Pub Date : 2024-03-09DOI: 10.1177/01427237241232741
Clifton Pye
The Mayan language Mam uses complex predicates to express events. Complex predicates map multiple semantic elements onto a single word, and consequently have a blend of lexical and phrasal features. The chameleon-like nature of complex predicates provides a window on children’s ability to express phrasal combinations at the one-word stage of language development. The ubiquity of complex predicates in the adult language insures that children will produce complex predicates as some of their first words. The verb complex in Mam has obligatory inflections for aspect, person, and to a degree direction. The inflections vary in degree of attachment between syllable segments, affixes, and clitics. Inflections with vowels are phonologically free, while inflections without vowels attach as either syllable segments or affixes. The Mam verb complex requires the addition of a phrasal layer to prosodic models of lexical acquisition. The paper used this extended version of prosodic theory to make five predictions for the acquisition of the verb complex. The paper analyzes production data for three children between 2;0 and 2;8 acquiring the northern variety of Mam spoken in San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, Guatemala. The children’s production data for both the intransitive and transitive verb complexes support all five predictions to some degree. The children produced prefixes more frequently on vowel-initial stems than on consonant-initial stems, and they produced imperative suffixes more frequently than prefixes on consonant-initial stems. The children exhibited developmental differences and produced phrasal contractions that the prosodic theory did not predict. The results underline the need to integrate prosody into models of morphosyntactic development, and highlight the significance of complex predicates for theories of language acquisition.
{"title":"A prosodic account of complex predicate acquisition in Mam: A Mayan language","authors":"Clifton Pye","doi":"10.1177/01427237241232741","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237241232741","url":null,"abstract":"The Mayan language Mam uses complex predicates to express events. Complex predicates map multiple semantic elements onto a single word, and consequently have a blend of lexical and phrasal features. The chameleon-like nature of complex predicates provides a window on children’s ability to express phrasal combinations at the one-word stage of language development. The ubiquity of complex predicates in the adult language insures that children will produce complex predicates as some of their first words. The verb complex in Mam has obligatory inflections for aspect, person, and to a degree direction. The inflections vary in degree of attachment between syllable segments, affixes, and clitics. Inflections with vowels are phonologically free, while inflections without vowels attach as either syllable segments or affixes. The Mam verb complex requires the addition of a phrasal layer to prosodic models of lexical acquisition. The paper used this extended version of prosodic theory to make five predictions for the acquisition of the verb complex. The paper analyzes production data for three children between 2;0 and 2;8 acquiring the northern variety of Mam spoken in San Ildefonso Ixtahuacán, Guatemala. The children’s production data for both the intransitive and transitive verb complexes support all five predictions to some degree. The children produced prefixes more frequently on vowel-initial stems than on consonant-initial stems, and they produced imperative suffixes more frequently than prefixes on consonant-initial stems. The children exhibited developmental differences and produced phrasal contractions that the prosodic theory did not predict. The results underline the need to integrate prosody into models of morphosyntactic development, and highlight the significance of complex predicates for theories of language acquisition.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"135 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140073495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-03-05DOI: 10.1177/01427237241228693
Pedro Mateo Pedro
This article evaluates the acquisition of directionals in Q’anjob’al, a Western Mayan language of Guatemala. The data come from a longitudinal study of two Q’anjob’al monolingual children of Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango, Guatemala: Xhuw (1;9–2;5) and Xhim (2;3–3;5). The results show how these children acquire the morphological distribution of motion verbs and directionals in Q’anjob’al. They produce directionals parallel to motion verbs. Xhuw produced more motion verbs than directionals, while Xhim produced more directionals than motion verbs. Despite the omission of tense/aspect and agreement in the verb complex, these children produce two types of suffixes that distinguish motion verbs from directionals. The children acquired three groups of directionals in the following order: DIR3 (teq ‘toward X’, toq ‘away from X’) > DIR2 (el ‘out’ aj ‘up’ ok ‘enter, in’ ek’ ‘pass’ ay ‘down’) > DIR1 (kan ‘stay’).
