Journal of Child Language

Table of Contents - September 2012 - Volume 39, Issue 04  

Articles

Putting singular and plural morphology in context*

MARCO DISPALDROa1 and BEATRICE BENELLIa1

a1 Università di Padova, Padova, Italy

ABSTRACT

This study explores the development of children's knowledge of linguistic and pragmatic aspects of singular and plural in Italian, for definite articles (Experiment 1) and verbs (Experiment 2). Participants aged three to adult were asked to pick objects from two dishes, each with a different number of items on them (one vs. two), following the morphological information. Results show that children understand that singular forms refer to ‘one’ at about age four, whereas they understand that plural forms refer to ‘more than one’ when they are older than six. Moreover, children use singular and plural knowledge in appropriate relation with the referential context only when they are about six.

(Received August 26 2010)

(Revised February 15 2011)

(Accepted June 03 2011)

(Online publication January 20 2012)

Footnotes

[*] Address for correspondence: Marco Dispaldro, Department of Development Psychology and Socialization, Università di Padova, Via Venezia, 8, Padua 35131, Italy. e-mail: marco.dispaldro@unipd.it