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Semantics in Language Acquisition
Edited by Kristen Syrett and Sudha Arunachalam
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 24] 2018
► pp. 46–65

Chapter 3
The influence of linguistic temporal organization on children’s understanding of temporal terms and concepts

| Ohio State University

The Typological Prevalence Hypothesis argues that the cognitive biases that lead to common cross-linguistic patterns also guide language development. Two studies investigated English learning children’s understanding of temporal terms and concepts and how they might be influenced by three typologically common patterns: the use of a deictic center, the asymmetry between past and future times, and the use of temporal remoteness. Using a timeline task, five- and eight-year-old children were asked to locate events with a range of temporal expressions as well as with general event descriptions. The results provided only limited support for the TPH for the temporal domain but do demonstrate the potential for the hypothesis as a research approach.

Keywords: tense, time, timeline, temporal semantics, typology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Experiment 1
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Stimuli
    • 2.3Procedures
    • 2.4Coding
    • 2.5Results
      • 2.5.1Ability to use the timeline appropriately
      • 2.5.2Analysis of effects
    • 2.6Discussion
  • 3.Experiment 2
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Stimuli and procedures
    • 3.3Results
    • 3.4Discussion
  • 4.General discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 2 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.24.03wag
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