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Direct linkDye, Cristina; Kedar, Yarden; Lust, Barbara – First Language, 2019
Scholars of language development have long been challenged to understand the development of functional categories. Traditionally, it was assumed that children's language development initially relies on lexical elements, while functional elements become accessible only at later periods; and that it is lexical growth which bootstraps grammatical…
Descriptors: Child Language, Nouns, Verbs, Form Classes (Languages)
Abbot-Smith, Kirsten; Serratrice, Ludovica – Journal of Child Language, 2015
In Study 1 we analyzed Italian child-directed-speech (CDS) and selected the three most frequent active transitive sentence frames used with overt subjects. In Study 2 we experimentally investigated how Italian-speaking children aged 2;6, 3;6, and 4;6 comprehended these orders with novel verbs when the cues of animacy, gender, and subject-verb…
Descriptors: Word Order, Child Language, Italian, Language Acquisition
Leischner, Franziska N.; Weissenborn, Jürgen; Naigles, Letitia R. – Language Learning and Development, 2016
The study investigated the influence of universal and language-specific morpho-syntactic properties (i.e., flexible word order, case) on the acquisition of verb argument structures in German compared with English. To this end, 65 three- to nine-year-old German learning children and adults were asked to act out grammatical ("The sheep…
Descriptors: German, Language Acquisition, Grammar, Nouns
Koulaguina, Elena; Shi, Rushen – Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2013
This study tests the hypothesis that distributional information can guide infants in the generalization of word order movement rules at the initial stage of language acquisition. Participants were 11- and 14-month-old infants. Stimuli were sentences in Russian, a language that was unknown to our infants. During training the word order of each…
Descriptors: Evidence, Syntax, Generalization, Language Acquisition
Franck, Julie; Millotte, Severine; Posada, Andres; Rizzi, Luigi – Applied Psycholinguistics, 2013
Word order is one of the earliest aspects of grammar that the child acquires, because her early utterances already respect the basic word order of the target language. However, the question of the nature of early syntactic representations is subject to debate. Approaches inspired by formal syntax assume that the head-complement order,…
Descriptors: Language Patterns, Models, Constructivism (Learning), Word Order
Armon-Lotem, Sharon; Haman, Ewa; de López, Kristine Jensen; Smoczynska, Magdalena; Yatsushiro, Kazuko; Szczerbinski, Marcin; van Hout, Angeliek; Dabašinskiene, Ineta; Gavarró, Anna; Hobbs, Erin; Kamandulyte-Merfeldiene, Laura; Katsos, Napoleon; Kunnari, Sari; Nitsiou, Chrisa; Olsen, Lone Sundahl; Parramon, Xavier; Sauerland, Uli; Torn-Leesik, Reeli; van der Lely, Heather – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2016
This cross-linguistic study evaluates children's understanding of passives in 11 typologically different languages: Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Polish. The study intends to determine whether the reported gaps between the comprehension of active and passive and between short and…
Descriptors: Language Research, Form Classes (Languages), Language Processing, Language Acquisition
Sugisaki, Koji – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2008
The acquisition of word order has been one of the central issues in the study of child language. One striking finding from the detailed investigation of various child languages is that from the earliest observable stages, children are highly sensitive to the basic word order of their target language. However, the evidence so far comes mainly from…
Descriptors: Child Language, Word Order, Language Acquisition, Japanese
Theakston, Anna L.; Lieven, Elena V. M. – Journal of Child Language, 2008
LChildren pass through a stage in development when they produce utterances that contain auxiliary BE ("he's playing") and utterances where auxiliary BE is omitted ("he playing"). One explanation that has been put forward to explain this phenomenon is the presence of questions in the input that model S-V word order (Theakston, Lieven & Tomasello,…
Descriptors: Word Order, Language Acquisition, Verbs, Linguistic Input
Gervain, Judit; Nespor, Marina; Mazuka, Reiko; Horie, Ryota; Mehler, Jacques – Cognitive Psychology, 2008
Learning word order is one of the earliest feats infants accomplish during language acquisition [Brown, R. (1973). "A first language: The early stages", Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.]. Two theories have been proposed to account for this fact. Constructivist/lexicalist theories [Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult…
Descriptors: Linguistic Theory, Syntax, Infants, Word Order
Rothman, Jason – International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (IRAL), 2010
One central question in the formal linguistic study of adult multilingual morphosyntax (i.e., L3/Ln acquisition) involves determining the role(s) the L1 and/or the L2 play(s) at the L3 initial state (e.g., Bardel & Falk, Second Language Research 23: 459-484, 2007; Falk & Bardel, Second Language Research: forthcoming; Flynn et al., The…
Descriptors: Experimental Groups, Language Research, Second Language Learning, Multilingualism
Arnold, Jennifer E.; Lao, Shin-Yi C. – Language and Cognitive Processes, 2008
Research has shown that the comprehension of definite referring expressions (e.g., "the triangle") tends to be faster for "given" (previously mentioned) referents, compared with new referents. This has been attributed to the presence of given information in the consciousness of discourse participants (e.g., Chafe, 1994) suggesting that given is…
Descriptors: Word Order, Eye Movements, Reading Comprehension, Achievement
Swingley, Daniel; Aslin, Richard N. – Cognitive Psychology, 2007
In two experiments, 1.5-year-olds were taught novel words whose sound patterns were phonologically similar to familiar words (novel neighbors) or were not (novel nonneighbors). Learning was tested using a picture-fixation task. In both experiments, children learned the novel nonneighbors but not the novel neighbors. In addition, exposure to the…
Descriptors: Young Children, Language Acquisition, Lexicology, Novelty (Stimulus Dimension)
Demuth, Katherine; Machobane, 'Malillo; Moloi, Francina – Journal of Child Language, 2003
Theorists of language acquisition have long debated the means by which children learn the argument structure of verbs (e.g. Bowerman, 1974, 1990; Pinker, 1984, 1989; Tomasello, 1992). Central to this controversy has been the possible role of verb semantics, especially in learning which verbs undergo dative-shift alternation in languages like…
Descriptors: Language Acquisition, Verbs, Semantics, African Languages
Bowey, Judith A.; Hirakis, Eliana – Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 2006
Although developmental increases in the size of the position effect within a mispronunciation detection task have been interpreted as consistent with a view of the lexical restructuring process as protracted, the position effect itself might not be reliable. The current research examined the effects of position and clarity of acoustic-phonetic…
Descriptors: Acoustics, Phonetics, Pronunciation, Children
Peer reviewedAkhtar, Nameera – Journal of Child Language, 1999
To test hypothesis that young children may be open to learning non-SVO structures with novel transitive verbs, 12 children in each of three age groups (2-year olds, 3-year olds, and 4-year olds) were taught novel verbs, one in each of three sentence positions: medial, final, and initial. Results suggest English-speaking children's acquisition of a…
Descriptors: Child Language, Generalization, Grammar, Language Acquisition
