Acquisition of adjectives across languages and populations: What's wrong with them?

Résumé

This article presents a review of recent research on the acquisition of adjectives across languages and different learner groups. It has often been noticed in the literature that adjectives are problematic for different groups of learners (L1, L2, SLI, etc.) and that they are acquired later than nouns and verbs. This review aims to provide explanation of the adjective challenge based on empirical data from a number of recent studies. It is proposed that adjectives are difficult because they are relatively infrequent in the input, often have abstract meanings, depend on the nouns and because their learning involves enhanced attention control and theory of mind.