{"title":"The acquisition of directionals in Q’anjob’al","authors":"Pedro Mateo Pedro","doi":"10.1177/01427237241228693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237241228693","url":null,"abstract":"This article evaluates the acquisition of directionals in Q’anjob’al, a Western Mayan language of Guatemala. The data come from a longitudinal study of two Q’anjob’al monolingual children of Santa Eulalia, Huehuetenango, Guatemala: Xhuw (1;9–2;5) and Xhim (2;3–3;5). The results show how these children acquire the morphological distribution of motion verbs and directionals in Q’anjob’al. They produce directionals parallel to motion verbs. Xhuw produced more motion verbs than directionals, while Xhim produced more directionals than motion verbs. Despite the omission of tense/aspect and agreement in the verb complex, these children produce two types of suffixes that distinguish motion verbs from directionals. The children acquired three groups of directionals in the following order: DIR3 (teq ‘toward X’, toq ‘away from X’) > DIR2 (el ‘out’ aj ‘up’ ok ‘enter, in’ ek’ ‘pass’ ay ‘down’) > DIR1 (kan ‘stay’).","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140047445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-24DOI: 10.1177/01427237241233084
Rebecca E. Winter, Heidrun Stoeger, Sebastian P. Suggate
A growing body of research suggests that fine motor skills (FMS) are associated with language development. In this study, we examined 76 children aged 3–6 years assessing the link between language and FMS. Specific measures included receptive and expressive vocabulary, oral narrative skills, and various fine motor tasks. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that FMS predicted receptive and expressive vocabulary as well as oral narrative skills. Overall, FMS were most strongly linked to children’s oral narrative skills. Educational implications, as well as limitations and the need for further studies on the link between language and FMS, are discussed.
{"title":"Fine motor skills and their link to receptive vocabulary, expressive vocabulary, and narrative language skills","authors":"Rebecca E. Winter, Heidrun Stoeger, Sebastian P. Suggate","doi":"10.1177/01427237241233084","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237241233084","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of research suggests that fine motor skills (FMS) are associated with language development. In this study, we examined 76 children aged 3–6 years assessing the link between language and FMS. Specific measures included receptive and expressive vocabulary, oral narrative skills, and various fine motor tasks. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that FMS predicted receptive and expressive vocabulary as well as oral narrative skills. Overall, FMS were most strongly linked to children’s oral narrative skills. Educational implications, as well as limitations and the need for further studies on the link between language and FMS, are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-02-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139947328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-31DOI: 10.1177/01427237241226734
Nozomi Tanaka, Elaine Lau, Alan L. F. Lee
Subject relative clauses (RCs) have been shown to be acquired earlier, comprehended more accurately, and produced more easily than object RCs by children. While this subject preference is often claimed to be a universal tendency, it has largely been investigated piecemeal and with low-powered experiments. To address these issues, this meta-analysis follows an established and rigorous scientific method to test the generalizability of the subject preference in RC acquisition by evaluating the collective evidence. While the results show a significant crosslinguistic subject preference, there is a large amount of heterogeneity in the data. The manifestation of this subject preference may not be uniform across languages, depending on typological properties such as language headedness, RC headedness, and main clause similarity. The true impact of these features, however, requires research on more typologically diverse languages.
{"title":"On the universality of the subject preference in the acquisition of relative clauses across languages","authors":"Nozomi Tanaka, Elaine Lau, Alan L. F. Lee","doi":"10.1177/01427237241226734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237241226734","url":null,"abstract":"Subject relative clauses (RCs) have been shown to be acquired earlier, comprehended more accurately, and produced more easily than object RCs by children. While this subject preference is often claimed to be a universal tendency, it has largely been investigated piecemeal and with low-powered experiments. To address these issues, this meta-analysis follows an established and rigorous scientific method to test the generalizability of the subject preference in RC acquisition by evaluating the collective evidence. While the results show a significant crosslinguistic subject preference, there is a large amount of heterogeneity in the data. The manifestation of this subject preference may not be uniform across languages, depending on typological properties such as language headedness, RC headedness, and main clause similarity. The true impact of these features, however, requires research on more typologically diverse languages.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"13 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139947250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-30DOI: 10.1177/01427237231225023
Xiangjun Deng, Xiaobei Zheng, Haoyan Ge
The acquisition of quantifiers is a central topic in cognitive science. The present study investigated the emergence, frequency, and non-target-like production of the universal quantifiers all, every, and each in child English from a linguistic perspective, based on the data from longitudinal naturalistic observation of 10 English-speaking children and their caregivers. We found that the use of these quantifiers as adverbs or in adverbials generally appeared earlier, and was more frequent, than their use as (pre)determiners in early child English. We also found that input frequency exerts a great influence on some aspects of the acquisition of universal quantifiers, for example, the frequency of the predeterminer all, but there are still some patterns that cannot be explained by mere input frequency, such as children’s initial preference for using universal quantifiers in A(dverbial)-quantification and their non-target forms. Their initial overreliance on A-quantification may be explained by event quantification being cognitively less demanding than entity quantification, and their non-target productions likely result from their developing grammatical systems. We argue that the acquisition of universal quantifiers involves multiple factors, such as cognitive complexity, children’s developing grammatical systems, and input frequency, interacting with each other.
