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Children's understanding of factive presuppositions: an experiment and a review

ABSTRACT This paper presents a study of children's ability to recognize the presuppositions of sentences with factive and nonfactive verbs, and a review of recent research on the acquisition of factive presuppositions. In the present study, subjects in grades K, 2, 5 and 8, and adults, were asked to judge the truth of the complement clauses of sentences of the form ‘Doctor Fact (verb) that the ball is (is not) blue.’ The task was presented in the context of a television quiz show, with subjects as putative contestants. A tendency was found among younger subjects to overgeneralize the scope of negation of complement verbs into the main clauses of factive sentences. A gradual increase in comprehension of factive and nonfactive verbs was found, extending into adolescence. In a comparison of the present results with those of several recent studies, marked differences were found in the age of acquisition of factivity. These differences are discussed in terms of variations in task requirements and assessment techniques. It is concluded that acquisition proceeds on a verb-by-verb basis, rather than as a unitary process.