Object relatives made easy: A cross-linguistic comparison of the constraints influencing young children's processing of relative clauses

Abstract

We present the results from four studies, two corpora and two experimental, which suggest that English- and German-speaking children (3;1–4;9 years) use multiple constraints to process and produce object relative clauses. Our two corpora studies show that children produce object relatives that reflect the distributional and discourse regularities of the input. Specifically, the results show that when children produce object relatives they most often do so with (a) an inanimate head noun, and (b) a pronominal relative clause subject. Our experimental findings show that children use these constraints to process and produce this construction type. Moreover, when children were required to repeat the object relatives they most often use in naturalistic speech, the subject-object asymmetry in processing of relative clauses disappeared. We also report cross-linguistic differences in children's rate of acquisition which reflect properties of the input language. Overall, our results suggest that children are sensitive to the same constraints on relative clause processing as adults

The discourse bases of relativization: An investigation of young German and English-speaking children's comprehension of relative clauses

“…More specifically, about 90 percent of all object relatives produced by the children between the age of 2;3 and 5;2 followed a head NP denoting a non-human referent. Similar results were reported by Kidd et al (2007). Looking at spoken corpora from four English children and one German child between the age of 2;0 and 5;0, we found that both English-and German-speaking children used object relatives with inanimate heads 75 percent of the time.…”

“…Again, based on discourse function and following frequency distributions in previous linguistic experience, the parser can expect an object relative after hearing a relativizer followed by a pronoun (Reali and Christiansen 2007a). For a more detailed summary of the results and their interpretations see Kidd et al (2007). Do children show the same sensitivity to these constraints in their own RC production?…”

“…In order also to test these constraints in an experimental setting, Kidd et al (2007) asked 3-and 4-year old English and German children to imitate subject and object relatives with animate and inanimate heads as well as object relatives with pronominal and full-NP subjects. The children were tested on the following kinds of sentences:…”

“…Adults and children usually hear and produce object relatives with inanimate heads and pronominal subjects (e.g., the car that we bought last year) (cf. Kidd et al 2007). We tested young 3-year old German-and English-speaking children with a referential selection task.…”

Does headedness affect processing? A new look at the VO–OV contrast

“…Rispoli (1987), Nomura & Shirai (1997), Fukuda &Choi (2009), andTsujimura (2006) show that Japanese children under 3;0 use intransitive verbs significantly more often than transitive verbs -in contrast to their Portuguese or English-speaking peers. Fukuda & Choi (2009) Kidd et al 2007 for the close relationship between the comprehension and production systems of children and adults).…”