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Title: | How do 5 year olds understand questions? Differences in languages across Europe |
Authors: | Sauerland, Uli Grohmann, Kleanthes K. Guasti, Maria Teresa Andelkovic, Darinka Argus, Reili Armon-Lotem, Sharon Arosio, Fabrizio Avram, Larisa Costa, Joao Dabasinskiene, Ineta De Lopez, Kristine Jensen Gatt, Daniela Grech, Helen Haman, Ewa van Hout, Angeliek Hrzica, Gordana Kainhofer, Judith Kamandulyte-Merfeldiene, Laura Kunnari, Sari Kovacevic, Melita Kraljevic, Jelena Kuvac Lipowska, Katarzyna Mejias, Sandrine Popovic, Masa Ruzaite, Jurate Savic, Maja Sevcenco, Anca Varlokosta, Spyridoula Varnava, Marina Yatsushiro, Kazuko |
Keywords: | Language acquisition Language awareness in children -- Case studies Children -- Language Language Development |
Issue Date: | 2016 |
Publisher: | Sage Publishing |
Citation: | Sauerland, U., Grohmann, K.K., Giuasti, M. T., Andjelkovic, D., Argus. R., Armon-Lotem, S.,...Yatsushiro, K. (2016). How do 5 year olds understand questions? Differences in languages across Europe. First Language, 36(3), 169-202. |
Abstract: | The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. We present the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by five year old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. We studied the effects of two factors on question formation: a) whether the question contains a simple interrogative word like ‘who’ or a complex one like ‘which princess’, and b) whether the question word was related to the sentential subject or object position of the verb.We found that there is considerable variation among languages, but the two factors mentioned consistently affect children’s performance. The cross-linguistic variation shows that three linguistic factors facilitate children’s understanding of questions: having overt case morphology, having a single lexical item for both ‘who’ and ‘which’, and the use of synthetic verbal forms. |
URI: | https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar//handle/123456789/18626 |
Appears in Collections: | Scholarly Works - FacHScCT |
Files in This Item:
File | Description | Size | Format | |
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How do 5 year olds understand questions Differences in languages across Europe..pdf | 3.16 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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