@article{LassottaOmakiFranck2016,
  author    = {Lassotta, Romy and Omaki, Akira and Franck, Julie},
  title     = {Developmental changes in misinterpretation of garden-path wh-questions in French},
  series = {The quarterly journal of experimental psychology},
  volume    = {69},
  journal   = {The quarterly journal of experimental psychology},
  publisher = {Nature Publ. Group},
  address   = {Abingdon},
  issn      = {1747-0218},
  doi       = {10.1080/17470218.2015.1054845},
  pages     = {829 -- 854},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {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-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.},
  language  = {en}
}