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ERIC Number: EJ1453971
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2023-Sep
Pages: 28
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: EISSN-1469-7602
Processing of Noun Plural Marking in German-Speaking Children: An Eye-Tracking Study
Bénédicte Grandon; Marcel Schlechtweg; Esther Ruigendijk
Journal of Child Language, v51 n6 p1450-1477 2023
The ability to process plural marking of nouns is acquired early: at a very young age, children are able to understand if a noun represents one item or more than one. However, little is known about how the segmental characteristics of plural marking are used in this process. Using eye-tracking, we aim at understanding how five to twelve-year old children use the phonetic, phonological, and morphological information available to process noun plural marking in German (i.e., a very complex system) compared to adults. We expected differences with stem vowels, stem-final consonants or different suffixes, alone or in combination, reflecting different processing of their segmental information. Our results show that for plural processing: 1) a suffix is the most helpful cue, an umlaut the least helpful, and voicing does not play a role; 2) one cue can be sufficient and 3) school-age children have not reached adult-like processing of plural marking.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A