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Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions

Two experiments tested how faithfully German children aged 4 ;5  to 5 ;6  reproduce ditransitive sentences that are unmarked or marked with respect to word order and focus (Exp1) or definiteness (Exp2). Adopting an optimality theory (OT) approach, it is assumed that in the German adult grammar word...

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Autores principales: HÖHLE, BARBARA, HÖRNIG, ROBIN, WESKOTT, THOMAS, KNAUF, SELENE, KRÜGER, AGNES
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Cambridge University Press 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4053924/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23803281
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000913000196
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author HÖHLE, BARBARA
HÖRNIG, ROBIN
WESKOTT, THOMAS
KNAUF, SELENE
KRÜGER, AGNES
author_facet HÖHLE, BARBARA
HÖRNIG, ROBIN
WESKOTT, THOMAS
KNAUF, SELENE
KRÜGER, AGNES
author_sort HÖHLE, BARBARA
collection PubMed
description Two experiments tested how faithfully German children aged 4 ;5  to 5 ;6  reproduce ditransitive sentences that are unmarked or marked with respect to word order and focus (Exp1) or definiteness (Exp2). Adopting an optimality theory (OT) approach, it is assumed that in the German adult grammar word order is ranked lower than focus and definiteness. Faithfulness of children's reproductions decreased as markedness of inputs increased; unmarked structures were reproduced most faithfully and unfaithful outputs had most often an unmarked form. Consistent with the OT proposal, children were more tolerant against inputs marked for word order than for focus; in conflict with the proposal, children were less tolerant against inputs marked for word order than for definiteness. Our results suggest that the linearization of objects in German double object constructions is affected by focus and definiteness, but that prosodic principles may have an impact on the position of a focused constituent.
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spelling pubmed-40539242014-06-12 Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions HÖHLE, BARBARA HÖRNIG, ROBIN WESKOTT, THOMAS KNAUF, SELENE KRÜGER, AGNES J Child Lang Articles Two experiments tested how faithfully German children aged 4 ;5  to 5 ;6  reproduce ditransitive sentences that are unmarked or marked with respect to word order and focus (Exp1) or definiteness (Exp2). Adopting an optimality theory (OT) approach, it is assumed that in the German adult grammar word order is ranked lower than focus and definiteness. Faithfulness of children's reproductions decreased as markedness of inputs increased; unmarked structures were reproduced most faithfully and unfaithful outputs had most often an unmarked form. Consistent with the OT proposal, children were more tolerant against inputs marked for word order than for focus; in conflict with the proposal, children were less tolerant against inputs marked for word order than for definiteness. Our results suggest that the linearization of objects in German double object constructions is affected by focus and definiteness, but that prosodic principles may have an impact on the position of a focused constituent. Cambridge University Press 2014-07 2013-06-27 /pmc/articles/PMC4053924/ /pubmed/23803281 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000913000196 Text en © Cambridge University Press 2013 The online version of this article is published within an Open Access environment subject to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/>. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use.
spellingShingle Articles
HÖHLE, BARBARA
HÖRNIG, ROBIN
WESKOTT, THOMAS
KNAUF, SELENE
KRÜGER, AGNES
Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions
title Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions
title_full Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions
title_fullStr Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions
title_full_unstemmed Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions
title_short Effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from German five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions
title_sort effects of focus and definiteness on children's word order: evidence from german five-year-olds' reproductions of double object constructions
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4053924/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23803281
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0305000913000196
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