TY  - JOUR
A1  - Franz, Isabelle
A1  - Kentner, Gerrit
A1  - Domahs, Frank
T1  - The impact of animacy and speech rhythm on the word order of conjuncts in German preschoolers and adults
T2  - Laboratory phonology
N2  - In this study, we investigated the impact of two constraints on the linear order of constituents in German preschool children’s and adults’ speech production: a rhythmic (*LAPSE, militating against sequences of unstressed syllables) and a semantic one (ANIM, requiring animate referents to be named before inanimate ones). Participants were asked to produce coordinated bare noun phrases in response to picture stimuli (e.g., Delfin und Planet, ‘dolphin and planet’) without any predefined word order. Overall, children and adults preferably produced animate items before inanimate ones, confirming findings of Prat-Sala, Shillcock, and Sorace (2000). In the group of preschoolers, the strength of the animacy effect correlated positively with age. Furthermore, the order of the conjuncts was affected by the rhythmic constraint, such that disrhythmic sequences, i.e., stress lapses, were avoided. In both groups, the latter result was significant when the two stimulus pictures did not vary with respect to animacy. In sum, our findings suggest a stronger influence of animacy compared to rhythmic well-formedness on conjunct ordering for German speaking children and adults, in line with findings by McDonald, Bock, and Kelly (1993) who investigated English speaking adults.
KW  - rhythm
KW  - animacy
KW  - picture naming
KW  - word order
KW  - children
KW  - adults
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/62910
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-629102
SN  - 1868-6354
VL  - 12
IS  - 1, art. 12
SP  - 1
EP  - 38
PB  - Ubiquity Press
CY  - London
ER  -