Abstract
We report a syntactic priming experiment that examined whether children's acquisition of the passive is a staged process, with acquisition of constituent structure preceding acquisition of thematic role mappings. Six-year-olds and nine-year-olds described transitive actions after hearing active and passive prime descriptions involving the same or different thematic roles. Both groups showed a strong tendency to reuse in their own description the syntactic structure they had just heard, including well-formed passives after passive primes, irrespective of whether thematic roles were repeated between prime and target. However, following passive primes, six-year-olds but not nine-year-olds also produced reversed passives, with well-formed constituent structure but incorrect thematic role mappings. These results suggest that by six, children have mastered the constituent structure of the passive; however, they have not yet mastered the non-canonical thematic role mapping. By nine, children have mastered both the syntactic and thematic dimensions of this structure.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 991-1016 |
Number of pages | 26 |
Journal | Journal of Child Language |
Volume | 39 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 19 Dec 2011 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Syntax
- Comprehension
- Verbs
- Reversibility
- Language production
- Young children
- Passive voice
- Representations