Hall D G, Moore C E
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
J Exp Child Psychol. 1997 Nov;67(2):236-67. doi: 10.1006/jecp.1997.2404.
Three experiments explored preschoolers' and adults' understanding of the distinctive semantic functions of adjectives (i.e., to name properties) and count nouns (i.e., to name object kinds). In Experiment 1, we modeled a familiar adjective (e.g., "blue") syntactically as either an adjective (e.g., "This is a blue one") or a count noun (e.g., "This is a blue") and applied it to a target object (e.g., a blue creature). In Experiments 2 and 3, we marked the adjective phonologically as either an adjective (e.g., "This is a blue bird") or a part of a count noun (e.g., "This is a bluebird") and applied it to a target object (e.g., a blue bluebird). In all experiments, participants then had to extend the expression they heard to either an object of a different kind with the same property as the target (e.g., a different creature or bird colored blue) or an object of the same kind with a different property (e.g., the same creature or bird colored red). Four-year-olds and adults, but not 3-year-olds, who heard the adjective version were more likely than those who heard the count noun version to choose the object with the same property. Thus, by the age of four years, children treated a word's lexical category, cued syntactically or phonologically, as a powerful cue to its meaning.
三项实验探究了学龄前儿童和成年人对形容词（即命名属性）和可数名词（即命名物体种类）独特语义功能的理解。在实验1中，我们在句法上把一个熟悉的形容词（如“蓝色的”）模拟为形容词（如“这是一个蓝色的”）或可数名词（如“这是一个蓝色”），并将其应用于一个目标物体（如一个蓝色的生物）。在实验2和实验3中，我们在语音上把形容词标记为形容词（如“这是一只蓝色的鸟”）或可数名词的一部分（如“这是一只蓝知更鸟”），并将其应用于一个目标物体（如一只蓝色的蓝知更鸟）。在所有实验中，参与者随后必须将他们听到的表达扩展到与目标物体具有相同属性的不同种类物体（如另一种蓝色的生物或鸟）或具有不同属性的同一种类物体（如红色的同一种生物或鸟）。听到形容词版本的4岁儿童和成年人比听到可数名词版本的人更有可能选择具有相同属性的物体，而3岁儿童则不然。因此，到4岁时，儿童将一个词的词汇类别（通过句法或语音提示）视为其意义的有力线索。
