Division of Psychology, Communication and Human Neuroscience, University of Manchester, United Kingdom.
Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, United Kingdom.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2023 Dec 11;66(12):5048-5060. doi: 10.1044/2023_JSLHR-23-00238. Epub 2023 Oct 30.
This is the first study to investigate the combined effects of processing-based factors (i.e., clause length and clause order) and discourse-pragmatic factors (i.e., information structure) on children's and adults' production of adverbial -clauses.
In a sentence repetition task, 16 three-year-old and 16 five-year-old children as well as 17 adults listened to and watched an animated story and then were asked to repeat what they had just heard and seen. Each story contained an adverbial -clause and its main clause. The sentences were manipulated for their clause order, information structure, and clause length.
Adults tended to change main- clause orders to -main in their repetitions, and they showed a strong preference for the given-new order of information. In contrast, 3-year-olds tended to change -main clause orders to main-, and they showed a preference for the new-given order of information. In addition, 3-year-olds tended to produce short-long clause orders irrespective of what they had heard, whereas adults produced both short-long and long-short orders in line with the input. In general, 5-year-olds were more adultlike in their production compared to 3-year-olds.
Young children were strongly affected by processing-based factors in their production of complex sentences. They tended to order main and -clauses in a way that requires less planning and processing load. However, they have not yet attained an adultlike sensitivity to discourse-pragmatic factors.
这是第一项研究，旨在调查基于加工的因素（即从句长度和从句顺序）和语篇语用因素（即信息结构）对儿童和成人状语从句产生的综合影响。
在句子重复任务中，16 名 3 岁儿童和 16 名 5 岁儿童以及 17 名成年人听并观看了一个动画故事，然后被要求重复他们刚才听到和看到的内容。每个故事都包含一个状语从句及其主句。这些句子在从句顺序、信息结构和从句长度方面进行了操控。
成年人在重复时倾向于将主句顺序更改为 -main，并且他们对给定-新的信息顺序表现出强烈的偏好。相比之下，3 岁儿童倾向于将 -main 从句顺序更改为 main-，并且他们更喜欢新的给定信息顺序。此外，3 岁儿童倾向于产生短-长从句顺序，而不管他们听到了什么，而成年人则根据输入产生短-长和长-短顺序。总体而言，与 3 岁儿童相比，5 岁儿童在其句子产生方面更具成人特征。
年幼的儿童在产生复杂句子时受到基于加工的因素的强烈影响。他们倾向于以需要较少计划和处理负载的方式对主从句进行排序。然而，他们尚未达到对语篇语用因素的成人敏感性。
