ERIC Number: EJ993573
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-Nov
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Is Children's Acquisition of the Passive a Staged Process? Evidence from Six- and Nine-Year-Olds' Production of Passives
Messenger, Katherine; Branigan, Holly P.; McLean, Janet F.
Journal of Child Language, v39 n5 p991-1016 Nov 2012
We report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children's acquisition of the passive is a staged process, with acquisition of constituent structure preceding acquisition of thematic role mappings. Six-year-olds and nine-year-olds described transitive actions after hearing active and passive prime descriptions involving the same or different thematic roles. Both groups showed a strong tendency to reuse in their own description the syntactic structure they had just heard, including well-formed passives after passive primes, irrespective of whether thematic roles were repeated between prime and target. However, following passive primes, six-year-olds but not nine-year-olds also produced reversed passives, with well-formed constituent structure but incorrect thematic role mappings. These results suggest that by six, children have mastered the constituent structure of the passive; however, they have not yet mastered the non-canonical thematic role mapping. By nine, children have mastered both the syntactic and thematic dimensions of this structure.
Descriptors: Evidence, Syntax, Priming, Verbs, Child Language, Language Acquisition, Language Research, Children, Role, Age Differences, Concept Formation
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
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Authoring Institution: N/A
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