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ERIC Number: EJ1062888
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015-Jul
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: N/A
Real-Time Comprehension of Gender and Number in Four- to Seven-Year-Old Children: A Study of the Relationship between Italian Clitic Pronouns and Visual Picture Referents
Dispaldro, Marco; Ruggiero, Anna; Scali, Francesca
Journal of Child Language, v42 n4 p917-931 Jul 2015
The gender and number of a direct object clitic pronoun are based on the gender and number of the noun to which it refers. Grammatical gender is an intrinsic property of the lexical item that is independent from the natural sex of referents, whereas number is a non-intrinsic feature of nouns based on the conceptual level of quantity. The aim of this paper is to investigate children's ability in matching Italian direct object clitic pronouns to an inanimate visual referent on the basis of number or gender information. The dependent variables are accuracy and response time. A total of sixty-nine children aged from 4;6 to 7;5 participated. The results show that children are more accurate and faster in selecting the referent when they use number information compared to the condition in which this matching operation is led by gender.
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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