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Evidence for (shared) abstract structure underlying children's short and full passives
Katherine Messenger1, Holly P Branigan, Janet F McLean
1School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, UK. kmesseng@illinois.edu
Cognition
|August 2, 2011
Summary
Children as young as four years old demonstrate abstract syntactic representations for passive voice constructions. This developmental finding challenges prior theories on early language acquisition and syntactic development in children.
Area of Science:
- Psycholinguistics
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistic Development
Background:
- Syntactic priming is a method used to study unconscious grammatical processing.
- Previous research suggested children develop abstract syntactic representations later in development.
- Understanding the emergence of passive voice in child language is crucial for developmental linguistics.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the development of abstract syntactic representations in young children.
- To determine if children utilize abstract representations for passive voice constructions.
- To compare syntactic priming effects in children and adults.
Main Methods:
- A syntactic priming paradigm was employed.
- Participants (3- and 4-year-olds, adults) described transitive events.
- Event descriptions were primed using thematically and lexically unrelated active and short passive sentences.
Main Results:
- Both children and adults showed a higher tendency to produce full passive descriptions after short passive primes compared to active primes.
- This priming effect indicates the use of abstract syntactic representations for passive constructions.
- The results were consistent across age groups, including four-year-olds.
Conclusions:
- Four-year-old children possess abstract syntactic representations for passive voice.
- This finding contradicts earlier theories suggesting a later development of such abstract representations.
- Abstract syntactic representations for passive constructions appear to be established by age four.
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