Four-year-old Cantonese-speaking children's online processing of relative clauses: a permutation analysis

Chan, Angel, Yang, Wenchun, Chang, Franklin ORCID: 0000-0003-1142-1911 and Kidd, Evan (2018) Four-year-old Cantonese-speaking children's online processing of relative clauses: a permutation analysis. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE, 45 (1). pp. 174-203.

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Abstract

We report on an eye-tracking study that investigated four-year-old Cantonese-speaking children's online processing of subject and object relative clauses (RCs). Children's eye-movements were recorded as they listened to RC structures identifying a unique referent (e.g. "Can you pick up the horse that pushed the pig?"). Two RC types, classifier (CL) and ge3 RCs, were tested in a between-participants design. The two RC types differ in their syntactic analyses and frequency of occurrence, providing an important point of comparison for theories of RC acquisition and processing. A permutation analysis showed that the two structures were processed differently: CL RCs showed a significant object-over-subject advantage, whereas ge3 RCs showed the opposite effect. This study shows that children can have different preferences even for two very similar RC structures within the same language, suggesting that syntactic processing preferences are shaped by the unique features of particular constructions both within and across different linguistic typologies.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Humans, Language, Language Development, Comprehension, Speech Perception, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Psycholinguistics, Semantics, Vocabulary, Child, Child, Preschool, China, Female, Male
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	25 Apr 2017 07:44
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 07:05
DOI:	10.1017/S0305000917000198
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3007128