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Cairncross, Alex; Dal Pozzo, Lena – First Language, 2022
While previous work on postverbal subjects in Italian has shown that young children are sensitive to the effects of argument structure and definiteness, little is known about the acquisition of postverbal subjects at the VP-periphery. In response, the present study investigated such subjects under new-information focus by monolingual Italian…
Descriptors: Italian, Monolingualism, Language Acquisition, Adults
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Ying, Yuanfan; Yang, Xiaolu; Shi, Rushen – First Language, 2022
Previous studies show that infants store functional morphemes for inferring syntactic categories of adjacent words, and they generally perform better with nouns than with verbs. In this study, we tested whether toddlers can exploit phrasal groupings for syntactic categorization in the face of noisy co-occurrence patterns. Using a visual fixation…
Descriptors: Morphemes, Toddlers, Language Acquisition, Inferences
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Shang Jiang; Anna Siyanova-Chanturia – First Language, 2024
Recent studies have accumulated to suggest that children, akin to adults, exhibit a processing advantage for formulaic language (e.g. "save energy") over novel language (e.g. "sell energy"), as well as sensitivity to phrase frequencies. The majority of these studies are based on formulaic sequences in their canonical form. In…
Descriptors: Phrase Structure, Language Processing, Language Acquisition, Child Language
Morton, Ian; Schuele, C. Melanie – First Language, 2021
Preschoolers' earliest productions of sentential complement sentences have matrix clauses that are limited in form. Diessel proposed that matrix clauses in these early productions are propositionally empty fixed phrases that lack semantic and syntactic integration with the clausal complement. By 4 years of age, however, preschoolers produce…
Descriptors: Phrase Structure, Preschool Children, Semantics, Syntax
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Ambridge, Ben – First Language, 2020
The goal of this article is to make the case for a radical exemplar account of child language acquisition, under which unwitnessed forms are produced and comprehended by on-the-fly analogy across multiple stored exemplars, weighted by their degree of similarity to the target with regard to the task at hand. Across the domains of (1) word meanings,…
Descriptors: Language Acquisition, Morphology (Languages), Phonetics, Phonology
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Fichman, Sveta; Walters, Joel; Melamed, Ravit; Altman, Carmit – First Language, 2022
This research analyzed adequacy of referential expressions in the narratives of bilingual and monolingual children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and typical language development (TLD), aiming to shed light on the relative contribution of morpho-syntactic, discourse-pragmatic, and semantic constraints. Narratives were collected from 51…
Descriptors: Russian, Semitic Languages, Preschool Children, Story Telling
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Aktan-Erciyes, Asli; Ünlütabak, Burcu; Zengin, Betül Firdevs – First Language, 2021
This study investigates the effects of early second-language (L2) acquisition on introduction of characters in narrative discourse by comparing 5- and 7-year-old monolingual (first-language [L1] = Turkish) and bilingual (L1 = Turkish, L2 = English) children. Turkish does not have a grammaticalized article system like English which enables to…
Descriptors: Second Language Learning, Monolingualism, Bilingualism, Native Language
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Volpato, Francesca – First Language, 2020
Verbal working memory resources may impact syntax comprehension. Thirteen Italian children with cochlear implants (CIs) were assessed in relative clause (RC) comprehension, digit span and nonword repetition and compared to 13 chronological age peers (CA) and 13 younger controls (LA) with normal hearing (NH). The RC comprehension task tested…
Descriptors: Verbal Ability, Short Term Memory, Assistive Technology, Prediction
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Talli, Ioanna; Stavrakaki, Stavroula – First Language, 2020
This article investigates verbal short-term memory (vSTM) and verbal working memory (vWM) abilities and their relation to lexical and syntactic abilities in monolingual (mono-) and bilingual (bi-) children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and typical development (TD). The authors employed the following tasks: vSTM (non-word repetition…
Descriptors: Short Term Memory, Verbal Ability, Syntax, Language Impairments
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Stanford, Emily; Delage, Hélène – First Language, 2020
Working memory (WM) limitations are frequently reported for children with specific learning disorder (SLD). However, WM capacity influences more than literacy and numeracy, as research highlights the contribution of WM to language development, in particular syntax. In this article, the authors study the effect of syntactic intervention, i.e.…
Descriptors: Syntax, Short Term Memory, Intervention, Phrase Structure
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Sauerland, Uli; Grohmann, Kleanthes K.; Guasti, Maria Teresa; Andelkovic, Darinka; Argus, Reili; Armon-Lotem, Sharon; Arosio, Fabrizio; Avram, Larisa; Costa, João; Dabašinskiene, Ineta; de López, Kristine; Gatt, Daniela; Grech, Helen; Haman, Ewa; van Hout, Angeliek; Hrzica, Gordana; Kainhofer, Judith; Kamandulyte-Merfeldiene, Laura; Kunnari, Sari; Kovacevic, Melita; Kuvac Kraljevic, Jelena; Lipowska, Katarzyna; Mejias, Sandrine; Popovic, Maša; Ruzaite, Jurate; Savic, Maja; Sevcenco, Anca; Varlokosta, Spyridoula; Varnava, Marina; Yatsushiro, Kazuko – First Language, 2016
The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Questioning Techniques, Preschool Children, Language Acquisition
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Zimmer, Elly Jane – First Language, 2017
This study asks whether children accept both interpretations of ambiguous sentences with contexts supporting each option. Twenty-six 3- to 5-year-old English-speaking children and a control group of 30 English-speaking adults participated in a truth value judgment task. As a step towards evaluating the complexity of syntactic ambiguity, the…
Descriptors: Preschool Children, Reading Comprehension, Ambiguity (Semantics), Syntax
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Sah, Wen-hui – First Language, 2018
This study investigates the referential choice of Mandarin-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The data consist of narratives from 16 children with ASD and 16 typically-developing (TD) children. The narratives were elicited using the wordless picture book "Frog, where are you?" Participants' referential expressions…
Descriptors: Mandarin Chinese, Classification, Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorders