TY - JOUR A1 - Haendler, Yair A1 - Kliegl, Reinhold A1 - Adani, Flavia T1 - Discourse accessibility constraints in children's processing of object relative clauses JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Children's poor performance on object relative clauses has been explained in terms of intervention locality. This approach predicts that object relatives with a full DP head and an embedded pronominal subject are easier than object relatives in which both the head noun and the embedded subject are full DPs. This prediction is shared by other accounts formulated to explain processing mechanisms. We conducted a visual-world study designed to test the off-line comprehension and on-line processing of object relatives in German-speaking 5-year-olds. Children were tested on three types of object relatives, all having a full DP head noun and differing with respect to the type of nominal phrase that appeared in the embedded subject position: another full DP, a 1st- or a 3rd-person pronoun. Grammatical skills and memory capacity were also assessed in order to see whether and how they affect children's performance. Most accurately processed were object relatives with 1st-person pronoun, independently of children's language and memory skills. Performance on object relatives with two full DPs was overall more accurate than on object relatives with 3rd-person pronoun. In the former condition, children with stronger grammatical skills accurately processed the structure and their memory abilities determined how fast they were; in the latter condition, children only processed accurately the structure if they were strong both in their grammatical skills and in their memory capacity. The results are discussed in the light of accounts that predict different pronoun effects like the ones we find, which depend on the referential properties of the pronouns. We then discuss which role language and memory abilities might have in processing object relatives with various embedded nominal phrases. KW - child language KW - relative clauses KW - discourse KW - pronouns KW - intervention locality KW - visual-world paradigm Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00360 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 6 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Haendler, Yair A1 - Kliegl, Reinhold A1 - Adani, Flavia T1 - Discourse accessibility constraints in children´s processing of object relative clauses JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Children’s poor performance on object relative clauses has been explained in terms of intervention locality. This approach predicts that object relatives with a full DP head and an embedded pronominal subject are easier than object relatives in which both the head noun and the embedded subject are full DPs. This prediction is shared by other accounts formulated to explain processing mechanisms. We conducted a visual-world study designed to test the off-line comprehension and on-line processing of object relatives in German-speaking 5-year-olds. Children were tested on three types of object relatives, all having a full DP head noun and differing with respect to the type of nominal phrase that appeared in the embedded subject position: another full DP, a 1st- or a 3rd-person pronoun. Grammatical skills and memory capacity were also assessed in order to see whether and how they affect children’s performance. Most accurately processed were object relatives with 1st-person pronoun, independently of children’s language and memory skills. Performance on object relatives with two full DPs was overall more accurate than on object relatives with 3rd-person pronoun. In the former condition, children with stronger grammatical skills accurately processed the structure and their memory abilities determined how fast they were; in the latter condition, children only processed accurately the structure if they were strong both in their grammatical skills and in their memory capacity. The results are discussed in the light of accounts that predict different pronoun effects like the ones we find, which depend on the referential properties of the pronouns. We then discuss which role language and memory abilities might have in processing object relatives with various embedded nominal phrases. KW - child language KW - relative clauses KW - discourse KW - pronouns KW - intervention locality KW - visual-world paradigm Y1 - 2015 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00860 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 6 IS - 860 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - GEN A1 - Haendler, Yair A1 - Kliegl, Reinhold A1 - Adani, Flavia T1 - Discourse accessibility constraints in children´s processing of object relative clauses N2 - Children’s poor performance on object