Cultural and Cognitive Structures of Human Languages Children’s Understanding of Reciprocal Anaphors: Experimental Evidence

In this paper I investigate whether Korean-speaking children know the basic meaning of reciprocal anaphors like each other. I further examine whether they have knowledge of subtle differences in the interpretations of such anaphors depending on the two types of verbs. Fiengo and Lasnik (1973) pointed out a contrast between reciprocal sentences with active verbs and stative verbs. For example, a sentence with an active verb like The men in the room are hitting each other, has both a strong reciprocal reading (i.e., every one of them in the room is hitting every other one) and a weak reciprocal reading (i.e., certain pairs of men are not engaged in the action of hitting each other). In contrast, a sentence with a stative verb like The men in the room know each other allows only a strong reciprocal reading (i.e., every one of them know every other one). 16 Korean children and 15 Korean adults were tested using the Truth Value Judgment Task methodology. The results of the present study show that like English children, Korean children know the meaning of reciprocal anaphor, and that they also know the semantic difference of reciprocal sentences with active and stative verbs. Therefore, the present study strongly supports the claim that the semantic distinction of reciprocal sentences with active and stative verbs may be universal, and that children’s ability of this semantic distinction might be innately given.