form and a general form for superiority, inferiority and equality respectively. Different dialects or varieties have varying rigorousness to Nuosu adjectival morphosyntax, thus resulting in different choices of the forms for comparison. Accordingly, the available Nuosu varieties are classified into three types: varieties with more morphosyntactic rigorousness, transitional varieties and varieties with less morphosyntactic rigorousness. It is found that Shynra Nuosu is morphosyntactically less rigorous than Yynuo and Suondi Nuosu. I will also address the relationship between the two structural forms of comparative constructions. To conclude, a prediction is made on the development of Nuosu adjectival comparatives.

Parents’ Spatial Language Mediates a Sex Difference in Preschoolers’ Spatial-Language Use

Do boys produce more terms than girls to describe the spatial world—that is, dimensional adjectives (e.g., big, little, tall, short), shape terms (e.g., circle, square), and words describing spatial features and properties (e.g., bent, curvy, edge)? If a sex difference in children’s spatial-language use exists, is it related to the spatial language that parents use when interacting with children? We longitudinally tracked the development of spatial-language production in children between the ages of 14 and 46 months in a diverse sample of 58 parent-child dyads interacting in their homes. Boys produced and heard more of these three categories of spatial words, which we call “what” spatial types (i.e., unique “what” spatial words), but not more of all other word types, than girls. Mediation analysis revealed that sex differences in children’s spatial talk at 34 to 46 months of age were fully mediated by parents’ earlier spatial-language use, when children were 14 to 26 months old, time points at which there was no sex difference in children’s spatial-language use.

Conceptual relations in the semantic domain of Swedish dimensional adjectives

In the conventional study of lexical semantics, adjectives are not considered likely to have a hierarchical relation, such as a meronymic (part-whole) relation, to each other. The most possible lexical relations among adjectives are antonymy and synonymy. In this study, however, I assume that meronomic relations between internal members of dimensional adjectives (e. g. big, long, deep) are conceptually possible from an ontological point of view. By using a semantic task, i. e. anaphora resolution, I draw the following conclusion: dimensional adjectives themselves have no meronymic relation to each other. However, restricting our discussion to the usage of Swedish dimensional adjectives in modifying concrete entities, the conceptual relations between the general term, e. g. BIG,1I use capital letters to indicate concepts throughout this essay. Lexical items are written in italics. and specific terms, e. g. LONG, DEEP, are mentally organized in a part-whole relation and thus in a meronomic structure. When applied to the whole expression which is a concept of a big entity, such as BIG CUP, there are meronomic relations between concepts of the big entity and its parts, e. g. BIG CUP – DEEP CUP.

Scale exhaustivity and the Modification Condition

This paper pursues a Vector Space Semantics (VSS) analysis of evaluative and extreme adjectives in absolute and comparative constructions, with a particular emphasis on the licensing of measure phrases (MPs) in these environments. I show that the Modification Condition (Winter 2005), which restricts the distribution of MPs with locative/directional PPs and dimensional adjectives, can be extended to account for MP licensing with evaluative and extreme adjectives as well. Importantly, the non-satisfaction of the Modification Condition is entailed when a set of vectors does not exhaust the range of possible values on a particular scale. This observation thus allows us to link a long-standing generalization that scale exhaustivity and MP licensing are crucially related (Bierwisch 1989) with the formal denotational properties of certain linguistic expressions.