relative clauses has been explained in terms of intervention locality. This approach predicts that object relatives with a full DP head and an embedded pronominal subject are easier than object relatives in which both the head noun and the embedded subject are full DPs. This prediction is shared by other accounts formulated to explain processing mechanisms. We conducted a visual-world study designed to test the off-line comprehension and on-line processing of object relatives in German-speaking 5-year-olds. Children were tested on three types of object relatives, all having a full DP head noun and differing with respect to the type of nominal phrase that appeared in the embedded subject position: another full DP, a 1st- or a 3rd-person pronoun. Grammatical skills and memory capacity were also assessed in order to see whether and how they affect children’s performance. Most accurately processed were object relatives with 1st-person pronoun, independently of children’s language and memory skills. Performance on object relatives with two full DPs was overall more accurate than on object relatives with 3rd-person pronoun. In the former condition, children with stronger grammatical skills accurately processed the structure and their memory abilities determined how fast they were; in the latter condition, children only processed accurately the structure if they were strong both in their grammatical skills and in their memory capacity. The results are discussed in the light of accounts that predict different pronoun effects like the ones we find, which depend on the referential properties of the pronouns. We then discuss which role language and memory abilities might have in processing object relatives with various embedded nominal phrases. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 279 KW - child language KW - relative clauses KW - discourse KW - pronouns KW - intervention locality KW - visual-world paradigm Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-78694 ER - TY - THES A1 - Jäger, Lena Ann T1 - Working memory and prediction in human sentence parsing T1 - Arbeitsgedächtnis und Vorhersagbarkeit in der menschlichen Satzverarbeitung BT - cross-linguistic evidence from anaphoric dependencies and relative clauses BT - neue Erkenntnisse durch cross-linguistische Untersuchungen zu anaphorischen Dependenzen und Relativsätzen N2 - This dissertation investigates the working memory mechanism subserving human sentence processing and its relative contribution to processing difficulty as compared to syntactic prediction. Within the last decades, evidence for a content-addressable memory system underlying human cognition in general has accumulated (e.g., Anderson et al., 2004). In sentence processing research, it has been proposed that this general content-addressable architecture is also used for language processing (e.g., McElree, 2000). Although there is a growing body of evidence from various kinds of linguistic dependencies that is consistent with a general content-addressable memory subserving sentence processing (e.g., McElree et al., 2003; VanDyke2006), the case of reflexive-antecedent dependencies has challenged this view. It has been proposed that in the processing of reflexive-antecedent dependencies, a syntactic-structure based memory access is used rather than cue-based retrieval within a content-addressable framework (e.g., Sturt, 2003). Two eye-tracking experiments on Chinese reflexives were designed to tease apart accounts assuming a syntactic-structure based memory access mechanism from cue-based retrieval (implemented in ACT-R as proposed by Lewis and Vasishth (2005). In both experiments, interference effects were observed from noun phrases which syntactically do not qualify as the reflexive's antecedent but match the animacy requirement the reflexive imposes on its antecedent. These results are interpreted as evidence against a purely syntactic-structure based memory access. However, the exact pattern of effects observed in the data is only partially compatible with the Lewis and Vasishth cue-based parsing model. Therefore, an extension of the Lewis and Vasishth model is proposed. Two principles are added to the original model, namely 'cue confusion' and 'distractor prominence'. Although interference effects are generally interpreted in favor of a content-addressable memory architecture, an alternative explanation for interference effects in reflexive processing has been proposed which, crucially, might reconcile interference effects with a structure-based account. It has been argued that interference effects do not necessarily reflect cue-based retrieval interference in a content-addressable memory but might equally well be accounted for by interference effects which have already occurred at the moment of encoding the antecedent