量词的习得是认知科学的一个核心课题。本研究基于对 10 名讲英语的儿童及其看护人的纵向自然观察数据，从语言学的角度研究了通用量词 all、every 和 each 在儿童英语中的出现、频率和非目标性产生。我们发现，在早期儿童英语中，这些量词作为副词或副词的使用一般比作为（前）定语的使用出现得更早，也更频繁。我们还发现，输入频率对通用量词习得的某些方面有很大影响，例如，前定语 all 的使用频率，但仍有一些模式是不能用单纯的输入频率来解释的，例如，儿童最初偏爱在 A（副词）量词及其非目标形式中使用通用量词。他们最初过度依赖甲量词的原因可能是事件量词在认知上的要求比实体量词低，而他们的非目标形式可能是他们语法系统发展的结果。我们认为，通用量词的习得涉及多种因素，如认知复杂性、儿童语法系统的发展和输入频率，这些因素相互作用。
{"title":"Quantifying events or entities?—A corpus-based study of universal quantifiers in early child English and child-directed speech","authors":"Xiangjun Deng, Xiaobei Zheng, Haoyan Ge","doi":"10.1177/01427237231225023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231225023","url":null,"abstract":"The acquisition of quantifiers is a central topic in cognitive science. The present study investigated the emergence, frequency, and non-target-like production of the universal quantifiers all, every, and each in child English from a linguistic perspective, based on the data from longitudinal naturalistic observation of 10 English-speaking children and their caregivers. We found that the use of these quantifiers as adverbs or in adverbials generally appeared earlier, and was more frequent, than their use as (pre)determiners in early child English. We also found that input frequency exerts a great influence on some aspects of the acquisition of universal quantifiers, for example, the frequency of the predeterminer all, but there are still some patterns that cannot be explained by mere input frequency, such as children’s initial preference for using universal quantifiers in A(dverbial)-quantification and their non-target forms. Their initial overreliance on A-quantification may be explained by event quantification being cognitively less demanding than entity quantification, and their non-target productions likely result from their developing grammatical systems. We argue that the acquisition of universal quantifiers involves multiple factors, such as cognitive complexity, children’s developing grammatical systems, and input frequency, interacting with each other.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139947313","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-09DOI: 10.1177/01427237231216571
Marisa Casillas, Ruthe Foushee, Juan Méndez Girón, Gilles Polian, Penelope Brown
This study examines whether children acquiring Tseltal (Mayan) demonstrate a noun bias – an overrepresentation of nouns in their early vocabularies. Nouns, specifically concrete and animate nouns, are argued to universally predominate in children’s early vocabularies because their referents are naturally available as bounded concepts to which linguistic labels can be mapped. This early advantage for noun learning has been documented using multiple methods and across a diverse collection of language populations. However, past evidence bearing on a noun bias in Tseltal learners has been mixed. Tseltal grammatical features and child–caregiver interactional patterns dampen the salience of nouns and heighten the salience of verbs, leading to the prediction of a diminished noun bias and perhaps even an early predominance of verbs. We here analyze the use of noun and verb stems in children’s spontaneous speech from egocentric daylong recordings of 29 Tseltal learners between 0;9 and 4;4. We find weak to no evidence for a noun bias using two separate analytical approaches on the same data; one analysis yields a preliminary suggestion of a flipped outcome (i.e. a verb bias). We discuss the implications of these findings for broader theories of learning bias in early lexical development.
