TY - GEN A1 - Berger, Frauke A1 - Höhle, Barbara T1 - Restrictions on addition BT - children’s interpretation of the focus particles auch ‘ also ’ and nur ‘ only ’ in German T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Children up to school age have been reported to perform poorly when interpreting sentences containing restrictive and additive focus particles by treating sentences with a focus particle in the same way as sentences without it. Careful comparisons between results of previous studies indicate that this phenomenon is less pronounced for restrictive than for additive particles. We argue that this asymmetry is an effect of the presuppositional status of the proposition triggered by the additive particle. We tested this in two experiments with German-learning three-and four-year-olds using a method that made the exploitation of the information provided by the particles highly relevant for completing the task. Three-year-olds already performed remarkably well with sentences both with auch 'also' and with nur 'only'. Thus, children can consider the presuppositional contribution of the additive particle in their sentence interpretation and can exploit the restrictive particle as a marker of exhaustivity. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 509 KW - presupposition KW - comprehension KW - implicature KW - acquisition KW - semantics KW - asymmetry KW - tolerance KW - mandarin Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-414911 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 509 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Höhle, Barbara A1 - Hörnig, Robin A1 - Weskott, Thomas A1 - Knauf, Selene A1 - Krüger, Agnes T1 - Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order BT - evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Two experiments tested how faithfully German children aged 4; 5 to 5; 6 reproduce ditransitive sentences that are unmarked or marked with respect to word order and focus (Exp1) or definiteness (Exp2). Adopting an optimality theory (OT) approach, it is assumed that in the German adult grammar word order is ranked lower than focus and definiteness. Faithfulness of children's reproductions decreased as markedness of inputs increased; unmarked structures were reproduced most faithfully and unfaithful outputs had most often an unmarked form. Consistent with the OT proposal, children were more tolerant against inputs marked for word order than for focus; in conflict with the proposal, children were less tolerant against inputs marked for word order than for definiteness. Our results suggest that the linearization of objects in German double object constructions is affected by focus and definiteness, but that prosodic principles may have an impact on the position of a focused constituent. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 511 KW - indefinite articles KW - preschool-children KW - information KW - animacy KW - acquisition KW - constraints KW - sentences KW - language KW - grammar KW - stress Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-415695 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 511 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Krause, Helena A1 - Bosch, Sina A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Morphosyntax in the bilingual mental lexicon BT - an experimental study of strong stems in German T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Although morphosyntax has been identified as a major source of difficulty for adult (nonnative) language learners, most previous studies have examined a limited set of largely affix-based phenomena. Little is known about word-based morphosyntax in late bilinguals and of how morphosyntax is represented and processed in a nonnative speaker's lexicon. To address these questions, we report results from two behavioral experiments investigating stem variants of strong verbs in German (which encode features such as tense, person, and number) in groups of advanced adult learners as well as native speakers of German. Although the late bilinguals were highly proficient in German, the results of a lexical priming experiment revealed clear native-nonnative differences. We argue that lexical representation and processing relies less on morphosyntactic information in a nonnative than in a native language. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 520 KW - morphological structure KW - 2nd-language grammar KW - inflected nouns KW - ER-FMRI KW - representation KW - sensitivity KW - violations KW - acquisition KW - agreement KW - learners Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-414431 IS - 520 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Krause, Helena A1 - Bosch, Sina A1 - Clahsen, Harald T1 - Morphosyntax in the bilingual mental lexicon BT - an experimental study of strong stems in German T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Although morphosyntax has been identified as a major source of difficulty for adult (nonnative) language learners, most previous studies have examined a limited set of largely affix-based phenomena. Little is known about word-based morphosyntax in late bilinguals and of how morphosyntax is represented and processed in a nonnative speaker's lexicon. To address these questions, we report results from two behavioral experiments investigating stem variants of strong verbs in German (which encode features such as tense, person, and number) in groups of advanced adult learners as well as native speakers of German. Although the late bilinguals were highly proficient in German, the results of a lexical priming experiment revealed clear native-nonnative differences. We argue that lexical representation and processing relies less on morphosyntactic information in a nonnative than in a native language. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 528 KW - morphological structure KW - 2nd-language grammar KW - inflected nouns KW - ER-FMRI KW - representation KW - sensitivity KW - violations KW - acquisition KW - agreement KW - learners Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-415478 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 528 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Adani, Flavia A1 - Forgiarini, Matteo A1 - Guasti, Maria Teresa A1 - Van der Lely, Heather K. J. T1 - Number dissimilarities facilitate the comprehension of relative clauses in children with (Grammatical) Specific Language Impairment T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - This study investigates whether number dissimilarities on subject and object DPs facilitate the comprehension of subject-and object-extracted centre-embedded relative clauses in children with Grammatical Specific Language Impairment (G-SLI). We compared the performance of a group of English-speaking children with G-SLI (mean age: 12; 11) with that of two groups of younger typically developing (TD) children, matched on grammar and receptive vocabulary, respectively. All groups were more accurate on subject-extracted relative clauses than object-extracted ones and, crucially, they all showed greater accuracy for sentences with dissimilar number features (i.e., one singular, one plural) on the head noun and the embedded DP. These findings are interpreted in the light of current psycholinguistic models of sentence comprehension in TD children and provide further insight into the linguistic nature of G-SLI. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Humanwissenschaftliche Reihe - 525 KW - normally developing-children KW - speaking children KW - greek children KW - SLI KW - acquisition KW - english KW - intervention KW - dependencies KW - complexity KW - movement Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-415453 SN - 1866-8364 IS - 525 SP - 811 EP - 841 ER -