in memory (Dillon, 2011). Three experiments (eye-tracking and self-paced reading) on German reflexives and Swedish possessives were designed to tease apart cue-based retrieval interference from encoding interference. The results of all three experiments suggest that there is no evidence that encoding interference affects the retrieval of a reflexive's antecedent. Taken together, these findings suggest that the processing of reflexives can be explained with the same cue-based retrieval mechanism that has been invoked to explain syntactic dependency resolution in a range of other structures. This supports the view that the language processing system is located within a general cognitive architecture, with a general-purpose content-addressable working memory system operating on linguistic expressions. Finally, two experiments (self-paced reading and eye-tracking) using Chinese relative clauses were conducted to determine the relative contribution to sentence processing difficulty of working-memory processes as compared to syntactic prediction during incremental parsing. Chinese has the cross-linguistically rare property of being a language with subject-verb-object word order and pre-nominal relative clauses. This property leads to opposing predictions of expectation-based accounts and memory-based accounts with respect to the relative processing difficulty of subject vs. object relatives. Previous studies showed contradictory results, which has been attributed to different kinds local ambiguities confounding the materials (Lin and Bever, 2011). The two experiments presented are the first to compare Chinese relatives clauses in syntactically unambiguous contexts. The results of both experiments were consistent with the predictions of the expectation-based account of sentence processing but not with the memory-based account. From these findings, I conclude that any theory of human sentence processing needs to take into account the power of predictive processes unfolding in the human mind. N2 - Diese Dissertation untersucht die der menschlichen Satzverarbeitung zugrunde liegenden Mechanismen des Arbeitsgedächtnisses sowie deren Bedeutung für die Verarbeitungskomplexität im Vergleich zu dem Einfluss syntaktischer Erwartung. Vor dem Hintergrund der in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten angewachsenen empirischen Evidenz für ein assoziatives Gedächtnissystem als Grundlage der menschlichen Kognition im Allgemeinen (z.B. Anderson et al., 2004) wurde u.a. von McElree (2000) vorgeschlagen, dass dieses assoziative Gedächtnissystem auch der Sprachverarbeitung im Besonderen dient (z.B. McElree, 2000) und die Sprachverarbeitung folglich nicht etwa als ein von anderen kognitiven Fähigkeiten weitgehend losgelöstes Modul (z.B. Frazier, 1979) zu begreifen ist. Obwohl sich die Evidenz für ein assoziatives Gedächtnis in der Sprachverarbeitung stetig mehrt (z.B. McElree et al., 2003; VanDyke2006), werden Daten zur Verarbeitung von Reflexivpronomen als Argument gegen ein assoziatives Gedächtnis herangezogen. So schlug beispielsweise Sturt (2003) vor, dass der Gedächtniszugriff in der Verarbeitung von Reflexivpronomen-Antezedens-Dependenzen nicht assoziativer Natur ist, sondern rein syntaktisch gesteuert ist (z.B., Sturt, 2003). Im ersten Teil der vorliegenden Arbeit werden zwei Leseexperimente (Eyetracking) vorgestellt, welche die Verarbeitung des chinesischen Reflexivpronomens 'ziji' testen und die darauf ausgelegt sind, Theorien, die einen syntaktisch gesteuerten Gedächtniszugriff annehmen, von Theorien, die einen assoziativen Gedächtniszugriff, wie er beispielsweise in dem ACTR-basierten Modell von Lewis and Vasishth (2005) implementiert wurde, zu unterscheiden. In beiden Experimenten wurden Interferenzeffekte von Nominalphrasen beobachtet, die syntaktisch nicht als Antezedens des Reflexivpronomens in Frage kommen, aber das Belebtheitskriterium, das 'ziji' an seinen Antezedens stellt, erfüllen. Diese Ergebnisse werden als Evidenz gegen einen rein syntaktisch gesteuerten Gedächtniszugriff interpretiert. Jedoch sind diese Ergebnisse auch mit dem assoziativen Modell von Lewis und Vasishth (2005) nicht vollkommen vereinbar. Daher wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit eine Erweiterung des Modells von Lewis und Vasishth entwickelt. Zwei neue Prinzipien, 'cue confusion' und 'distractor prominence’, werden dem Originalmodell hinzugefügt und deren Auswirkungen auf die Vorhersagen des Modells diskutiert. Wenngleich Interferenzeffekte im Allgemeinen als Evidenz für ein assoziatives Gedächtnis herangezogen werden, argumentierte Dillon (2011), dass die empirisch beobachteten Interferenzeffekte nicht notwendigerweise Interferenzen im Moment eines assoziativen Gedächtniszugriffs reflektieren, sondern gleichermaßen Interferenzen widerspiegeln