Effects of semantic and syntactic complexities and aspectual class on past tense production

  • This paper reports results from a series of experiments that investigated whether semantic and/or syntactic complexity influences young Dutch children’s production of past tense forms. The constructions used in the three experiments were (i) simple sentences (the Simple Sentence Experiment), (ii) complex sentences with CP complements (the Complement Clause Experiment) and (iii) complex sentences with relative clauses (the Relative Clause Experiment). The stimuli involved both atelic and telic predicates. The goal of this paper is to address the following questions. Q1. Does semantic complexity regarding temporal anchoring influence the types of errors that children make in the experiments? For example, do children make certain types of errors when a past tense has to be anchored to the Utterance Time (UT), as compared to when it has to be anchored to the matrix topic time (TT)? Q2. Do different syntactic positions influence children’s performance on past-tense production? Do children perform better in the Simple Sentence Experiment compared to complex sentences involving two finite clauses (the Complement Clause Experiment and the Relative Clause Experiment)? In complex sentence trials, do children perform differently when the CPs are complements vs. when the CPs are adjunct clauses? (Lebeaux 1990, 2000) Q3. Do Dutch children make more errors with certain types of predicate (such as atelic predicates)? Alternatively, do children produce a certain type of error with a certain type of predicates (such as producing a perfect aspect with punctual predicates)? Bronckart and Sinclair (1973), for example, found that until the age of 6, French children showed a tendency to use passé composé with perfective events and simple present with imperfective events; we will investigate whether or not the equivalent of this is observed in Dutch.

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Metadaten
Author:Ayumi Matsuo
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-308537
URL:http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/fileadmin/material/ZASPiL_Volltexte/zp29/zaspil29-matsuo.pdf
ISSN:1435-9588
ISSN:0947-7055
Parent Title (English):Acquisition of aspect / Ed. by Dagmar Bittner & Natalia Gagarina, , Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin, 2003; ZAS papers in linguistics Vol. 29
Publisher:Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung
Place of publication:Berlin
Document Type:Part of a Book
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2013/11/14
Year of first Publication:2003
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2013/11/14
GND Keyword:Morphologie; Kindersprache; Aspekt; Semantik; Syntax; Niederländisch
Volume:29
Page Number:27
First Page:149
Last Page:175
HeBIS-PPN:381233936
Dewey Decimal Classification:4 Sprache / 43 Deutsch, germanische Sprachen allgemein / 430 Germanische Sprachen; Deutsch
4 Sprache / 43 Deutsch, germanische Sprachen allgemein / 439 Andere germanische Sprachen
Sammlungen:Linguistik
Linguistik-Klassifikation:Linguistik-Klassifikation: Syntax
Linguistik-Klassifikation: Spracherwerb / Language acquisition
Linguistik-Klassifikation: Semantik / Semantics
Linguistik-Klassifikation: Morphologie / Morphology
Zeitschriften / Jahresberichte:ZAS papers in linguistics : ZASPiL / ZASPiL 29 = Acquisition of aspect
:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-306704
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht