title: Preschoolers' use of morphosyntactic cues to identify generic sentences: indefinite singular noun phrases, tense, and aspect.
abstract: Generic sentences (e.g., "Birds lay eggs") convey generalizations about entire categories and may thus be an important source of knowledge for children. However, these sentences cannot be identified by a simple rule, requiring instead the integration of multiple cues. The present studies focused on 3- to 5-year-olds' (N = 91) use of morphosyntactic cues--in particular, on whether children can (a) interpret indefinite singular noun phrases (e.g., "a strawberry") as generic and (b) use a verb's tense and aspect (e.g., "A bat sleeps/slept/is sleeping upside down") to determine whether its subject noun phrase is generic. Children demonstrated sensitivity to both cues. Thus, solving the in-principle problem of identifying generics may not be beyond the reach of young children's comprehension skills.
authors.affiliation: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Stanford University, Champaign, IL 61820, USA. acimpian@psych.illinois.edu
authors.forename: Andrei
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cimpian
authors.forename: Trent J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Meltzer
authors.forename: Ellen M
authors.initials: EM
authors.lastname: Markman
mesh_terms: D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary