Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The spatial prepositions in and on apply to a wide range ofcontainment and support relations, making exhaustivedefinitions difficult. Theories differ in whether they endorsegeometric or functional properties and how these properties arerelated to meaning and use. This study directly examines theroles of geometric and functional information in adults’ andchildren’s use of in and on by developing a large sample ofrelations situated within a small gradable geometric andfunctional feature space. We propose that variation in featuresacross items is systematically related to the use of in and onand demonstrate that feature-language relationships changeacross development: adults’ expression use is sensitive to bothgeometric and functional features, while children’s use variesonly according to geometric features.