CHILDRENS LINGUISTIC INTUITIONS ABOUT FACTIVE PRESUPPOSITIONS

Third and sixth graders' understanding of factive presupposition was i nvestigated via two tasks: One required an abstract truth value judgme nt of the verb complement; the other called for a more informal judgme nt of consistency (or contradiction) between the target sentence and t he negation of its complement. When compared with corresponding adult data, the present results indicate that the development of factive pre supposition continues through late childhood. A further task examined a nonlogical pragmatic variable related to factive meaning. The final task investigated whether children's judgments of overall certainty ar e governed by factive or pragmatic aspects of meaning. Comparisons acr oss the four tasks indicate that factive presupposition only gradually emerges as a distinct logical component of verb meaning. It is argued that young children's initial discriminations between factive and non factive verbs reflect the subjective confidence conveyed by the verb-r ather than the logical property of factivity, but that later in acquis ition, factivity acquires a status superseding that of other facets of meaning.