Studies on young children's comprehension have shown that children can experience problems interpreting object pronouns, even when reflexive interpretation is already adult-like. Compared to resolving reflexives, linking pronouns to a referent is considered a more "intensive" process, because it also involves non-syntactic factors like…

We studied English-learning children's ability to learn the meanings of novel words from sentences containing truth-functional negation (Exp1) and to use the semantics of negation to inform word meaning (Exp2). In Exp1, 22-month-olds (n = 21) heard dialogues introducing a novel verb in either negative-transitive "("Mary didn't blick the…

Prediction-based theories posit that interlocutors use prediction to process language efficiently and to coordinate dialogue. The present study evaluated whether listeners can use spatial deixis (i.e., "this," "that," "these," and "those") to predict the plurality and proximity of a speaker's upcoming…

To investigate cross-linguistic lexical and syntactic influences in grammatical gender in early bilingualism, we tested 12 simultaneous, 12 early successive bilingual Russian-German children, and 15 monolingual German children aged 8-9 years. An elicited production task in German shows that all bilingual children assign target gender to nouns,…

This article investigates whether and how L2 sentence processing is affected by memory constraints that force serial parsing. Monitoring eye movements, we test effects of working memory on L2 relative-clause attachment preferences in a sample of 75 late-adult German learners of English and 25 native English controls. Mixed linear regression…

Despite the problems found in relation to verbs, to date there have been few studies on the online processing of verb argument structure in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This work explores the role of verb semantics and specifically verb argument structure in language comprehension and language production. To carry out the…