Adjective Learning by Spanish-Speakers Children and Adults. The Impact of Morphology and Semantic Information

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to explore the kind of information Spanish-speaking 3-year-old children and adults use when learning adjectives in a joint picturebook reading situation. The impact of two linguistic clues was studied; a morphological clue (adjective suffix) and a semantic clue (descriptive information concerning the property). Results show that for children the description was decisive to map the new adjective with the property; for adults, instead, the presence of the suffix was crucial. These results illustrate a developmental shift in the sort of clues that shapes adjective learning.