Adjectivization in Childre’s Language Acquisition and Development
A Systematic Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4151/S0718-09342026012001369Keywords:
revisión sistemática, lenguaje infantil, adjetivación, adquisición del lenguaje, desarrollo del lenguajeAbstract
Adjectivation enables the description, evaluation, comparison, and discrimination of events, objects, or processes (Davies et al., 2023, 2021). Research has highlighted the significance of this lexical category in language acquisition (Nippold et al., 2009; Tribushinina, 2018). However, compared to other word classes, approaches to the study of adjectives are limited, and even fewer studies systematically synthesize prior research on this phenomenon. In this context, we present a systematic review of 15 scientific articles published between 2013 and 2024 in journals indexed in the Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed databases, addressing adjectivation during childhood. The aim of this review is to determine how linguistic, cognitive, and pragmatic skills involved in adjective acquisition have been examined, as well as to identify the theories and methodologies used in recent studies on adjectivation. The systematization is based on the PRISMA 2020 methodology (Page et al., 2021), which ensures transparency in the analysis mechanisms of the reviewed articles. The results highlight that research on adjectivation has primarily focused on early childhood, children with typical development, and oral language. However, the findings underscore the fundamental role of not only linguistic but also cognitive and pragmatic skills in adjectivation. Factors such as attention, conceptual differentiation, cognitive flexibility, and context sensitivity are essential for its use and acquisition.
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