- Treffer 1 von 1
Developmental changes in misinterpretation of garden-path wh-questions in French
- This study explores (mis)interpretation of biclausal wh-questions by French-speaking adults and children, aiming to investigate cross-linguistic differences in sentence revision mechanisms. Following previous work in Japanese the ambiguity of wh-questions was manipulated: In ambiguous questions, the fronted wh-phrase could be associated with the first, main-clause verb or the second, embedded-clause verb, while in garden-path questions, an inserted filled-gap prepositional phrase (PP) blocked main-clause attachment. Importantly, French differs from Japanese in that the filled gap arises after the first verb-that is, after the wh-phrase has been interpreted within the main clause. Two story-based comprehension experiments were conducted to probe the effect of word order on revision performance. Adults and children frequently provided main-clause interpretations of ambiguous questions. In filled-gap questions, children displayed relatively acute sensitivity to the filled-gap in wh-argument questions (Experiment 2), but not in wh-adjunctThis study explores (mis)interpretation of biclausal wh-questions by French-speaking adults and children, aiming to investigate cross-linguistic differences in sentence revision mechanisms. Following previous work in Japanese the ambiguity of wh-questions was manipulated: In ambiguous questions, the fronted wh-phrase could be associated with the first, main-clause verb or the second, embedded-clause verb, while in garden-path questions, an inserted filled-gap prepositional phrase (PP) blocked main-clause attachment. Importantly, French differs from Japanese in that the filled gap arises after the first verb-that is, after the wh-phrase has been interpreted within the main clause. Two story-based comprehension experiments were conducted to probe the effect of word order on revision performance. Adults and children frequently provided main-clause interpretations of ambiguous questions. In filled-gap questions, children displayed relatively acute sensitivity to the filled-gap in wh-argument questions (Experiment 2), but not in wh-adjunct questions (Experiment 1); adults showed surprisingly low sensitivity to it, frequently misinterpreting adjunct and argument questions. Acceptability ratings (Experiment 3) showed that adults systematically prefer in situ questions over wh-fronting questions. We conclude that timing of the error signal influences revision, and that whereas French-speaking children prioritize syntactic cues, adults prioritize distributional information about the optionality of wh-fronting in French.…
Verfasserangaben: | Romy Lassotta, Akira Omaki, Julie Franck |
---|---|
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2015.1054845 |
ISSN: | 1747-0218 |
ISSN: | 1747-0226 |
Pubmed ID: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26052979 |
Titel des übergeordneten Werks (Englisch): | The quarterly journal of experimental psychology |
Verlag: | Nature Publ. Group |
Verlagsort: | Abingdon |
Publikationstyp: | Wissenschaftlicher Artikel |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Jahr der Erstveröffentlichung: | 2016 |
Erscheinungsjahr: | 2016 |
Datum der Freischaltung: | 22.03.2020 |
Freies Schlagwort / Tag: | Filled-gap dependency; Garden-path; Misinterpretation; Sentence revision; Wh-questions |
Band: | 69 |
Seitenanzahl: | 26 |
Erste Seite: | 829 |
Letzte Seite: | 854 |
Fördernde Institution: | Swiss National Fund for Scientific Research [100014-126924] |
Organisationseinheiten: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Strukturbereich Kognitionswissenschaften / Department Linguistik |
Peer Review: | Referiert |
Name der Einrichtung zum Zeitpunkt der Publikation: | Humanwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Linguistik / Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft |