Cover not available
Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2017
Edited by Sander Lestrade and Bert Le Bruyn
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 34] 2017
► pp. 63–76

Whose side are they on?

Children’s interpretation of perspective-dependent prepositions

| University of Groningen
| University of Groningen

Spatial prepositions express relations between objects in space. A subset of spatial prepositions is ambiguous due to the different perspectives from which these spatial relations can be considered. The ability to consider another person’s perspective is still developing in children. This study investigates how Dutch-speaking children (mean age 10) and adults interpret perspective-dependent spatial prepositions uttered by a speaker. We found that adults took the speaker’s perspective in a third of the cases, whereas children did so in a sixth of the cases. No differences in interpretation emerged between prepositions in assertions and requests, although these different speech acts reflect different speaker intentions. In general, children performed like adults, but less often took the speaker’s perspective with naast compared to voor and achter in assertions. We conclude that 10-year-olds can take another person’s perspective when interpreting spatial prepositions, but, like adults, only do so in a minority of cases.

Keywords: language development, perspective-taking, egocentric perspective, other-centric perspective, reference frame, spatial prepositions
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Point of view in space
    • 1.2Interpreting spatial prepositions
    • 1.3Other-centric perspectives with spatial prepositions
    • 1.4Children’s development of perspective-taking
    • 1.5The current study
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials and design
      • Linguistic Description Task
      • Linguistic Instruction Task
      • Visual Perspective-Taking Task
    • 2.3Procedure
    • 2.4Data analysis
    • 2.5Inclusion criteria
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Linguistic Description Task
    • 3.2Linguistic Instruction Task
    • 3.3Visual Perspective-Taking Task
    • 3.4Comparison between tasks
    • 3.5Comparisons between prepositions
      • 3.5.1Prepositions in the Linguistic Description Task
      • 3.5.2Prepositions in the Linguistic Instruction Task
  • 4.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 23 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.34.05huk
References (14)
Bullens, Jessie, Nina Lienenkämper, Frank Wijnen & Albert Postma
2013 “Children’s use of spatial reference frames in verbal and non-verbal tasks.” In: Y. Coello & A. Bartolo (Eds.), Language and Action in Cognitive Neuroscience, Hove, East Sussex: Psychology Press, 177–190.Google Scholar
Duran, Nicholas D., Rick Dale & Roger J. Kreuz
2011 “Listeners invest in an assumed other’s perspective despite cognitive cost.” Cognition, 121(1), 22–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Epley, Nicholas, Carey K. Morewedge & Boaz Keysar
2004 “Perspective taking in children and adults: Equivalent egocentrism but differential correction.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(6), 760–768. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flavell, John H., Barbara Abrahams Everett, Karen Croft & Eleanor R. Flavell
1981 “Young children’s knowledge about visual perception: Further evidence for the Level 1 – Level 2 distinction.” Developmental Psychology, 17(1), 99–103. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Greenberg, Anastasia, Buddhika Bellana & Ellen Bialystok
2013 “Perspective-taking ability in bilingual children: Extending advantages in executive control to spatial reasoning.” Cognitive Development, 28(1), 41–50. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Keysar, Boaz, Dale T. Barr, Jennifer A. Balin & Jason S. Brauner 2000 “Taking perspective in conversation: The role of mutual knowledge in comprehension.” Psychological Science, 11(1), 32–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen C.
1996 “Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslinguistic evidence.” In: P. Bloom & M. Peterson (Eds.), Language and Space. Cambridge, MA: MIT press, 109–169.Google Scholar
2003 Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Michelon, Pascale & Jeffrey M. Zacks
2006 “Two kinds of visual perspective taking.” Perception & Psychophysics, 68(2), 327–337. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vander Heyden, Karin, Mariette Huizinga, Maartje E. J. Raijmakers & Jelle Jolles
2017 “Children’s representations of another person’s spatial perspective: Different strategies for different viewpoints?” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1531, 57–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vanderveken, Daniel
1998 “On the logical form of illocutionary acts.” In: A. Kasher (Ed.), Pragmatics: Critical Concepts, Volume 21, London: Routledge, 170–194.Google Scholar
Tversky, Barbara & Bridgette M. Hard
2009 “Embodied and disembodied cognition: Spatial perspective-taking.” Cognition, 110(1), 124–129. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zwarts, Joost & Peter Gärdenfors
2016 “Locative and directional prepositions in conceptual space: The role of polar convexity.” Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 251, 109–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zwarts, Joost & Yoad Winter
2000 “Vector space semantics: A model-theoretic analysis of locative prepositions.” Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 9(2), 169–211. DOI logoGoogle Scholar