können, die bereits bei der Abspeicherung des entsprechenden Elements (z.B. des Antezedens in Reflexiv-Antezedens-Dependenzen) im Gedächtnis stattgefunden haben. Dies würde Interferenzeffekte mit einem nicht-assoziativen Gedächtnismodell vereinbar machen. Im zweiten Teil dieser Dissertation werden drei Experimente (selbst-gesteuertes Lesen und Eyetracking) vorgestellt, die deutsche Reflexivpronomen sowie schwedische Possessivpronomen testen und darauf abzielen, Rückschlüsse über den Moment der Interferenz (Interferenz beim Gedächtniszugriff im Gegensatz zu Interferenz bei der Speicherung) zu ziehen. Die Ergebnisse aller drei Experimente zeigen, dass etwaige Interferenzen beim Abspeichern eines Nomens keinen Einfluss auf dessen späteren Zugriff haben. Zusammengefasst zeigen die Ergebnisse dieser Experimente zum Chinesischen, Deutschen und Schwedischen, dass die Verarbeitung von Reflexivpronomen mit demselben assoziativen Gedächtniszugriff erklärt werden kann, von dem angenommen wird, dass er der Verarbeitung einer Reihe anderer syntaktischer Dependenzen zugrunde liegt. Darüber hinaus sind die hier vorgestellten Ergebnisse im Einklang mit einer generellen Theorie über die menschliche Kognition, die das Sprachverarbeitungssystem als Bestandteil einer allgemeinen kognitiven Architektur begreift, in welcher ein allgemeines assoziatives Gedächtnissystem auf sprachlichen Repräsentationen operiert. Im dritten Teil dieser Dissertation werden zwei weitere Leseexperimente (selbst-gesteuertes Lesen und Eyetracking) vorgestellt, in denen anhand chinesischer Relativsätze die Wirkung von Arbeitsgedächtnisprozessen im Vergleich zu der Wirkung syntaktischer Erwartung auf die Komplexität der inkrementellen Satzverarbeitung untersucht wird. Chinesisch ist cross-linguistisch insofern eine außergewöhnliche Sprache, als dass es eine Subjekt-Verb-Objekt-Wortstellung mit pränominalen Relativsätzen vereint. Die Kombination dieser Eigenschaften führt dazu, dass Theorien, die Satzverarbeitungskomplexität primär Arbeitsgedächtnisprozessen zuschreiben (z.B. Gibson, 2000), und erwartungsbasierte Theorien, welche die Satzverarbeitungskomplexität dem Erfüllen bzw. dem Brechen syntaktischer oder lexikalischer Erwartungen zuschreiben (z.B. Hale, 2001; Levy, 2008), gegensätzliche Vorhersagen machen. Bisherige Studien zu chinesischen Relativsätzen zeigten widersprüchliche Ergebnisse, was mit dem Vorhandensein konfundierender lokaler syntaktischer Ambiguitäten in den Stimuli erklärt wurde (Lin und Bever, 2011). Die beiden in dieser Arbeit vorgestellten Experimente testen erstmals chinesische Relativsätze anhand von Materialien, die frei von syntaktischen Ambiguitäten sind. Die Ergebnisse beider Experimente sind vereinbar mit erwartungsbasierten Theorien, aber nicht mit Theorien, die Satzverarbeitungskomplexität allein mit Arbeitsgedächtnisprozessen erklären. Diese Ergebnisse zeigen, dass jede umfassende Theorie der Satzverarbeitung erwartungsgesteuerten kognitiven Prozessen einen wichtigen Stellenwert einräumen muss. KW - working memory KW - Arbeitsgedächtnis KW - sentence processing KW - Satzverarbeitung KW - cognitive modeling KW - kognitive Modellierung KW - psycholinguistics KW - Psycholinguistik KW - ACT-R KW - Chinese KW - Chinesisch KW - reflexives KW - Reflexivpronomen KW - relative clauses KW - Relativsätze KW - linguistics KW - Linguistik KW - German KW - Deutsch KW - prediction KW - syntactic expectation KW - content-addressable memory Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-82517 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Stegenwallner-Schütz, Maja Henny Katherine A1 - Händler, Yair A1 - Zukowski, Andrea T1 - Elicited production of relative clauses in German: Evidence from typically developing children and children with specific language impairment JF - First language N2 - We elicited the production of various types of relative clauses in a group of German-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in order to test the movement optionality account of grammatical difficulty in SLI. The results show that German-speaking children with SLI are impaired in relative clause production compared to typically developing children. The alternative structures that they produce consist of simple main clauses, as well as nominal and prepositional phrases produced in isolation, sometimes contextually appropriate, and sometimes not. Crucially for evaluating the movement optionality account, children with SLI produce very few instances of embedded clauses where the relative clause head noun is pronounced in situ; in fact, such responses are more common among the typically developing child controls. These results underscore the difficulty German-speaking children with SLI have with structures involving movement, but provide no specific support for the movement