106 research outputs found
Refining intervention: The acquisition of featural relations in object A-bar dependencies
No full textThe presence of a [+NP] feature (representing a 'lexical restriction') on both the moved DP and the intervening subject is assumed to hinder children's comprehension of object A-bar dependencies (Friedmann et al., 2009). In order to better understand the nature and impact of this feature and its interaction with animacy, we assessed comprehension of object relative clauses and wh-questions in French-speaking children aged 5-11 using a character-selection task. Furthermore, we explored the link between processing of featural relations and working memory abilities through digit-span tasks. Results on questions straightforwardly confirm the role of the [+NP] feature; results on relatives suggest that the locality effect is sensitive to the formal similarity in D + NP shape of the target and the intervener. An animacy mismatch facilitates processing (as of age 7) only in the [+NP] condition, suggesting that the computation of locality draws on the structural expression of features, not just their mere semantic value. We argue in favor of a restrictive structural approach to intervention, and of a hierarchical organization of features. The link between accuracy and memory scores illustrates that limitations of computational resources affect processing of A-bar dependencies
COMPLEX SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES IN THE HERITAGE LANGUAGE VS. THE MAJORITY LANGUAGE: A COMPREHENSION STUDY WITH ROMANIAN-GERMAN BILINGUALS
No full textThis study investigated the comprehension of subject and object which-questions in both the heritage language (Romanian) and the societal language (German) of eighteen bilingual children with ages between five and eleven. Using an offline picture-matching task, the study assessed whether the bilingual children use morphological cues, like differential object marking, case marking, and number agreement to overcome the difficulties associated with the comprehension of object which-questions even in monolingual acquisition (Bentea 2017, Friedmann et al. 2009, Roesch & Chondrogianni 2016). The study shows that the Romanian-German bilingual children exhibit a subject-object asymmetry in both their heritage and societal language. However, children appear to use morphological cues differently. In Romanian, the differential object marker did not eliminate comprehension difficulties and a number mismatch did not significantly impact offline interpretation. In contrast, in German, case marking, but not number, played a significant facilitative role, especially when marked on both noun phrases
Person Matters : Relative Clauses in the Acquisition of French
No full textChildren’s comprehension difficulties with object relative clauses (ORs) seem reduced when the embedded subject is a pronoun, rather than a lexical noun. The intervention locality account explains this facilitation in terms of a mismatch in features between the head of the OR and the intervening pronominal subject, namely the N feature according to some (Friedmann et al. 2009), or finer-grained phi features according to others (Bentea & Durrleman, 2021). We evaluate the predictions of these accounts in an experimental study assessing OR comprehension in French. Fifty-two children between the ages of four and five were tested on a character-selection task investigating whether intervention effects in ORs with a lexically-restricted object are alleviated, or not, with pronominal interveners matching with the object in other features than lexical restriction. We also explored the potential impact of an intervening pronominal mismatching with the object on a feature yet unexplored in French, namely person. Results reveal low performance on ORs with pronominal interveners matching on features (number, gender, person). However, ORs with pronominal interveners mismatching only in person were comprehended significantly better. This suggests that differences in finer-grained features than N explain children’s difficulties with ORs and that person is such a feature.publishe
Acquisition of Multiple Wh-questions in English and Romanian Monolingual and Bilingual Children: from Production to Comprehension
No full textAcquisition of Multiple Wh-questions in English and Romanian Monolingual and Bilingual Children: from Production to Comprehension
No full textAcquisition of Multiple Wh-questions in English and Romanian Monolingual and Bilingual Children: from Production to Comprehension
No full textSYNTAX IN HERITAGE LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: THE VIEW FROM ROMANIAN
