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Davies, Benjamin; Xu Rattansone, Nan; Demuth, Katherine – Journal of Child Language, 2020
Subject-verb (SV) agreement helps listeners interpret the number condition of ambiguous nouns ("The sheep is/are fat"), yet it remains unclear whether young children use agreement to comprehend newly encountered nouns. Preschoolers and adults completed a forced choice task where sentences contained singular vs. plural copulas…
Descriptors: Preschool Children, Verbs, Nouns, Grammar
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Varlokosta, Spyridoula; Nerantzini, Michaela; Papadopoulou, Despina – Journal of Child Language, 2015
Cross-linguistic studies have shown that typically developing children have difficulties comprehending non-canonical structures. These findings have been interpreted within the Relativized Minimality (RM) approach, according to which local relations cannot be established between two terms of a dependency if an intervening element possesses similar…
Descriptors: Greek, Foreign Countries, Language Acquisition, Child Development
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Kline, Melissa; Demuth, Katherine – Journal of Child Language, 2014
To understand how children develop adult argument structure, we must understand the nature of syntactic and semantic representations during development. The present studies compare the performance of children aged 2;6 on the two intransitive alternations in English: patient ("Daddy is cooking the food"/"The food is cooking")…
Descriptors: Syntax, Generalization, Novelty (Stimulus Dimension), Verbs
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Emerson, Harriet F. – Journal of Child Language, 1979
This article discusses a study designed to ascertain the comprehension of the role of "because" in a sentence in children between the ages of 5;8 and 10;11. (CFM)
Descriptors: Child Language, Comprehension, Intellectual Development, Language Acquisition
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Bonvillian, John D.; And Others – Journal of Child Language, 1979
The effects of speech rate, intonation, and sentence length on children's ability to imitate sentences were examined. Results indicate that adult speech is more readily imitated by children when intonation is normal, sentences are short, and speech rate is close to that of the child. (Author/AM)
Descriptors: Adults, Child Language, Imitation, Intonation
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Ambridge, Ben; Rowland, Caroline F.; Theakston, Anna L.; Tomasello, Michael – Journal of Child Language, 2006
This study investigated different accounts of children's acquisition of non-subject wh-questions. Questions using each of 4 wh-words ("what," "who," "how" and "why"), and 3 auxiliaries (BE, DO and CAN) in 3sg and 3pl form were elicited from 28 children aged 3;6-4;6. Rates of non-inversion error ("Who…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Language Acquisition, Error Analysis (Language), Child Language
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Valian, Virginia; Prasada, Sandeep; Scarpa, Jodi – Journal of Child Language, 2006
We hypothesize that the conceptual relation between a verb and its direct object can make a sentence easier ("the cat is eating some food") or harder ("the cat is eating a sock") to parse and understand. If children's limited performance systems contribute to the ungrammatical brevity of their speech, they should perform better on sentences that…
Descriptors: Sentences, Language Acquisition, Imitation, Oral Language
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Kavanaugh, Robert D. – Journal of Child Language, 1979
Sentences were constructed in which the terms "before" and "after" were embedded in logically constrained and logically reversible sequences. The preschool children in the study found the constrained sentences easier to comprehend. (Author/CFM)
Descriptors: Child Language, Cognitive Processes, Comprehension, Language Acquisition
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Kess, Joseph F. – Journal of Child Language, 1979
This article discusses a study by Segalowitz and Galang that reports results showing better mastery of patient-focus sentences than agent-focus sentences for Tagalog children. (CFM)
Descriptors: Child Language, English, Language Acquisition, Language Processing