Teleological talk in parent-child conversations in Quechua

Southern Peruvian Quechua is an indigenous language spoken primarily in rural communities in the Peruvian Andes. The language includes a syntactic construction, '-paq', that expresses purpose or function, thus providing an opportunity to trace how parents and children with little formal education express teleological concepts. The authors recorded parent-child dyads (N = 36; children aged 3-5 years) talking about items in a picture book, and coded uses of -paq (e.g., 'What is that little [toy] bear for?' ['Chay usuchari imapaqtaq?']. For younger children (3-4 years) and their parents, -paq was infrequent and equivalent across domains. For older children (5-year-olds) and their parents, -paq increased dramatically and differentially by domain (most commonly produced for artifacts, food, and animals). These results provide new evidence that speaks to existing developmental accounts regarding the domain-specificity vs. domain-generality of teleological concepts in development.