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Lexical and Referential Cues to Sentence Interpretation: An Investigation of Children's Interpretations of Ambiguous Sentences
- Source :
-
Journal of Child Language . Nov 2005 32(4):855-876. - Publication Year :
- 2005
-
Abstract
- This paper reports on an investigation of children's (aged 3;5-9;8) comprehension of sentences containing ambiguity of prepositional phrase (PP) attachment. Results from a picture selection study (N=90) showed that children use verb semantics and preposition type to resolve the ambiguity, with older children also showing sensitivity to the definiteness of the object NP as a cue to interpretation. Study 2 investigated three- and five-year-old children's (N=47) ability to override an instrumental interpretation of ambiguous PPs in order to process attributes of the referential scene. The results showed that while five-year-olds are capable of incorporating aspects of the referential scene into their interpretations, three-year-olds are not as successful. Overall, the results suggest that children are attuned very early to the lexico-semantic co-occurrences that have been shown to aid ambiguity resolution in adults, but that more diffuse cues to interpretation are used only later in development. [This research was partially funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award.]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 0305-0009
- Volume :
- 32
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- ERIC
- Journal :
- Journal of Child Language
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- EJ777487
- Document Type :
- Journal Articles<br />Reports - Research
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000905007051