ERIC Number: EJ1118839
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Dec
Pages: 18
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0090-6905
EISSN: N/A
Children's Production of Subject-Verb Agreement in Hebrew When Gender and Context Are Ambiguous
Karniol, Rachel; Artzi, Sigal; Ludmer, Maya
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, v45 n6 p1515-1532 Dec 2016
Third and 5th grade Hebrew-speaking children performed two sentence completion tasks, one requiring the assignment of male, female, or gender-ambiguous names and the inflection of verbs for male-stereotyped, female-stereotyped, and gender-neutral activities, and the other task, of inflecting verbs for male- and female-stereotyped activities performed by children with gender-ambiguous names. The question of concern was whether when faced with the need to inflect verbs to match the conceptual gender of the sentence subject, the gender-stereotyped nature of the activities in question and children's own gender would play a role in resolving the dilemma created by gender-ambiguous names and contexts. In both parts of the study, we found that (1) children's own gender played a role in determining the pattern of verb inflection, and (2) children used their semantic knowledge regarding the gender-stereotyped nature of activities to inflect verbs so as to create subject-verb agreement. Hence, subject-verb agreement in children draws on both their grammatical and semantic knowledge.
Descriptors: Grammar, Gender Differences, Verbs, Semitic Languages, Sex Stereotypes, Elementary School Students, Grade 3, Grade 5, Semantics, Sentences, Task Analysis, Naming, Ambiguity (Context), Role, Language Skills
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education; Grade 3; Primary Education; Early Childhood Education; Grade 5; Intermediate Grades; Middle Schools
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A