DEVELOPMENT OF LOCATIVE EXPRESSIONS IN ENGLISH, ITALIAN, SERBO-CROATIAN AND TURKISH

The ability of children between the ages of 2; o and 4; 8 to produce locative pre- or postpositions was investigated in English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, and Turkish. Across languages, there was a general order of development: •(1) ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘under’, and ‘beside’, (2) ‘between’, ‘back’ and ‘front’ with featured objects, (3)' back' and' front' with non-featured objects. This order of development is discussed in terms of nonlinguistic growth in conceptual ability. Language-specific differences in the general pattern of development are discussed in terms of a number of linguistic factors which may facilitate or retard the child's discovery of the linguistic means for encoding concepts. © 1979, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.