ERIC Number: EJ777227
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2004-Aug
Pages: 25
Abstractor: Author
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
On-Line Grammaticality Judgments in French Children and Adults: A Crosslinguistic Perspective
Kail, Michele
Journal of Child Language, v31 n3 p713-737 Aug 2004
This study examined the on-line processing of French sentences in a grammaticality judgment experiment. Three age groups of French children (mean age: 6;8, 8;6 and 10;10 years) and a group of adults were asked to detect grammatical violations as quickly as possible. Three factors were studied: the violation type: agreement violations (number and gender) vs. word order violations; the violation position: early vs. late in the sentence; the target type of the violations: intra vs. interphrasal. An example of an early interphrasal verbal agreement violation follows: "Chaque semaine la voisine remplissent le frigo apres avoir fait les courses au marche" (Every week the neighbour fill the fridge after shopping at the market). The main developmental results were the following: not surprisingly, children were always slower than adults in the detection of grammatical violations. At each age level, morphological violations were more rapidly detected than word order violations. Each age group was faster at judging sentences with later occurring violations and the position effect was especially strong in the youngest groups. Finally, intraphrasal violations were more rapidly detected than interphrasal ones, this effect being observed only in the oldest groups (i.e. 10;10 years and adults). The results were compared to previous on-line data obtained in modern Greek (Kail & Diakogiorgi, 1998) showing strong similarities, even though Greek is a very rich morphological language. These results are discussed within the framework of the Competition Model, outlining the necessity to incorporate new processing constraints into the model.
Descriptors: Sentences, Age, Grammar, Word Order, French, Greek, Language Acquisition, Language Processing, Children, Morphology (Languages), Models, Linguistic Theory, Error Analysis (Language), Language Research, Comparative Analysis
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A