How do 5-year-olds understand questions? Differences in languages across Europe

Sauerland, Uli; Grohmann, Kleanthes Κ.; Guasti, Maria Teresa; Anđelković, Darinka; Argus, Reili; Armon-Lotem, Sharon; Arosio, Fabrizio; Avram, Larisa; Costa, João; Dabašinskiené, Ineta; López, Kristine Jensen de; Gatt, Daniela; Grech, Helen; Haman, Ewa; Hout, Angeliek van; Hržica, Gordana; Kainhofer, Judith; Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė, Laura; Kunnari, Sari; Kovačević, Melita; Kraljević, Jelena Kuvač; Lipowska, Katarzyna; Mejias, Sandrine; Popović, Maša; Ruzaitė, Jūratė; Savić, Maja; Sevcenco, Anca; Varlokosta, Spyridoula; Varnava, Marina; Yatsushiro, Kazuko

doi:10.1177/0142723716640236

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…One example is the use of an overly precise number (Krifka 2009;Solt 2015) such as The talk should be forty-five/#forty-four minutes long. Curiously, Sauerland and Gotzner (2013) report that adults use overly precise numbers about 20% of the time in an internet-based study about number trivia, which mirrors the use of overly long phrases by adults that we report below.…”

Section: The Pragmatics Of Passives In Relative Clauses In Germansupporting

confidence: 69%

How to be Brief: Children’s and Adults’ Application of Grice’s Brevity Maxim in Production

Yatsushiro

Sauerland

2019

Languages

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The brevity maxim of Gricean pragmatics states that unnecessary prolixity should be avoided. We report a case in which 5-year-old children’s performance conforms better to Grice’s maxim than adults’ behavior. Our data come from a semi-spontaneous German relative clause production study that we carried out with 5- and 7-year-old children as well as adults. In particular, we focus on the pragmatics of the passive predicates that were produced. These constituted about a third of both child and adult productions in items that targeted an object relative clause structure. Since the expression of the agent is syntactically optional with passive predicates, the brevity maxim predicts that the agent should only be expressed when it is informative. We compare two conditions to test this prediction: one where the agent is informative and one where it is not. We find that 5-year-old children display significantly greater sensitivity to the brevity maxim than adults do. In two follow-up studies, we show that adults’ violations of brevity cannot be explained by priming of by-phrases expressing the agent and that there is an effect of age within children as well.

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Section: The Pragmatics Of Passives In Relative Clauses In Germansupporting

confidence: 69%

How to be Brief: Children’s and Adults’ Application of Grice’s Brevity Maxim in Production

Yatsushiro

Sauerland

2019

Languages

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“…Turning to comprehension, experimental studies targeting complex sentences in Greek, such as relative clauses and wh-questions, have reported that case marking has a facilitatory effect on the comprehension of these structures. Preschool and school-age monolingual Greek-speaking children make use of case-marking cues to assign thematic roles when parsing complex structures in a way that may accelerate acquisition (Guasti, Stavrakaki, & Arosio, 2012;Sauerland et al, 2016;Stavrakaki, Tasioudi, & Guasti, 2015;Tsimpli & Stavrakaki, 2001;Varlokosta, Nerantzini, & Papadopoulou, 2015). For example, Guasti et al (2012) reported that relative clauses were acquired in Greek-speaking children between the ages of four and five years, almost two years earlier than the Italian-speaking children in their study, a language without case marking.…”

Section: Case Marking and Word Order In Greek-speaking Monolingual Chmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The early acquisition of case marking in Greek allows for the early acquisition of variable word order. Spontaneous language samples (Kapetangianni, 2011) (Tsimpli, 2005) (Guasti, Stavrakaki, & Arosio, 2012;Sauerland et al, 2016;Stavrakaki, Tasioudi, & Guasti, 2015;Tsimpli & Stavrakaki, 2001;Varlokosta, Nerantzini, & Papadopoulou, 2015). For example, Guasti et al (2012) reported that relative clauses were acquired in Greek-speaking children between the ages of four and five years, almost two years earlier than the Italian-speaking children in their study, a language without case marking.…”

Section: Case Marking and Word Order In Greek-speaking Monolingual Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

Case marking and word order in Greek heritage children

Chondrogianni

Schwartz

2020

J. Child Lang.

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This study examined the linguistic and individual-level factors that render case marking a vulnerable domain in English-dominant Greek heritage children. We also investigated whether heritage language (HL) children can use case-marking cues to interpret (non-)canonical sentences in Greek similarly to their monolingual peers. A group of six- to twelve-year-old Greek heritage children in New York City and a control group of age-matched monolingual children living in Greece participated in a production and a picture verification task targeting case marking and (non-)canonical word order in Greek. HL children produced syncretic inflectional errors, also found in preschool monolingual children. In the comprehension task, HL children showed variable performance on the non-canonical OVS but ceiling performance on the SVO conditions, which suggests influence from English. Linguistic factors such as case transparency affected comprehension, whereas child-level factors such as proficiency and degree of (early) use of Greek influenced performance on both modalities.

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“…Estas assimetrias foram identificadas na aquisição de muitas línguas (cf. Sauerland et al, 2016;Friedmann, Rizzi & Belletti, 2016, Guasti, Brachini & Arozio, 2012.…”

Section: Aquisição Do Movimento-q E De Interrogativas-qunclassified

Compreensão e produção oral de interrogativas-Q em crianças portuguesas surdas com implante coclear

Moita

Lobo²

2018

RAPL

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The present study investigates the comprehension and production of Portuguese wh-questions by hearing impaired children with cochlear implants. We investigate whether the asymmetries found in typically developing children are also present in our target group or whether the difficulties are more widespread. In particular, we investigate whether there are asymmetries between subject and (DP/PP) object wh-questions produced by these children, and whether wh-questions with a lexical restriction are more difficult than bare wh-questions. We also consider the importance of extra-linguistic variables, such as age of implantation, hearing age, early attendance of speech and language therapy sessions, and exposure to sign language.

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How do 5-year-olds understand questions? Differences in languages across Europe

Cited by 7 publications

References 43 publications

How to be Brief: Children’s and Adults’ Application of Grice’s Brevity Maxim in Production

How to be Brief: Children’s and Adults’ Application of Grice’s Brevity Maxim in Production

Case marking and word order in Greek heritage children

Compreensão e produção oral de interrogativas-Q em crianças portuguesas surdas com implante coclear

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