ERIC Number: EJ932539
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 26
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1048-9223
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Children's Comprehension of Relative Clauses in an Ergative Language: The Case of Basque
Gutierrez-Mangado, M. Juncal
Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, v18 n3 p176-201 2011
The investigation of the comprehension of L1 relative clauses across different languages has shown that subject relatives (SRs) are acquired earlier and responded to more accurately than object relatives (ORs). Most of this work has been based on SVO nominative-absolutive languages. In this article we present the results obtained in a binary picture-sentence matching task from L1 Basque, a highly inflected, ergative-absolutive, SOV language with prenominal relatives. The results obtained reveal that in Basque, ORs are responded to more accurately than SRs, which indicates that children do not comprehend SRs with more accuracy universally. The results are discussed in the light of different hypotheses put forward in the literature in order to account for the previously observed SR preference. (Contains 5 tables and 17 footnotes.)
Descriptors: Phrase Structure, Languages, Child Language, Language Acquisition, Native Language, Task Analysis, Pictorial Stimuli, Linguistic Theory, Language Processing, Structural Analysis (Linguistics)
Psychology Press. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
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Language: English
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