The study of developmental process of generic concepts in Persian-speking children

Generic sentences (e. g.، GijAhAn be? Ab nijAz dArӕnd “Plants need water”) refer to essential، enduring and timeless properties of the category and play a crucial role in the developmental trend of childrens’ conceptual processing. Interpreting generic sentences requires integration of multiple linguistic and non-linguistic cues rather than implementing a simple rule. The present study focused on 3-4 and 4-5 year-olds’ (N = 16) use of morphosyntactic cues to determine whether the NP in subject position of a sentence is generic or not. The results of the data analysis revealed that in both morphological and syntactic experiments، children in the 4-5 age group had higher level of linguistic ability in the comprehension and production of generic noun phrases compared to children in the 3-4 age group. Also، children of both age groups used morphological cues rather than syntactic ones to process generic noun phrases.