optionality account. KW - Elicited production KW - first language acquisition KW - German KW - relative clauses KW - specific language impairment Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0142723716648842 SN - 0142-7237 SN - 1740-2344 VL - 36 SP - 203 EP - 227 PB - Sage Publ. CY - London ER - TY - GEN A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Stegenwallner-Schütz, Maja Henny Katherine A1 - Haendler, Yair A1 - Zukowski, Andrea T1 - Elicited production of relative clauses in German BT - evidence from typically developing children and children with specific language impairment T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - We elicited the production of various types of relative clauses in a group of German-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing controls in order to test the movement optionality account of grammatical difficulty in SLI. The results show that German-speaking children with SLI are impaired in relative clause production compared to typically developing children. The alternative structures that they produce consist of simple main clauses, as well as nominal and prepositional phrases produced in isolation, sometimes contextually appropriate, and sometimes not. Crucially for evaluating the movement optionality account, children with SLI produce very few instances of embedded clauses where the relative clause head noun is pronounced in situ; in fact, such responses are more common among the typically developing child controls. These results underscore the difficulty German-speaking children with SLI have with structures involving movement, but provide no specific support for the movement optionality account. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 409 KW - elicited production KW - first language acquisition KW - German KW - relative clauses KW - specific language impairment Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-405149 IS - 409 ER - TY - THES A1 - Haendler, Yair T1 - Effects of embedded pronouns on relative clause processing T1 - Effekte eingebauter Pronomen auf Relativsatzverarbeitung BT - cross-linguistic evidence from children and adults BT - Hinweise zwischensprachlischer Daten von Kindern und Erwachsenen N2 - Difficulties with object relative clauses (ORC), as compared to subject relative clauses (SR), are widely attested across different languages, both in adults and in children. This SR-ORC asymmetry is reduced, or even eliminated, when the embedded constituent in the ORC is a pronoun, rather than a lexical noun phrase. The studies included in this thesis were designed to explore under what circumstances the pronoun facilitation occurs; whether all pronouns have the same effect; whether SRs are also affected by embedded pronouns; whether children perform like adults on such structures; and whether performance is related to cognitive abilities such as memory or grammatical knowledge. Several theoretical approaches that explain the pronoun facilitation in relative clauses are evaluated. The experimental data have been collected in three languages–German, Italian and Hebrew–stemming from both children and adults. In the German study (Chapter 2), ORCs with embedded 1st- or 3rd-person pronouns are compared to ORCs with an embedded lexical noun phrase. Eye-movement data from 5-year-old children show that the 1st-person pronoun facilitates processing, but not the 3rd-person pronoun. Moreover, children’s performance is modulated by additive effects of their memory and grammatical skills. In the Italian study (Chapter 3), the 1st-person pronoun advantage over the 3rd-person pronoun is tested in ORCs and SRs that display a similar word order. Eye-movement data from 5-year-olds and adult controls and reading times data from adults are pitted against the outcome of a corpus analysis, showing that the 1st-/3rd-person pronoun asymmetry emerges in the two relative clause types to an equal extent. In the Hebrew study (Chapter 4), the goal is to test the effect of a special kind of pronoun–a non-referential arbitrary subject pronoun–on ORC comprehension, in the light of potential confounds in previous studies that used this pronoun. Data from a referent-identification task with 4- to 5-year-olds indicate that, when the experimental material is controlled, the non-referential pronoun does not necessarily facilitate ORC comprehension. Importantly, however, children have even more difficulties when the embedded constituent is a referential pronoun. The non-referentiality / referentiality asymmetry is emphasized by the relation between children’s performance on the experimental task and their memory skills. Together, the data presented in this thesis indicate that sentence processing is not only driven by structural (or syntactic) factors, but also by discourse-related ones, like