Comprehension of the copula: preschoolers (and sometimes adults) ignore subject–verb agreement during sentence processing

Benjamin Davies; Nan Xu Rattanasone; Katherine Demuth

doi:10.1017/S0305000919000680

Comprehension of the copula: preschoolers (and sometimes adults) ignore subject–verb agreement during sentence processing

Benjamin Davies, Nan Xu Rattanasone, Katherine Demuth

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

151 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Subject–verb (SV) agreement helps listeners interpret the number condition of ambiguous nouns (The sheep is/are fat), yet it remains unclear whether young children use agreement to comprehend newly encountered nouns. Preschoolers and adults completed a forced choice task where sentences contained singular vs. plural copulas (Where is/are the [novel noun(s)]?). Novel nouns were either morphologically unambiguous (tup/tups) or ambiguous (/geks/ = singular: gex / plural: gecks). Preschoolers (and some adults) ignored the singular copula, interpreting /ks/-final words as plural, raising questions about the role of SV agreement in learners’ sentence comprehension and the status of is in Australian English.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	695-708
Number of pages	14
Journal	Journal of Child Language
Volume	47
Issue number	3
Early online date	19 Nov 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000919000680
Publication status	Published - 1 May 2020

Keywords

language change
comprehension
agreement

Access to Document

10.1017/S0305000919000680

Accepted author manuscriptAccepted author manuscript, 1.06 MBLicence: Unspecified

Cite this

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title = "Comprehension of the copula: preschoolers (and sometimes adults) ignore subject–verb agreement during sentence processing",

abstract = "Subject–verb (SV) agreement helps listeners interpret the number condition of ambiguous nouns (The sheep is/are fat), yet it remains unclear whether young children use agreement to comprehend newly encountered nouns. Preschoolers and adults completed a forced choice task where sentences contained singular vs. plural copulas (Where is/are the [novel noun(s)]?). Novel nouns were either morphologically unambiguous (tup/tups) or ambiguous (/geks/ = singular: gex / plural: gecks). Preschoolers (and some adults) ignored the singular copula, interpreting /ks/-final words as plural, raising questions about the role of SV agreement in learners{\textquoteright} sentence comprehension and the status of is in Australian English.",

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AB - Subject–verb (SV) agreement helps listeners interpret the number condition of ambiguous nouns (The sheep is/are fat), yet it remains unclear whether young children use agreement to comprehend newly encountered nouns. Preschoolers and adults completed a forced choice task where sentences contained singular vs. plural copulas (Where is/are the [novel noun(s)]?). Novel nouns were either morphologically unambiguous (tup/tups) or ambiguous (/geks/ = singular: gex / plural: gecks). Preschoolers (and some adults) ignored the singular copula, interpreting /ks/-final words as plural, raising questions about the role of SV agreement in learners’ sentence comprehension and the status of is in Australian English.

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Comprehension of the copula: preschoolers (and sometimes adults) ignore subject–verb agreement during sentence processing

Abstract

Keywords

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Neural and behavioural evidence for children's learning of grammatical morphology

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Comprehension of the copula: preschoolers (and sometimes adults) ignore subject–verb agreement during sentence processing

Abstract

Keywords

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Neural and behavioural evidence for children's learning of grammatical morphology

Cite this