{"title":"Little evidence for a noun bias in Tseltal spontaneous speech","authors":"Marisa Casillas, Ruthe Foushee, Juan Méndez Girón, Gilles Polian, Penelope Brown","doi":"10.1177/01427237231216571","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231216571","url":null,"abstract":"This study examines whether children acquiring Tseltal (Mayan) demonstrate a noun bias – an overrepresentation of nouns in their early vocabularies. Nouns, specifically concrete and animate nouns, are argued to universally predominate in children’s early vocabularies because their referents are naturally available as bounded concepts to which linguistic labels can be mapped. This early advantage for noun learning has been documented using multiple methods and across a diverse collection of language populations. However, past evidence bearing on a noun bias in Tseltal learners has been mixed. Tseltal grammatical features and child–caregiver interactional patterns dampen the salience of nouns and heighten the salience of verbs, leading to the prediction of a diminished noun bias and perhaps even an early predominance of verbs. We here analyze the use of noun and verb stems in children’s spontaneous speech from egocentric daylong recordings of 29 Tseltal learners between 0;9 and 4;4. We find weak to no evidence for a noun bias using two separate analytical approaches on the same data; one analysis yields a preliminary suggestion of a flipped outcome (i.e. a verb bias). We discuss the implications of these findings for broader theories of learning bias in early lexical development.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"21 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2024-01-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139441414","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-29DOI: 10.1177/01427237231217249
Mélanie Havy
In everyday life, children hear but also often see their caregiver talking. Children build on this correspondence to resolve auditory uncertainties and decipher words from the speech input. As they hear the name of an object, 18- to 30-month-olds form a representation that permits word recognition in either the auditory (i.e. acoustic form of the word with no accompanying face) or the visual modality (i.e. seeing a silent talking face). Continuing on this work, we ask whether this ability already exists at a younger age. Using a cross-modal word learning task, French-learning 14-month-old infants were taught novel word–object mappings. During learning, they experienced the words auditorily. At test, they experienced the words either in the auditory or the visual modality. Results revealed successful word recognition in the auditory modality only. This suggests that as opposed to older children, 14-month-old infants only interpret novel auditorily learned words auditorily. This finding is discussed in line with the perceptual and lexical achievements that may influence infants’ capacity to navigate from the auditory to the visual modality during word learning.
{"title":"In the ear of the viewer: Toward an auditory dominance in early word learning","authors":"Mélanie Havy","doi":"10.1177/01427237231217249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231217249","url":null,"abstract":"In everyday life, children hear but also often see their caregiver talking. Children build on this correspondence to resolve auditory uncertainties and decipher words from the speech input. As they hear the name of an object, 18- to 30-month-olds form a representation that permits word recognition in either the auditory (i.e. acoustic form of the word with no accompanying face) or the visual modality (i.e. seeing a silent talking face). Continuing on this work, we ask whether this ability already exists at a younger age. Using a cross-modal word learning task, French-learning 14-month-old infants were taught novel word–object mappings. During learning, they experienced the words auditorily. At test, they experienced the words either in the auditory or the visual modality. Results revealed successful word recognition in the auditory modality only. This suggests that as opposed to older children, 14-month-old infants only interpret novel auditorily learned words auditorily. This finding is discussed in line with the perceptual and lexical achievements that may influence infants’ capacity to navigate from the auditory to the visual modality during word learning.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":" 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139145103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-28DOI: 10.1177/01427237231216010
Naja Ferjan Ramírez
This study focuses on parental use of parentese: the acoustically exaggerated, clear, and higher-pitched speech produced by adults across cultures when they address infants. While previous research shows that parentese enhances language learning and processing, it is still unclear what drives the variability in the amount of parental parentese use. We report on the development of a survey related to parental beliefs, knowledge, and self-awareness of parentese, and the cross-validation of this survey with daylong recordings in which parental parentese was measured through observation. Forty mother–father (18 monolingual English and 22 bilingual Spanish/English) U.S. families with infants between 3 and 24 months of age participated. Scores on the parentese questionnaire showed wide variability, suggesting that many parents were unsure about the effects of parentese on infant language development, and had limited self-awareness of their own parentese use. Almost half of the parents claimed that they talked to their child ‘like an adult’, and a similar number disagreed with the claim that parentese can support language learning. Our observational assessment of parentese demonstrated that all mothers and all fathers used parentese when talking to their infants; mothers in an average of 81% and fathers in an average of 69% of child-directed segments. Importantly, maternal parentese knowledge/beliefs scores, as well as their self-reported parentese use, were significantly positively correlated with observed parentese use; these relations were not significant for fathers. These results demonstrate that maternal and paternal links between beliefs, self-awareness, and behavior may be distinct, emphasizing the importance of studying all caregivers and using observational methodologies. More broadly, a thorough understanding of the factors that shape infants’ language environments contributes to theories of language acquisition and can aid in intervention design.
