Is Children's Acquisition of the Passive a Staged Process? Evidence from Six- and Nine-Year-Olds' Production of Passives

Autor/inn/en	Messenger, Katherine; Branigan, Holly P.; McLean, Janet F.
Titel	Is Children's Acquisition of the Passive a Staged Process? Evidence from Six- and Nine-Year-Olds' Production of Passives
Quelle	In: Journal of Child Language, 39 (2012) 5, S.991-1016 (26 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0305-0009
DOI	10.1017/S0305000911000377
Schlagwörter	Evidence; Syntax; Priming; Verbs; Child Language; Language Acquisition; Language Research; Children; Role; Age Differences; Concept Formation + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Evidenz; 'Children''s language'; Kindersprache; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Sprachforschung; Child; Kind; Kinder; Rollen; Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Concept learning; Begriffsbildung
Abstract	We report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children's acquisition of the passive is a staged process, with acquisition of constituent structure preceding acquisition of thematic role mappings. Six-year-olds and nine-year-olds described transitive actions after hearing active and passive prime descriptions involving the same or different thematic roles. Both groups showed a strong tendency to reuse in their own description the syntactic structure they had just heard, including well-formed passives after passive primes, irrespective of whether thematic roles were repeated between prime and target. However, following passive primes, six-year-olds but not nine-year-olds also produced reversed passives, with well-formed constituent structure but incorrect thematic role mappings. These results suggest that by six, children have mastered the constituent structure of the passive; however, they have not yet mastered the non-canonical thematic role mapping. By nine, children have mastered both the syntactic and thematic dimensions of this structure. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10