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Höhle, Barbara; Hörnig, Robin; Weskott, Thomas; Knauf, Selene; Krüger, Agnes – Journal of Child Language, 2014
Two experiments tested how faithfully German children aged 4;5 to 5;6 reproduce ditransitive sentences that are unmarked or marked with respect to word order and focus (Exp1) or definiteness (Exp2). Adopting an optimality theory (OT) approach, it is assumed that in the German adult grammar word order is ranked lower than focus and definiteness.…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Young Children, Word Order, Sentences
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Kail, Michele; Kihlstedt, Maria; Bonnet, Philippe – Journal of Child Language, 2012
This study examined on-line processing of Swedish sentences in a grammaticality-judgement experiment within the framework of the Competition Model. Three age groups from 6 to 11 and an adult group were asked to detect grammatical violations as quickly as possible. Three factors concerning cue cost were studied: violation position (early vs. late),…
Descriptors: Sentences, Stimuli, Grammar, Linguistics
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O'Shannessy, Carmel – Journal of Child Language, 2011
The study examines strategies multilingual children use to interpret grammatical relations, focusing on their two primary languages, Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Both languages use mixed systems for indicating grammatical relations. In both languages ergative-absolutive case-marking indicates core arguments, but to different extents in…
Descriptors: Video Technology, Sentences, Language Research, Form Classes (Languages)
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Aljenaie, Khawla; Farghal, Mohammad – Language Sciences, 2009
The present project is a case study of 68 Kuwaiti children (aged between 4 and 8) who acted out their interpretation of verbal stimuli involving three word orders in Kuwaiti Arabic Subject Verb Object (SVO), Verb Subject Object (VSO) and Topic-Comment (T-C) by using a set of props. The purpose is to investigate the way Kuwaiti children comprehend…
Descriptors: Semitic Languages, Sentences, Verbal Stimuli, Cues
Hidajat, Lanny – ProQuest LLC, 2010
This dissertation studies the acquisition of verb argument structure in the basilectal subvariety of Jakarta Indonesian (henceforth, bJI). There are two characteristics of bJI that potentially affect the acquisition of verb argument structure. First, bJI sentences can surface not only in the full frame but also in truncated frames. Second, the…
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Verbs, Linguistic Competence, Sentences
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Brand, Silke; Diessel, Holger; Tomasello, Michael – Journal of Child Language, 2008
This paper investigates the development of relative clauses in the speech of one German-speaking child aged 2 ; 0 to 5 ; 0. The earliest relative clauses we found in the data occur in topicalization constructions that are only a little different from simple sentences: they contain a single proposition, express the actor prior to other…
Descriptors: Word Order, Sentences, German, Case Studies
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Conwell, Erin; Demuth, Katherine – Cognition, 2007
The abstractness of children's early syntactic representations has been questioned in the recent acquisition literature. While some research has suggested that children's knowledge of basic constructions such as the transitive is robust and abstract at a very young age, other work has proposed that young children only have constructions that are…
Descriptors: Young Children, Sentences, Language Acquisition, Syntax
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Soderstrom, Melanie; White, Katherine S.; Conwell, Erin; Morgan, James L. – Infancy, 2007
This study examines 16-month-olds' understanding of word order and inflectional properties of familiar nouns and verbs. Infants preferred grammatical sentences over ungrammatical sentences when the ungrammaticality was cued by both misplaced inflection and word order reversal of nouns and verbs. Infants were also sensitive to inflection alone as a…
Descriptors: Sentences, Cues, Verbs, Nouns
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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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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