When Do Children Learn the Comparative?

[Dale, Philip S.]

Although I'm not entirely persuaded by either the theory or the data on seriation as it connects to language, in all fairness to Piaget it should be pointed out that seriation is not comparison. The essence of seriation that a single item can be *simultaneously* greater than one or more other items *and* less than one or more other items. Flavell and others have argued that the core concept of what Piaget called concrete operations is precisely this sort of "dual representation" of reality that shows up in so many areas (appearance-reality, egocentrism, conservation, etc.). 

Philip Dale


-----Original Message-----
From: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org on behalf of Ginny Mueller Gathercole
Sent: Sat 2/21/2004 03:04
To: Peyton Todd; info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Subject: Re: When Do Children Learn the Comparative?
 
	Does anyone know when children normally learn the -er (comparative) suffix in English, also the 'more + Adjective' alternate? What about children learning other languages? Supposedly, if they can't seriate until concrete operations, they would presumably not understand the comparative, but of course they might still utter it, and just use it to choose between pairs of objects. What actually happens?
	
	Thanks!
	
	Peyton Todd