Previous research has shown a link between the spatial words children use and their performance on spatial reasoning tasks. There is a dearth of measures of spatial language, especially those that focus on a specific type of word. This dissertation introduces three studies, using two measures of dimensional adjective comprehension, one in English and one in Spanish. Study one found that bilingual children’s knowledge of dimensional adjectives in one language is not predictive of their performance on dimensional adjectives in the other language, but that general vocabulary within a language predicts performance in that language. This study also showed that within a pair of polar opposite terms (e.g., long and short) children are more likely to know the term describing the big dimension and not the small dimension than vice versa. The second study found that the number of dimensional concepts children comprehend predicts how well they perform on a spatial scaling test, controlling for age and general vocabulary. The final study failed to find a link between dimensional adjective knowledge and performance on the children’s mental transformation task. These findings might have important implications for early education, showing that supporting children’s understanding of language might have an impact on their spatial reasoning.

The purpose of this study is to give a thorough and detailed account and analysis of the semantics of twelve Swedish dimensional adjectives: hög ‘high/tall', låg ‘low', bred ‘broad/wide', smal ‘narrow/thin', vid ‘broad', trång ‘narrow', tjock ‘thick', tunn ‘thin', djup ‘deep', grund ‘narrow', lång ‘long' and kort ‘short'. Focus has been placed on their spatial, non-metaphorical sense. The study was written within the framework of cognitive linguistics, where lexical definitions may be given in terms of prototypical and peripheral uses. Four sources of data have been considered: a corpus, consisting of contemporary fiction, an elicitation test, designed for the purpose, dictionary articles on the pertinent adjectives, and the author's own linguistic intuition as a native speaker. The methodology has involved categorisation of combinations of adjective and noun, based upon three major themes: orientation, function, and shape. In order to determine prototypical uses, precedence has been given to the outcome of the elicitation test over the corpus search. For both sources, frequency has played an important part. The ranking of senses as stated in the dictionary articles has also been considered. The results indicate that the dimensional adjectives differ quite markedly from each other, as opposed to a structural view where the adjectives traditionally have been regarded as forming a neat patchwork. Adjectives overlap each other for some uses (högt gräs ‘high grass', långt gräs ‘long grass' and even djupt gräs ‘deep grass'), while there are also situations in which no dimensional adjective can describe an object. Furthermore, adjectives forming pairs, such as djup – grund ‘deep – shallow', do not exhibit full antonymy, despite the fact that dimensional adjectives are traditionally cited as examples par excellence concerning antonymy.

The purpose of this study is to give a thorough and detailed account and analysis of the semantics of twelve Swedish dimensional adjectives: hög ’high/tall’, låg ’low’, bred ’broad/wide’, smal ’narrow’ vid ’broad’, trång ’narrow’, tjock ’thick’, tunn ’thin’, djup ’deep’, grund ’narrow’, lång ’long’ and kort ’short’. Focus has been placed on their spatial, non-metaphorical sense. The study was written within the framework of cognitive linguistics, where lexical definitions may be given in terms of prototypical and peripheral uses. Four sources of data have been considered: a corpus, consisting of contemporary fiction, an elicitation test, designed for the purpose, dictionary articles on the pertinent adjectives, and the author's own linguistic intuition as a native speaker. The methodology has involved categorisation of combinations of adjective and noun, based upon three major themes: orientation, function, and shape. In order to determine prototypical uses, precedence has been given to the outcome of the elicitation test over the corpus search. For both sources, frequency has played an important part. The ranking of senses as stated in the dictionary articles has also been considered. The results indicate that the dimensional adjectives differ quite markedly from each other, as opposed to a structural view where the adjectives traditionally have been regarded as forming a neat patchwork. Adjectives overlap each other for some uses (högt gräs ’high grass’, långt gräs ’long grass’ and even djupt gräs ’deep grass’), while there are also situations in which no dimensional adjective can describe an object. Furthermore, adjectives forming pairs, such as djup – grund ’deep – shallow’, do not exhibit full antonymy, despite the fact that dimensional adjectives are traditionally cited as examples par excellence concerning antonymy.

In the present study, the linguistic performance of 11 Swedish high-school students of Spanish as second language (L2)/foreign language (FL) of 3 different levels, between 16-18 years old, has been measured through analysis of experimental elicited speech samples from a picture description task, designed to elicit placement of adjectives and dimensional adjectives in Spanish. The task provided 3 images with phrases in the source language and the participants were asked to translate it into the target language (TL). Subsequently, 9 images without text were presented and the students were asked to describe the images in the TL. The intention was to measure the grammatical accuracy concerning the placement of adjectives and the possible transfer –from Swedish to Spanish– of semantical markers regarding dimensional adjectives. The results from the performance analysis of the learners responses indicate that in beginner learners of Spanish, the semantic markers of dimensional adjectives have been transferred from Swedish to Spanish. One example that reflects this is the predominant use of the form largo ‘long’ instead of alto ’high/tall’ regarding the height of a person. The beginners also exhibit transfer in the placement of adjectives. These types of errors found in the speech of beginner students were not salient to the same extent in more advanced students.