The recognition of discontinuous verbal dependencies by German 19-month-olds : evidence for lexical and structural influences on children’s early processing capacities

  • Recent work has shown that English-learning 18-month-olds can detect the relationship between discontinuous morphemes such as is and -ing in Grandma is always running (Gomez, 2002; Santelmann & Jusczyk, 1998) but only at a maximum of 3 intervening syllables. In this article we examine the tracking of discontinuous dependencies in children acquiring German. Due to freer word order, German allows for greater distances between dependent elements and a greater syntactic variety of the intervening elements than English does. The aim of this study was to investigate whether factors other than distance may influence the child’s capacity to recognize discontinuous elements. Our findings provide evidence that children’s recognition capacities are affected not only by distance but also by their ability to linguistically analyze the material intervening between the dependent elements. We speculate that this result supports the existence of processing mechanisms that reduce a discontinuous relation to a local one based on subcategorizationRecent work has shown that English-learning 18-month-olds can detect the relationship between discontinuous morphemes such as is and -ing in Grandma is always running (Gomez, 2002; Santelmann & Jusczyk, 1998) but only at a maximum of 3 intervening syllables. In this article we examine the tracking of discontinuous dependencies in children acquiring German. Due to freer word order, German allows for greater distances between dependent elements and a greater syntactic variety of the intervening elements than English does. The aim of this study was to investigate whether factors other than distance may influence the child’s capacity to recognize discontinuous elements. Our findings provide evidence that children’s recognition capacities are affected not only by distance but also by their ability to linguistically analyze the material intervening between the dependent elements. We speculate that this result supports the existence of processing mechanisms that reduce a discontinuous relation to a local one based on subcategorization relations.show moreshow less

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Metadaten
Author details:Barbara HöhleORCiDGND, Michaela Schmitz, Anja Müller, Jürgen Weissenborn
URN:urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-16297
Publication series (Volume number):Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe (paper 024)
Publication type:Postprint
Language:English
Publication year:2006
Publishing institution:Universität Potsdam
Release date:2008/01/25
Source:Language Learning and Development. - New York : Psychology Press, 2 (2006), 3, p. 277-300. - ISSN 1547-3341
Organizational units:Extern / Extern
Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik
DDC classification:4 Sprache / 40 Sprache / 400 Sprache
Collection(s):Universität Potsdam / Schriftenreihen / Interdisciplinary studies on information structure : ISIS ; working papers of the SFB 632, ISSN 1866-4725 / ISIS (2006) 05
Institution name at the time of the publication:Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft
License (English):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung - Nicht-kommerziell - Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen 3.0 Unported
External remark:
This is an electronic version of an article published in Language Learning and Development. - New York : Psychology Press, 2 (2006), 3, p. 277-300
ISSN 1547-3341
Language Learning and Development is available online at informaworldTM .
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