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Full-Text Articles in Psychology
A Touchy Subject: Optimality And Coreference, Jill De Villiers, Jacqueline Cahillane, Emily Altreuter
A Touchy Subject: Optimality And Coreference, Jill De Villiers, Jacqueline Cahillane, Emily Altreuter
Philosophy: Faculty Publications
Four studies are reported that compare production and comprehension of structures involving Principle A and B with 68 English speaking children. The stimuli included simple and complex sentences combined with simple and quantified NPs, each with reflexives and pronouns. A novel technique using a laptop proved successful for eliciting stimulus descriptions as well as truth value judgment. The results test a recent Optimality account of binding by Hendriks and Spenader (2004), but it is argued that more constraints are needed. Although the data can be fit well by the constraints, questions remain about whether it is theoretically satisfactory.
‘We Don’T Talk Gypsy Here’: Minority Language Policies In Europe, William S. New, Hristo Kyuchukov, Jill De Villiers
‘We Don’T Talk Gypsy Here’: Minority Language Policies In Europe, William S. New, Hristo Kyuchukov, Jill De Villiers
Philosophy: Faculty Publications
The Roma constitute an ideal case of educational injustice meeting linguistic difference, racism, social marginalization, and poverty. This paper asks whether human-rights or capabilities approaches are best suited to address issues related to the language education of Roma students in Europe. These children are disadvantaged by not growing up with the standard dialect of whatever language is preferred by the mainstream population, and by the low status of the Romani language, and non-standard dialect of the standard language they usually speak. We examine language education for Roma students in Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria, describing similarities and differences across …
Finding Signatures Of Linguistic Reasoning, Jill De Villiers
Finding Signatures Of Linguistic Reasoning, Jill De Villiers
Philosophy: Faculty Publications
Hinzen lays out the platform of un-Cartesian linguistics, and the ramifications threaten widespread beliefs about the relations between language and thought. The theoretical story is compelling but my commentary will address my con- cerns as a laborer in research.
Recursive Complements And Propositional Attitudes, Jill De Villiers, Kathryn Hobbs, Bart Hollebrandse
Recursive Complements And Propositional Attitudes, Jill De Villiers, Kathryn Hobbs, Bart Hollebrandse
Philosophy: Faculty Publications
The focus of this chapter is in what role syntactic recursion might play in the representation of propositional attitudes. Syntactic complements under mental and communication verbs are recursive, and so also are the propositional attitudes. There is strong evidence that children take some time to master the first order syntactic complementation typical of verbs of communication. When they do acquire these structures, the evidence suggests that this helps children reason about propositional attitudes such as false beliefs. In this chapter we seek to deepen our understanding of the crucial property of sentential and attitude embedding. Is the crucial aspect that …
Children’S Insensitivity To Information From The Target Of Agreement: The Case Of Xhosa, Sandile Gxilishe, Mantoa Rose Smouse, Thabisa Xhalisa, Jill De Villiers
Children’S Insensitivity To Information From The Target Of Agreement: The Case Of Xhosa, Sandile Gxilishe, Mantoa Rose Smouse, Thabisa Xhalisa, Jill De Villiers
Philosophy: Faculty Publications
The paper presents an account of number agreement phenomena arguing that the target of agreement may be bleached of number information. This would explain why English-speaking children have difficulty relying on the target alone as a clue to number, despite producing it correctly. Xhosa has a very rich subject-verb agreement system and pro-drop, and there is theoretical dispute over its properties. An experiment with Xhosa-speaking children revealed that they, too, are unable to use the morpheme on the verb as a cue to subject number. It is argued that this may be further evidence that the morpheme is agreement rather …
Getting Complements On Your Mental State (Verbs), Jill De Villiers
Getting Complements On Your Mental State (Verbs), Jill De Villiers
Philosophy: Faculty Publications
There is a considerable body of theoretical and experimental work on how children develop a Theory of Mind. A recent meta-analysis by Wellman, Cross and Watson (2001) has revealed a consensus that children develop an awareness that other people might have false beliefs around the age of four years, give or take six months. Wellman and some other theorists believe that children undergo a conceptual change at this point, from a psychological theory based primarily on desire as the motivator of human action, to one that accords beliefs a causal role. Other theorists such as Leslie (1991; 1994) contend that …
Continuity And Modularity In Language Acquisition And Research, Jill De Villiers
Continuity And Modularity In Language Acquisition And Research, Jill De Villiers
Philosophy: Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
From Evidence To Belief: Developmental Precursors For False Belief Ascriptions, Jill De Villiers, Angelika Kratzer, Tom Roeper
From Evidence To Belief: Developmental Precursors For False Belief Ascriptions, Jill De Villiers, Angelika Kratzer, Tom Roeper
Philosophy: Faculty Publications
Recently, a fruitful line of inquiry has linked children’s acquisition of the language of the mind to their developing understanding of other minds. In particular, a cascade of linguistic effects regarding sentences embedded under mental verbs has been shown to occur around the age of four years for the average child, roughly the age when children start passing standard false belief tests. This set of linguistic effects is summarized briefly below. In the proposed study, we will turn our attention to possible precursors for the ability to ascribe a false belief to another person. These precursors include knowledge about how …