Acquisition of Prosodic Focus Marking by English, French, and German Three-, Four-, Five- and Six-Year-Olds

Autor/inn/en	Szendroi, Kriszta; Bernard, Carline; Berger, Frauke; Gervain, Judit; Hohle, Barbara
Titel	Acquisition of Prosodic Focus Marking by English, French, and German Three-, Four-, Five- and Six-Year-Olds
Quelle	In: Journal of Child Language, 45 (2018) 1, S.219-241 (23 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0305-0009
Schlagwörter	Child Language; Young Children; Suprasegmentals; French; German; English; Comprehension; Novelty (Stimulus Dimension); Syntax; Comparative Analysis + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? 'Children''s language'; Kindersprache; Frühe Kindheit; Französisch; Deutscher; English language; Englisch; Verstehen; Verständnis
Abstract	Previous research on young children's knowledge of prosodic focus marking has revealed an apparent paradox, with comprehension appearing to lag behind production. Comprehension of prosodic focus is difficult to study experimentally due to its subtle and ambiguous contribution to pragmatic meaning. We designed a novel comprehension task, which revealed that three- to six-year-old children show adult-like comprehension of the prosodic marking of subject and object focus. Our findings thus support the view that production does not precede comprehension in the acquisition of focus. We tested participants speaking English, German, and French. All three languages allow prosodic subject and object focus marking, but use additional syntactic marking to varying degrees (English: dispreferred; German: possible; French preferred). French participants produced fewer subject marked responses than English participants. We found no other cross-linguistic differences. Participants interpreted prosodic focus marking similarly and in an adult-like fashion in all three languages. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01