ERIC Number: EJ1070654
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Sep
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Understanding Different Sources of Information: The Acquisition of Evidentiality
Koring, Loes; de Mulder, Hannah
Journal of Child Language, v42 n5 p947-968 Sep 2015
This paper investigates six- to nine-year-old children's acquisition of evidentiality. In two minimally different tasks we assess whether children can be made to use a particular source of information by presenting them with a specific evidential term. That is, we assess whether children have an explicit awareness of the source requirement of the evidential terms. The results demonstrate that children explicitly understand the direct evidential term, but not the indirect evidential terms. Interestingly, the direct evidential term tested (Dutch "lijken") does not encode high speaker certainty. Hence, even though the child cannot rely on speaker certainty to provide an answer, the results still show that direct evidentiality is acquired before indirect evidentiality.
Descriptors: Information Sources, Evidence, Young Children, Cognitive Development, Concept Formation
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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Authoring Institution: N/A
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