The Acquisition of Simple and Complex Spatial Locatives in English: A Longitudinal Investigation

Abstract

The emergence of simple and complex spatial locatives was investigated in six children learning English obtained from the CHILDES archives. We traced the emergence of 13 locative prepositions from the average age of 1;10 to 4;2. The locatives were as follows: (1) simple, in, on, into, onto, out of, off of, and (2) complex, across, along, around, through, deictic front, deictic back/behind, between. We determined the age of the initial occurrence and the age of the initial contrast with a related locative, e.g., into/onto and across/along. On average, the simple set emerged at 2;1 with minimal variability and maximal contrast, and the complex set at 3;4 with considerable variability and minimal contrast. The data were evaluated in the context of conceptual and linguistic factors.