Priming the comprehension of German object relative clauses

Brandt, Silke and Nitschke, Sanjo and Kidd, Evan (2017) Priming the comprehension of German object relative clauses. Language Learning and Development, 13 (3). pp. 241-261. ISSN 1547-5441

[thumbnail of Priming_the_Comprehension_of_German_Object_Relative_Clausee_accepted]
Preview
PDF (Priming_the_Comprehension_of_German_Object_Relative_Clausee_accepted)
Priming_the_Comprehension_of_German_Object_Relative_Clausee_accepted.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.

Download (707kB)

Abstract

Structural priming is a useful laboratory-based technique for investigating how children respond to temporary changes in the distribution of structures in their input. In the current study we investigated whether increasing the number of object relative clauses (RCs) in German-speaking children’s input changes their processing preferences for ambiguous RCs. Fifty-one 6-year-olds and 54 9-year-olds participated in a priming task that (i) gauged their baseline interpretations for ambiguous RC structures, (ii) primed an object-RC interpretation of ambiguous RCs, and (iii) determined whether priming persevered beyond immediate prime-target pairs. The 6-year old children showed no priming effect, whereas the 9-year-old group showed robust priming that was long lasting. Unlike in studies of priming in production, priming did not increase in magnitude when there was lexical overlap between prime and target. Overall, the results suggest that increased exposure to object RCs facilitates children’s interpretation of this otherwise infrequent structure, but only in older children. The implications for acquisition theory are discussed.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Language Learning and Development
Additional Information:
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in [Language Learning and Development on 04/01/2017, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15475441.2016.1235500
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3310
Subjects:
?? sentence processingprimingobject relative clauseslinguistics and languageeducationlanguage and linguistics ??
ID Code:
81387
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
30 Aug 2016 10:16
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
30 Nov 2024 00:46