Cue Reliability, Salience and Early Comprehension of Agreement: Evidence from Greek

Autor/inn/en	Kenanidis, Panagiotis; Chondrogianni, Vicky; Legendre, Géraldine; Culbertson, Jennifer
Titel	Cue Reliability, Salience and Early Comprehension of Agreement: Evidence from Greek
Quelle	In: Journal of Child Language, 48 (2021) 4, S.815-833 (19 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0305-0009
DOI	10.1017/S0305000920000628
Schlagwörter	Greek; Comprehension; Cues; Child Language; Form Classes (Languages); Morphemes; Preschool Children; Language Processing + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Grieche; Griechisch; Verstehen; Verständnis; Stichwort; 'Children''s language'; Kindersprache; Analytischer Sprachbau; Morphem; Pre-school age; Preschool age; Child; Children; Pre-school education; Preschool education; Vorschulalter; Kind; Kinder; Vorschulkind; Vorschulkinder; Vorschulerziehung; Vorschule; Sprachverarbeitung
Abstract	Previous studies across languages (English, Spanish, French) have argued that perceptual salience and cue reliability can explain cross-linguistic differences in early comprehension of verbal agreement. Here we tested this hypothesis further by investigating early comprehension in Greek, where markers have high salience and reliability (compared to Spanish and English) predicting early comprehension, as in French. We investigated two and three-year-old Greek-speaking children's ability to distinguish third person singular and plural agreement in a picture-selection task. We also examined the frequency of these morphemes in child-directed speech to address input effects. Results showed that three-year-olds are sensitive to both singular and plural agreement, earlier than children acquiring English and Spanish, but later than French, and despite singular agreement being more frequent than plural agreement in the child corpus. These findings provide further support for the role of salience and reliability during early acquisition, while highlighting a potential effect of morpheme position. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2022/1/01