pronouns’ referential properties or their discourse accessibility mechanism, which is defined as the level of ease or difficulty with which referents of pronouns are identified and retrieved from the discourse model. Although independent in essence, these structural and discourse factors can in some cases interact in a way that affects sentence processing. Moreover, both types of factors appear to be strongly related to memory. The data also support the idea that, from early on, children are sensitive to the same factors that affect adults’ sentence processing, and that the processing strategies of both populations are qualitatively similar. In sum, this thesis suggests that a comprehensive theory of human sentence processing needs to account for effects that are due to both structural and discourse-related factors, which operate as a function of memory capacity. N2 - Zahlreiche Studien haben gefunden, dass sowohl Erwachsene als auch Kinder über Sprachen hinweg größere Schwierigkeiten mit Objektrelativsätzen (ORS) als mit Subjektrelativsätzen (SRS) haben. Diese SRS-ORS-Asymmetrie wird reduziert oder sogar ausgelöscht, wenn das eingebaute Subjekt im ORS keine lexikalische Nominalphrase, sondern ein Pronomen ist. Die Experimente in dieser Dissertation erforschen unter welchen Umständen die Begünstigung des Pronomens geschieht; ob alle Pronomen denselben Effekt haben; ob SRS ebenso von eingebauten Pronomen beeinflusst werden; ob Erwachsene und Kinder in Bezug auf diese Strukturen eine ähnlich Leistung zeigen; und ob die Leistung von Versuchspersonen eine Verbindung mit kognitiven Fähigkeiten hat, wie zum Beispiel mit dem Arbeitsgedächtnis oder mit grammatikalischer Kenntnis. Verschiedene theoretische Rahmen, die die Pronomenvereinfachung in Relativsätzen erklären, werden evaluiert. Die Daten wurden in drei Sprachen–Deutsch, Italienisch und Hebräisch–mit Kindern und Erwachsenen erhoben. In der Studie auf Deutsch (Kapitel 2) werden ORS mit einem eingebauten Pronomen der ersten oder der dritten Person mit ORS verglichen, die eine eingebaute lexikalische Nominalphrase haben. Blickbewegungsdaten von 5-jährigen Kindern zeigen, dass das Pronomen der ersten Person die Satzverarbeitung vereinfacht, nicht jedoch das Pronomen der dritten Person. Die Performance von Kindern wird durch zusätzliche Effekte wie Gedächtnis und grammatikalische Fähigkeiten beeinflusst. In der Studie auf Italienisch (Kapitel 3) wird der Vereinfachungsvorteil des Pronomens der ersten Person, im Vergleich mit dem der dritten Person, in ORS und SRS, die eine ähnliche Wortstellung haben, untersucht. Blickbewegungsdaten von 5-jährigen Kindern und von einer Kontrollgruppe von Erwachsenen sowie Lesezeiten von Erwachsenen, werden mit dem Ergebnis einer Korpusanalyse verglichen. Sie zeigen denselben asymmetrischen Effekt der zwei Pronomen in beiden Relativsatztypen. In der Studie auf Hebräisch (Kapitel 4) war das Ziel, den Effekt eines besonderen Pronomens, nämlich eines nicht-referentiellen beliebigen Subjektspronomens, auf das Verständnis von ORS zu untersuchen, anhand methodischer Problematiken in vergangenen Studien, die dieses Pronomen verwendet haben. Daten von 4- und 5-jährigen Kindern, die eine Referentenerkennungsaufgabe gemacht haben, zeigen, dass mit kontrolliertem Versuchsmaterial das nicht-referentielle Pronomen nicht unbedingt das Verständnis von ORS erleichtert. Jedoch hatten die Kinder aber noch mehr Schwierigkeiten, wenn das eingebaute Pronomen ein referentielles Pronomen war. Die Asymmetrie zwischen nicht-referentiellen und referentiellen Pronomen wird durch die Verbindung zwischen der Performance in der experimentellen Aufgabe und den Gedächtnisfähigkeiten der Kinder hervorgehoben. In ihrer Gesamtheit zeigen die in dieser Arbeit präsentierten Daten, dass Sprachverarbeitung nicht nur durch strukturelle (oder syntaktische) Faktoren beeinträchtigt wird, sondern auch durch Diskurs-gebundene Faktoren, wie die referentiellen Eigenschaften von Pronomen oder den Mechanismus von Diskurszugänglichkeit (discourse accessibility). Diese wird definiert als das Leichtigkeits- oder Schwierigkeitslevel mit dem Referenten von Pronomen im Diskursmodell erkannt und abgerufen werden. Diese strukturellen und diskursgebundenen Faktoren, obwohl sie im Wesentlichen unabhängig voneinander sind, können in manchen Fällen aufeinander einwirken und zusammen die Sprachverarbeitung beeinträchtigen. Darüber hinaus scheinen beide Faktoren eine Verbindung mit dem Gedächtnis zu haben. Die Daten unterstützen auch die Idee, dass Kinder von früh an auf dieselben Faktoren empfindlich reagieren, die die Sprachverarbeitung von Erwachsenen bestimmen und dass die Sprachverarbeitungsstrategien von beiden Altersgruppen qualitativ ähnlich sind. Zusammengefasst weist diese Dissertation darauf hin, dass eine umfassende Theorie der menschlichen Sprachverarbeitung in der Lage sein sollte, Effekte zu erklären, die sowohl durch Satzstruktur als auch durch Diskurs bedingt werden und die in Abhängigkeit von Gedächtnisfähigkeit funktionieren. KW - relative clauses KW - pronouns KW - discourse KW - sentence processing KW - eye-tracking KW - language development KW - Relativsätze KW - Pronomen KW - Diskurs KW - Sprachverarbeitung KW - Blickbewegungen KW - Sprachentwicklung Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-396883 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Stegenwallner-Schutz, Maja Henny Katherine A1 - Niesel, Talea T1 - The Peaceful Co-existence of Input Frequency and Structural Intervention Effects on the Comprehension of Complex Sentences in German-Speaking Children JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - The predictions of two contrasting approaches to the acquisition of transitive relative clauses were tested within the same groups of German-speaking participants aged from 3 to 5 years old. The input frequency approach predicts that object relative clauses with inanimate heads (e.g., the pullover that the man is scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with an animate head (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). In contrast, the structural intervention approach predicts that object relative clauses with two full NP arguments mismatching in number (e.g., the man that the boys are scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with number-matching NPs (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). These approaches were tested in two steps. First, we ran a corpus analysis to ensure that object relative clauses with number-mismatching NPs are not more frequent than object relative clauses with number-matching NPs in child directed speech. Next, the comprehension of these structures was tested experimentally in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds respectively by means of a color naming task. By comparing the predictions of the two approaches within the same participant groups, we were able to uncover that the effects predicted by the input frequency and by the structural intervention approaches co-exist and that they both influence the performance of children on transitive relative clauses, but in a manner that is modulated by age. These results reveal a sensitivity to animacy mismatch already being demonstrated by 3-year-olds and show that animacy is initially deployed more reliably than number to interpret relative clauses correctly. In all age groups, the animacy mismatch appears to explain the performance of children, thus, showing that the comprehension of frequent object relative clauses is enhanced compared to the other conditions. Starting with 4-year-olds but especially in 5-year-olds, the number mismatch supported comprehension-a facilitation that is unlikely to be driven by input frequency. Once children fine-tune their sensitivity to verb agreement information around the age of four, they are also able to deploy number marking to overcome the intervention effects. This study highlights the importance of testing experimentally contrasting theoretical approaches in order to characterize the multifaceted, developmental nature of language acquisition. KW - relative clauses KW - sentence comprehension KW - input frequency KW - number KW - animacy KW - language acquisition KW - German Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01590 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 8 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Stegenwallner-Schütz, Maja Henny Katherine A1 - Niesel, Talea T1 - The Peaceful Co-existence of Input Frequency and Structural Intervention Effects on the Comprehension of Complex Sentences in German-Speaking Children JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - The predictions of two contrasting approaches to the acquisition of transitive relative clauses were tested within the same groups of German-speaking participants aged from 3 to 5 years old. The input frequency approach predicts that object relative clauses with inanimate heads (e.g., the pullover that the man is scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with an animate head (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). In contrast, the structural intervention approach predicts that object relative clauses with two full NP arguments mismatching in number (e.g., the man that the boys are scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with number-matching NPs (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). These approaches were tested in two steps. First, we ran a corpus analysis to ensure that object relative clauses with number-mismatching NPs are not more frequent than object relative clauses