TY - JOUR
T1 - Four-year-old Cantonese-speaking children's online processing of relative clauses
T2 - A permutation analysis
AU - Chan, Angel
AU - Yang, Wenchun
AU - Chang, Franklin
AU - Kidd, Evan
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Cambridge University Press Â.
PY - 2018/1/1
Y1 - 2018/1/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85020728836&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0305000917000198
DO - 10.1017/S0305000917000198
M3 - Article
SN - 0305-0009
VL - 45
SP - 174
EP - 203
JO - Journal of Child Language
JF - Journal of Child Language
IS - 1
ER -