Cue conflicts in context: Interplay between morphosyntax and discourse context in Danish preschoolers’ semantic role assignment

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelfagfællebedømt

Standard

Cue conflicts in context : Interplay between morphosyntax and discourse context in Danish preschoolers’ semantic role assignment. / Boeg Thomsen, Ditte; Poulsen, Mads.

I: Journal of Child Language, Bind 42, Nr. 6, 2015, s. 1237-1266.

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftTidsskriftartikelfagfællebedømt

Harvard

Boeg Thomsen, D & Poulsen, M 2015, 'Cue conflicts in context: Interplay between morphosyntax and discourse context in Danish preschoolers’ semantic role assignment', Journal of Child Language, bind 42, nr. 6, s. 1237-1266. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000914000786

APA

Boeg Thomsen, D., & Poulsen, M. (2015). Cue conflicts in context: Interplay between morphosyntax and discourse context in Danish preschoolers’ semantic role assignment. Journal of Child Language, 42(6), 1237-1266. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000914000786

Vancouver

Boeg Thomsen D, Poulsen M. Cue conflicts in context: Interplay between morphosyntax and discourse context in Danish preschoolers’ semantic role assignment. Journal of Child Language. 2015;42(6):1237-1266. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000914000786

Author

Boeg Thomsen, Ditte ; Poulsen, Mads. / Cue conflicts in context : Interplay between morphosyntax and discourse context in Danish preschoolers’ semantic role assignment. I: Journal of Child Language. 2015 ; Bind 42, Nr. 6. s. 1237-1266.

Bibtex

@article{05f15a62a2354e62adde01d0bd710e7d,
title = "Cue conflicts in context: Interplay between morphosyntax and discourse context in Danish preschoolers{\textquoteright} semantic role assignment",
abstract = "When learning their first language, children develop strategies for assigning semantic roles to sentence structures, depending on morphosyntactic cues such as case and word order. Traditionally, comprehension experiments have presented transitive clauses in isolation, and crosslinguistically children have been found to misinterpret object-first constructions by following a word-order strategy (Chan, Lieven & Tomasello, 2009; Dittmar, Abbot-Smith, Lieven & Tomasello, 2008; Hakuta, 1982; McDonald, 1989; Slobin & Bever, 1982). In an act-out study, we replicated this finding with Danish preschoolers. However, object-first clauses may be context-sensitive structures, which are infelicitous in isolation. In a second act-out study we presented OVS clauses in supportive and unsupportive discourse contexts and in isolation and found that five-to-six-year-olds{\textquoteright} OVS comprehension was enhanced in discourse-pragmatically felicitous contexts. Our results extend previous findings of preschoolers{\textquoteright} sensitivity to discourse-contextual cues in sentence comprehension (Hurewitz, 2001; Song & Fisher, 2005) to the basic task of assigning agent and patient roles.",
author = "{Boeg Thomsen}, Ditte and Mads Poulsen",
year = "2015",
doi = "10.1017/S0305000914000786",
language = "English",
volume = "42",
pages = "1237--1266",
journal = "Journal of Child Language",
issn = "0305-0009",
publisher = "Cambridge University Press",
number = "6",

}

RIS

TY - JOUR

T1 - Cue conflicts in context

T2 - Interplay between morphosyntax and discourse context in Danish preschoolers’ semantic role assignment

AU - Boeg Thomsen, Ditte

AU - Poulsen, Mads

PY - 2015

Y1 - 2015

N2 - When learning their first language, children develop strategies for assigning semantic roles to sentence structures, depending on morphosyntactic cues such as case and word order. Traditionally, comprehension experiments have presented transitive clauses in isolation, and crosslinguistically children have been found to misinterpret object-first constructions by following a word-order strategy (Chan, Lieven & Tomasello, 2009; Dittmar, Abbot-Smith, Lieven & Tomasello, 2008; Hakuta, 1982; McDonald, 1989; Slobin & Bever, 1982). In an act-out study, we replicated this finding with Danish preschoolers. However, object-first clauses may be context-sensitive structures, which are infelicitous in isolation. In a second act-out study we presented OVS clauses in supportive and unsupportive discourse contexts and in isolation and found that five-to-six-year-olds’ OVS comprehension was enhanced in discourse-pragmatically felicitous contexts. Our results extend previous findings of preschoolers’ sensitivity to discourse-contextual cues in sentence comprehension (Hurewitz, 2001; Song & Fisher, 2005) to the basic task of assigning agent and patient roles.

AB - When learning their first language, children develop strategies for assigning semantic roles to sentence structures, depending on morphosyntactic cues such as case and word order. Traditionally, comprehension experiments have presented transitive clauses in isolation, and crosslinguistically children have been found to misinterpret object-first constructions by following a word-order strategy (Chan, Lieven & Tomasello, 2009; Dittmar, Abbot-Smith, Lieven & Tomasello, 2008; Hakuta, 1982; McDonald, 1989; Slobin & Bever, 1982). In an act-out study, we replicated this finding with Danish preschoolers. However, object-first clauses may be context-sensitive structures, which are infelicitous in isolation. In a second act-out study we presented OVS clauses in supportive and unsupportive discourse contexts and in isolation and found that five-to-six-year-olds’ OVS comprehension was enhanced in discourse-pragmatically felicitous contexts. Our results extend previous findings of preschoolers’ sensitivity to discourse-contextual cues in sentence comprehension (Hurewitz, 2001; Song & Fisher, 2005) to the basic task of assigning agent and patient roles.

U2 - 10.1017/S0305000914000786

DO - 10.1017/S0305000914000786

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 26435080

VL - 42

SP - 1237

EP - 1266

JO - Journal of Child Language

JF - Journal of Child Language

SN - 0305-0009

IS - 6

ER -

ID: 130329738