Abstract
Children must possess some ability to process input in a meaningful manner to acquire language. The present study reports on data from an experiment investigating 3- to 5-year-old English-speaking children's understanding of restrictive relative clauses manipulated for embeddedness and focus. The results of the study showed that English-speaking children acquire right-branching before center-embedded structures. Comparisons made with data from Portuguese-speaking children suggest general-cognitive, and language-specific constraints on development, and with respect to English, a "clause expansion" approach to processing in development. © 2002 Plenum Publishing Corporation.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 599-617 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Journal of Psycholinguistic Research |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2002 |
Keywords
- English
- Language acquisition
- Relative clauses
- Syntax