Abstract sentence representations in 3-year-olds: Evidence from language production and comprehension

• Published in: Journal of memory and language Vol. 59; no. 1; pp. 97 - 113
• Main Authors: Bencini, Giulia M.L., Valian, Virginia V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Diego, CA Elsevier Inc 01.07.2008; Elsevier; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Child; Child development; Developmental psychology; Experimental psychology; Form Classes (Languages); Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Grammar; Grammatical Categories; Language Acquisition; Language Processing; Language Research; Linguistics; Passives; Preschool Children; Priming; Prompting; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Semantic Roles; Semantics; Sentence comprehension; Sentence production; Sentences; Syntactic priming; Syntax; Syntax Semantics Relationship; Voice; Young Children; Passives; Syntactic priming; Sentence production; Semantics; Syntax; Language acquisition; Sentence comprehension; Preschool age; Human; Verbal comprehension; Priming effect; Cognition; Verbal production; Experimental study; Language; Language development; Child; Sentence
• ISSN: 0749-596X; 1096-0821
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2007.12.007

We use syntactic priming to test the abstractness of the sentence representations of young 3-year-olds (35–42 months). In describing pictures with inanimate participants, 18 children primed with passives produced more passives (11 with a strict scoring scheme, 16 with lax scoring) than did 18 children primed with actives (2 on either scheme) or 12 children who received no priming (0). Priming was comparable to that reported for older children and adults. Comprehension of reversible passives with animate participants before and after priming was above chance but did not improve as a result of priming. Young 3-year-olds represent sentences abstractly, have syntactic representations for noun, verb, “surface subject”, and “surface object”, have semantic representations for “agent” and “patient”, and flexibly map the relation between syntax and semantics. Taken together with research on syntactic categories in 2-year-olds, our results provide empirical support for continuity in language acquisition.