1. Adjective production in referential communication (Bahtiyar & Küntay)
5-year-olds
9-year-olds
College age adults
Task (art-craft activity): to give verbal instructions to the adult confederate to pick up particular objects from a display
3 conditions manipulated (4 trials in each)
Adapted from Nadig & Sedivy (2002)

2. Common ground condition
Addressee
when two objects of the same kind, but different sizes were available to both
clarification needed (i.e., large scissors)
Participant

3. Privileged ground condition
when only one of two similar objects was available to both
no clarification needed
Addressee
Participant

4. Baseline condition
control condition, where there is only one of each kind of object on the table
no clarification needed.
Addressee
Participant

5. Results
5-year-olds used more adjectives in the common ground condition (than the privileged ground and the baseline conditions)
the tendency to do so was weaker than the older children and the adults
Differences between 9-year-olds and adults

6. 5-year-olds: individual differences
1/3 used more adjectival modifiers in the common ground condition than the other two conditions
2/3 did not use any adjectives
Bare nouns such as makas ‘scissors’, uhu ‘glue’ in more 50% of the trials

7. Fuller constructions
Accusative case marking on the noun (1) makas-ı scissors-ACC
Placing the NP in a verbal construction
(2) makas-ı al-ırmısın?
scissors-ACC take-would.you
‘Would you take the scissors?’
Some language-specific properties of Turkish need to be introduced here. In order to produce a fully specified request-making construction in Turkish one needs to provide an ACCUSATIVE case on the noun, and place this noun phrase in a verbal construction, makası verirmisin, would you pass me the scissors? Some of our participants just produced the noun with ACC marking, indicating an action is requested from the addressee to be carried out on the referent specified by the noun.

8. Labeling, not requesting
Providing casemarking on a noun and/or embedding it in a verbal construction reveals a pragmatic intent of requesting an object
Whereas a bare noun might just reflect an intent of labeling
Is there a link between overt requests and unique identification?
We speculated that some speakers especially the youngest ones were labeling objects rather than requesting them. Providing casemarking on a noun and/or placing it in verbal construction reveals a pragmatic intent of requesting an object. Whereas a bare noun might just reflect an intent of labeling.
This speculation made us wonder about whether there is a link between overt requests and unique identification

9. Follow-up study: Study 2
Ran another group of 5-year-olds (mean age = 5;3)
Prompting them for requestive language
The confederate “likes really nice, polite language” so make sure you are “really nice and polite” when you are asking her to pick up objects
Increase the likelihood of fuller constructions and discriminating adjectives

10. Results: full constructions vs. bare Ns
Only 13% of trials were produced just in bare nouns, compared to 56% in Study 1
Only 2 children provided noun-only constructions; both did not provide any discriminating adjectives in any of the trials
Across conditions, 87% of the trials were rendered with a full construction including the verb al ‘take’ and/or accusative case marking on the noun
First let’s look at the use of full constructions in this new group of preschoolers, which was prompted for requests.

11. Study 1 vs. 2
When prompted for requests, Study 2 5-year-olds become more inclined to use more discriminating adjectives in comparison to 5-year-olds in Study 1
But also more redundant
Use more adjectives in the privileged ground condition as well

12. What does “requesting” do?
When led to produce requestive forms, children became more likely to produce informative referring expressions in the common ground condition
As opposed to a labeling game, requests call for action from the addressee
One needs to specify enough information for the addressee to figure out what exact action is desired (Ervin-Tripp, Guo & Lambert)
And now some of our thoughts about the results. Why would children become more likely to produce more informative referring expressions when led to produce requestive speech acts?

13. What does “requesting” do?
Asking for requestive speech might have led to two different effects
Led the children to be sensitive to the functions of their speech acts and increase forms that request a specific object rather than simply name an object category
Encouraged them to use more elaborate language, which included more adjectives as well

14. More elaborate AND more informative
Requests led to more elaborate language in all three conditions
But there is still a significant difference in adjective usage between common ground condition and the other two conditions
So the relatively more production of adjectives in the common ground condition cannot be solely explained by generally longer sentences

15. Matthews et al. Training effects in referential communication
Which condition works the best? Why?
2-year-olds benefit from training
But only 4-year-olds transfer the skill to a new task
Why do we worry about referential communication as cognitive developmentalists?