Assessing Preschool Children’s Knowledge of Compounds from a Logico- Semantic Perspective

Abstract

Research in First Language Acquisition investigates three broad questions: What do children know about language? When does this knowledge emerge? How is children’s knowledge of language different from adults’ knowledge of language? This study adds to previous research in FLA by investigating the interaction between logic and meaning in child language. This study examines preschool children’s comprehension of the logical relation between a compound and its head noun in comparison to adult’s logico-semantic interpretation of compounds.

Keywords

• Language acquisition
• English language-- Compound words
• Semantics