acquiring "or question"

[Nelson, Katherine]

Parisa,
There is a now dated review of studies of "or" comprehension and production in the following:

French, L. A. and K. Nelson (1985). Young children's understanding of relational terms: Some ifs, ors and buts. New York, Springer-Verlag.

The conclusion there is that the disjunctive "or" is understood and used by children of 4 and 5 years but not younger, and that prior to this age it may be used as a conjunctive equivalent to "and".  Thus most 2 year olds would not be expected to consistently reply to "or" questions appropriately.



This source also noted that many studies of the comprehension of "or" indicated that this was not achieved until a much later age, but the argument in French and Nelson was that these studies conflated the natural language use of "or" with the formal logic understanding of the term.



I have not kept up with this line of research so cannot provide any more recent sources.



Katherine


________________________________
From: info-childes at googlegroups.com [info-childes at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of parisa Daftarifard [pdaftaryfard at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 15, 2011 11:29 PM
To: info-childes at googlegroups.com
Subject: acquiring "or question"

Dear List members,

"Or question" seem to be a difficult part of learning first language. When you ask a kid of two years old whose language is not developed completely yet an alternative question, he or she may repeat the question, choose the first option or choose the second option.


Is there any review of the literature you may refer us to on the specific topic.

I appreciate your help in advance.
Best,
Parisa Daftarifard
--
Parisa Daftarifard
Phd Student of TEFL
Islamic Azad University of Science and Research


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