{"title":"What do parents really think? Knowledge, beliefs, and self-awareness of parentese in relation to its use in daylong recordings","authors":"Naja Ferjan Ramírez","doi":"10.1177/01427237231216010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231216010","url":null,"abstract":"This study focuses on parental use of parentese: the acoustically exaggerated, clear, and higher-pitched speech produced by adults across cultures when they address infants. While previous research shows that parentese enhances language learning and processing, it is still unclear what drives the variability in the amount of parental parentese use. We report on the development of a survey related to parental beliefs, knowledge, and self-awareness of parentese, and the cross-validation of this survey with daylong recordings in which parental parentese was measured through observation. Forty mother–father (18 monolingual English and 22 bilingual Spanish/English) U.S. families with infants between 3 and 24 months of age participated. Scores on the parentese questionnaire showed wide variability, suggesting that many parents were unsure about the effects of parentese on infant language development, and had limited self-awareness of their own parentese use. Almost half of the parents claimed that they talked to their child ‘like an adult’, and a similar number disagreed with the claim that parentese can support language learning. Our observational assessment of parentese demonstrated that all mothers and all fathers used parentese when talking to their infants; mothers in an average of 81% and fathers in an average of 69% of child-directed segments. Importantly, maternal parentese knowledge/beliefs scores, as well as their self-reported parentese use, were significantly positively correlated with observed parentese use; these relations were not significant for fathers. These results demonstrate that maternal and paternal links between beliefs, self-awareness, and behavior may be distinct, emphasizing the importance of studying all caregivers and using observational methodologies. More broadly, a thorough understanding of the factors that shape infants’ language environments contributes to theories of language acquisition and can aid in intervention design.","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"223 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139153076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-25DOI: 10.1177/01427237231218768
Jasmijn E. Bosch
{"title":"Book review: Saiegh-Haddad, E., Laks, L., & McBride, C., Handbook of literacy in diglossia and in dialectal contexts: Psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, and educational perspectives","authors":"Jasmijn E. Bosch","doi":"10.1177/01427237231218768","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231218768","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139158584","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-11DOI: 10.1177/01427237231215104
Ian Morton, C. Melanie Schuele
Comprehension of sentences with a center-embedded, object-gapped relative clause (ORC) is challenging for children as well as adults. Mismatching lexical and grammatical features of subject noun phrases (NPs) across the main clause and relative clause has been shown to facilitate comprehension. Adani et al. concluded that children’s comprehension improved under conditions of NP number mismatch (e.g., singular main clause subject and plural relative clause subject) as compared with NP number match (e.g., both singular subjects). However, their stimuli provided number information on verb phrases (VPs) as well as NPs creating a confound for conclusions about facilitative effects of NP number mismatch. In this study, we isolated the contribution of NP number mismatch. Notably, 32 6-year-olds with typical language participated in a center-embedded, ORC sentence comprehension task with 4 types of stimuli: (a) NP number mismatch without VP number information (NP mismatch only), (b) NP number match without VP number information (NP match only), (c) NP number mismatch with VP number mismatch (NP + VP mismatch), and (d) NP number match with VP number match (NP + VP match). Children selected one of four pictures in an array to a verbally presented relative clause sentence; 56 sentences were presented. The within-subjects comparison for NP mismatch only and NP match only was not significant. However, the within-subjects comparison for NP mismatch only and NP + VP mismatch was significant. Children were more successful in NP + VP mismatch sentence comprehension ([Formula: see text] = 0.70).
{"title":"Six-year-olds’ comprehension of object-gapped relative clause sentences: Investigating the contribution of NP number mismatch","authors":"Ian Morton, C. Melanie Schuele","doi":"10.1177/01427237231215104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/01427237231215104","url":null,"abstract":"Comprehension of sentences with a center-embedded, object-gapped relative clause (ORC) is challenging for children as well as adults. Mismatching lexical and grammatical features of subject noun phrases (NPs) across the main clause and relative clause has been shown to facilitate comprehension. Adani et al. concluded that children’s comprehension improved under conditions of NP number mismatch (e.g., singular main clause subject and plural relative clause subject) as compared with NP number match (e.g., both singular subjects). However, their stimuli provided number information on verb phrases (VPs) as well as NPs creating a confound for conclusions about facilitative effects of NP number mismatch. In this study, we isolated the contribution of NP number mismatch. Notably, 32 6-year-olds with typical language participated in a center-embedded, ORC sentence comprehension task with 4 types of stimuli: (a) NP number mismatch without VP number information (NP mismatch only), (b) NP number match without VP number information (NP match only), (c) NP number mismatch with VP number mismatch (NP + VP mismatch), and (d) NP number match with VP number match (NP + VP match). Children selected one of four pictures in an array to a verbally presented relative clause sentence; 56 sentences were presented. The within-subjects comparison for NP mismatch only and NP match only was not significant. However, the within-subjects comparison for NP mismatch only and NP + VP mismatch was significant. Children were more successful in NP + VP mismatch sentence comprehension ([Formula: see text] = 0.70).","PeriodicalId":47254,"journal":{"name":"First Language","volume":"10 1‐2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138978684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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