Semantic roles are a critical aspect of linguistic knowledge because they indicate the relations of the participants in an event to the main predicate. Experimental studies on children and adults show that both groups use associations between general semantic roles such as Agent and Theme, and grammatical positions such as Subject and Object, even…

Examines the relationship between children's attribute saliency and metaphor interpretation. Findings indicate that attribute saliency for the individual perceiving the metaphor plays a key role in the interpretation process. (Author/CB)