Discourse Effect on Children's Interpretation of Pre-Subject Exclusive Zhiyou 'Only'.
It has been reported for decades that preschool children (age 4-7) tend to assign non-adult-like interpretations for sentences with pre-subject exclusive only. This study reports findings from two experiments investigating (1) the effects of (in)congruent implicit questions in discourse contexts and...
| Publicado en: | Language Learning & Development Vol. 20; no. 4; pp. 324 - 343 |
|---|---|
| Autor principal: | |
| Formato: | Artículo |
| Publicado: |
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Oct-Dec2024
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=179710287&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 179710287 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 15475441 W44 jtl: Language Learning & Development issn: 15475441 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Oct-Dec2024 vid: 20 iid: 4 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 179710287 10.1080/15475441.2024.2313223 ppf: 324 ppct: 19 formats: tig: atl: Discourse Effect on Children's Interpretation of Pre-Subject Exclusive Zhiyou 'Only'. aug: au: Su, Yi-Ching affil: Graduate Institute of Linguistics Graduate Institute of Linguistics Hsinchu, Taiwan su: Taiwan Comparative grammar Preschools Discourse analysis School children Semantics Language acquisition Research funding Phonological awareness Descriptive statistics Verbal behavior sug: subj: Comparative grammar Preschools Discourse analysis School children Semantics Language acquisition Taiwan Child Day Care Services Research funding Phonological awareness Descriptive statistics Verbal behavior ab: It has been reported for decades that preschool children (age 4-7) tend to assign non-adult-like interpretations for sentences with pre-subject exclusive only. This study reports findings from two experiments investigating (1) the effects of (in)congruent implicit questions in discourse contexts and (2) word order transformation on children's interpretations of Mandarin pre-subject zhiyou 'only'. Experiment 1 showed that children performed non-adult-like in the incongruent discourse condition, similar to the patterns found in previous studies, but adult-like in the congruent discourse condition. Experiment 2 showed that using sentences similar to English 'Those who ate apples was only the boy' where the VP precedes the subject NP with zhiyou 'only' was not sufficient to overcome the processing difficulty caused by the incongruent discourse for preschool children. The results demonstrate that a congruent context taking the VP as the background (i.e., given and salient information) in Experiment 1, but not the syntactic manipulation in Experiment 2, is sufficient for children to interpret sentences with pre-subject zhiyou 'only' at an adult-like level of accuracy. The findings demonstrate that children have the syntactic knowledge for sentences with exclusive zhiyou 'only', but the discourse incongruence hinders them from correctly interpreting sentences with exclusive zhiyou 'only' when it is in pre-subject position.It has been reported for decades that preschool children (age 4-7) tend to assign non-adult-like interpretations for sentences with pre-subject exclusive only. This study reports findings from two experiments investigating (1) the effects of (in)congruent implicit questions in discourse contexts and (2) word order transformation on children's interpretations of Mandarin pre-subject zhiyou 'only'. Experiment 1 showed that children performed non-adult-like in the incongruent discourse condition, similar to the patterns found in previous studies, but adult-like in the congruent discourse condition. Experiment 2 showed that using sentences similar to English 'Those who ate apples was only the boy' where the VP precedes the subject NP with zhiyou 'only' was not sufficient to overcome the processing difficulty caused by the incongruent discourse for preschool children. The results demonstrate that a congruent context taking the VP as the background (i.e., given and salient information) in Experiment 1, but not the syntactic manipulation in Experiment 2, is sufficient for children to interpret sentences with pre-subject zhiyou 'only' at an adult-like level of accuracy. The findings demonstrate that children have the syntactic knowledge for sentences with exclusive zhiyou 'only', but the discourse incongruence hinders them from correctly interpreting sentences with exclusive zhiyou 'only' when it is in pre-subject position. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|