with number-matching NPs in child directed speech. Next, the comprehension of these structures was tested experimentally in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds respectively by means of a color naming task. By comparing the predictions of the two approaches within the same participant groups, we were able to uncover that the effects predicted by the input frequency and by the structural intervention approaches co-exist and that they both influence the performance of children on transitive relative clauses, but in a manner that is modulated by age. These results reveal a sensitivity to animacy mismatch already being demonstrated by 3-year-olds and show that animacy is initially deployed more reliably than number to interpret relative clauses correctly. In all age groups, the animacy mismatch appears to explain the performance of children, thus, showing that the comprehension of frequent object relative clauses is enhanced compared to the other conditions. Starting with 4-year-olds but especially in 5-year-olds, the number mismatch supported comprehension—a facilitation that is unlikely to be driven by input frequency. Once children fine-tune their sensitivity to verb agreement information around the age of four, they are also able to deploy number marking to overcome the intervention effects. This study highlights the importance of testing experimentally contrasting theoretical approaches in order to characterize the multifaceted, developmental nature of language acquisition. KW - relative clauses KW - sentence comprehension KW - input frequency KW - number KW - animacy KW - language acquisition KW - German Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01590 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 8 SP - 1 EP - 11 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - GEN A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Stegenwallner-Schütz, Maja Henny Katherine A1 - Niesel, Talea T1 - The Peaceful Co-existence of Input Frequency and Structural Intervention Effects on the Comprehension of Complex Sentences in German-Speaking Children N2 - The predictions of two contrasting approaches to the acquisition of transitive relative clauses were tested within the same groups of German-speaking participants aged from 3 to 5 years old. The input frequency approach predicts that object relative clauses with inanimate heads (e.g., the pullover that the man is scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with an animate head (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). In contrast, the structural intervention approach predicts that object relative clauses with two full NP arguments mismatching in number (e.g., the man that the boys are scratching) are comprehended earlier and more accurately than those with number-matching NPs (e.g., the man that the boy is scratching). These approaches were tested in two steps. First, we ran a corpus analysis to ensure that object relative clauses with number-mismatching NPs are not more frequent than object relative clauses with number-matching NPs in child directed speech. Next, the comprehension of these structures was tested experimentally in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds respectively by means of a color naming task. By comparing the predictions of the two approaches within the same participant groups, we were able to uncover that the effects predicted by the input frequency and by the structural intervention approaches co-exist and that they both influence the performance of children on transitive relative clauses, but in a manner that is modulated by age. These results reveal a sensitivity to animacy mismatch already being demonstrated by 3-year-olds and show that animacy is initially deployed more reliably than number to interpret relative clauses correctly. In all age groups, the animacy mismatch appears to explain the performance of children, thus, showing that the comprehension of frequent object relative clauses is enhanced compared to the other conditions. Starting with 4-year-olds but especially in 5-year-olds, the number mismatch supported comprehension—a facilitation that is unlikely to be driven by input frequency. Once children fine-tune their sensitivity to verb agreement information around the age of four, they are also able to deploy number marking to overcome the intervention effects. This study highlights the importance of testing experimentally contrasting theoretical approaches in order to characterize the multifaceted, developmental nature of language acquisition. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 352 KW - German KW - animacy KW - input frequency KW - language acquisition KW - number KW - relative clauses KW - sentence comprehension Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-403672 ER -