No full textA heritage language, also known as “family language”, “home language”, or “native language”, represents a minority language acquired through naturalistic exposure within the home, but in a context where a different language is the majority societal language (Rothman 2009, Montrul 2008, 2016, 2022a, b, 2023, Benmamoun et al. 2013, Polinsky 2018, a.o.). In other words, the language spoken in the home, and possibly within a smaller community, differs from the dominant language used by the broader society. Children acquiring heritage languages are heritage speakers of these languages. They are typically early bilinguals, simultaneous or successive, depending on the timing of acquisition of the two languages. These can be acquired either simultaneously from birth or successively, when the heritage language is acquired as the first language (L1) and the societal language is acquired later as second language (L2). Heritage speakers differ greatly in their profiles and can be either second generation immigrants (so children of first-generation immigrants and who are born in the new country), or immigrant children, who immigrate to the new country before puberty (Montrul & Polinsky 2021). For instance, a child born to Romanian immigrant parents in Paris or a child who immigrated at the age of nine with the family from Cluj-Napoca to Munich, would grow up as heritage speakers of Romanian in France and Germany, respectively
Locality in the acquisition of object A’-dependencies : insights from French
No full textChildren’s difficulties with dependencies involving movement of an object to the left periphery of the clause (object relative clauses/RCs and wh-questions), have been explained in terms of intervention effects arising when the moved object and the intervening subject share a lexical N feature (Friedmann, Belletti & Rizzi 2009). Such an account raises various questions: (1) Do these effects hold in the absence of a lexical N feature when the object and the intervener share other relevant features? (2) Do phi-features with a semantic role modulate such effects? (3) Does the degree of feature overlap determine a gradience in performance? We addressed these in three sentence-picture matching studies with French-speaking children (4;8 to 6;3), by assessing comprehension of (1) subject and object RCs headed by the demonstrative pronouns celui/celle and matching or mismatching in number; (2) object RCs headed by a lexical N and matching or mismatching in animacy; (3) object who- and which-questions. Our results show that mismatches in number, not in animacy, enhance comprehension of object RCs, even in the absence of a lexical N feature, and confirm previous findings that object who-questions yield better comprehension than object which-questions. Comparing across studies, the following gradation emerges with respect to performance accuracy: disjunction > intersection > inclusion. The global interpretation of these findings is that fine-grained phi-features determining movement are both sufficient and necessary for locality, and the degree of overlap of these features can capture the pattern of performance observed in children, namely higher accuracy as featural differences increase.publishe
Claudia Anamaria IOV, (2020), Rethinking (In)Security in the European Union: The Migration-Identity-Security Nexus, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 289pp.
No full textA Scientific Researcher with over 12 years of experience in the
field of international relations and also a university lecturer with a career spanning more than 10 years in security studies at Babeș-Bolyai
University in Cluj-Napoca, Claudia Anamaria Iov, author of the book
Rethinking (In)Security in the European Union: The Migration-Identity-
Security Nexus, presents in this ambitious, well-documented work an approach to the complex relationship between migration, identity,
and security within the European Union, particularly in the case of the
Roma minority
Not committing has its advantages: facilitating children's comprehension of object filler–gap dependencies is one of them
No full textAbstractTwo studies assess French-speaking children's comprehension of object filler–gap dependencies, with the goal of investigating whether the degree of specificity/set-restriction of the fronted object or the intervening subject modulates comprehension. We tease apart the predictions of various accounts attributing children's difficulties to (i) similarities between the object and the intervening subject (Gordonet al., 2001, 2004), particularly when both constituents share a structural +NP feature (Friedmannet al., 2009); (ii) increased processing cost determined by an operation of set-restriction (Goodluck 2010); and (iii) the tendency to incrementally interpret sentences and the subsequent difficulty in revising an early commitment to an agent/subject-first analysis (Trueswellet al., 1999). Our results support the incremental processing view as they reveal that only a less specific fronted object, but not a less specific intervener, enhances comprehension. This suggests that referentially ambiguous objects alleviate children from an erroneous initial interpretive commitment to an agent/subject-first structure.</jats:p
- …
