Sources of Children's Difficulties with Non-Canonical Sentence Structures: Insights from Mandarin
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| Title: | Sources of Children's Difficulties with Non-Canonical Sentence Structures: Insights from Mandarin |
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| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Jiuzhou Hao (ORCID |
| Source: | Journal of Child Language. 2025 52(6):1295-1322. |
| Availability: | Cambridge University Press. 100 Brook Hill Drive, West Nyack, NY 10994. Tel: 800-872-7423; Tel: 845-353-7500; Fax: 845-353-4141; e-mail: subscriptions_newyork@cambridge.org; Web site: https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/journals |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 28 |
| Publication Date: | 2025 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Research |
| Descriptors: | Child Language, Sentences, Sentence Structure, Mandarin Chinese, Language Processing, Cues, Priming, Word Order, Morphology (Languages), Syntax, Language Usage, Accuracy, Error Patterns |
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0305000924000424 |
| ISSN: | 0305-0009 1469-7602 |
| Abstract: | The present study investigated whether children's difficulty with non-canonical structures is due to their non-adult-like use of linguistic cues or their inability to revise misinterpretations using late-arriving cues. We adopted a priming production task and a self-paced listening task with picture verification, and included three Mandarin non-canonical structures with differing word orders and the presence or absence of morphosyntactic cues. Forty five-to-ten-year-old Mandarin-speaking children were tested and compared to adults. Results showed that children were indistinguishable from adults in how they used different cues in real-time, although their performance in offline comprehension and production was more prone to errors but improved given the increase of age. These results suggest that the current child sample has adult-like cue-use patterns and use late-arriving cues to revise misinterpretations. The observed worse offline accuracy and production difficulties relative to adults result from their less developed domain-general abilities in performing tasks. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Notes: | https://osf.io/h7suz |
| Entry Date: | 2025 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1486788 |
| Database: | ERIC |
| Abstract: | The present study investigated whether children's difficulty with non-canonical structures is due to their non-adult-like use of linguistic cues or their inability to revise misinterpretations using late-arriving cues. We adopted a priming production task and a self-paced listening task with picture verification, and included three Mandarin non-canonical structures with differing word orders and the presence or absence of morphosyntactic cues. Forty five-to-ten-year-old Mandarin-speaking children were tested and compared to adults. Results showed that children were indistinguishable from adults in how they used different cues in real-time, although their performance in offline comprehension and production was more prone to errors but improved given the increase of age. These results suggest that the current child sample has adult-like cue-use patterns and use late-arriving cues to revise misinterpretations. The observed worse offline accuracy and production difficulties relative to adults result from their less developed domain-general abilities in performing tasks. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 0305-0009 1469-7602 |
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0305000924000424 |
