On the acquisition of the meaning of before and after

Abstract

It was proposed that children acquire the meanings of words component by component. Forty children between 3;0 and 5;0 were asked to act out instructions containing the temporal conjunctions before and after (e.g., Before the boy jumped the gate, he patted the dog ) and to answer questions demanding before and after in their replies. The results showed four stages in acquisition: first, children understood neither word; second, children understood before but not after ; third, children interpreted after as if it meant before ; and fourth, children understood both words correctly. Linguistically, the results indicated that children acquire the separate meaning-components of before and after hierarchically, from the super-ordinate component on down.