Can prosody encode recursive embedding? Children's realizations of complex NPs in Japanese

Abstract

Recursive NPs are difficult to produce and late to emerge. We compare prosodic and syntactic abilities in Japanese-speaking five- and six-year-olds (n = 28) and adults (n = 10). It is reported that syntactic structure in Japanese is prosodically marked via downstep and metrical boost. Results of an elicited imitation task suggested that children had acquired the lexical prosody (contrast between accented and unaccented words), a pre-requisite for downstep realization. While downstep, the prosodic phrasing involved in the complex NPs in this study, was established, children showed interspeaker variation with the metrical boost, a feature that distinguishes recursively embedded NPs from non-recursive NPs. However, variability was also found in adults, indicating that, in contrast to previous results, prosodic encoding of syntax is generally unreliable in adult speech. Finally, the magnitude of metrical boost was not correlated to children's ability to produce recursive possessives, suggesting that prosody does not help bootstrap Japanese children's recursive phrases.

On the L1 acquisition of recursive no in Japanese

“…Participants were first presented with two short practice trials. After the recursion test, participants took part in a sentence repetition task involving complex NPs, for the purpose of prosodic analysis, reported elsewhere (Hirayama et al, 2020).…”

“…A recent study of recursive possessives by Hirayama et al (2020) finds that by the age of five, most children produce recursive possessives in an elicitation task, but at low rates. Between the ages of five and six, production of recursive possesives increases drastically, doubling in rates.…”