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Children's judgements of correct and reversed sentences with ‘if’*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Harriet F. Emerson
Harriet F. Emerson
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
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Abstract

Judgements of grammatical acceptability were made for correct and reversed ‘Y if X’ and ‘If X, Y’ sentences. Children aged 4; 10–8; 7 judged sentences ‘sensible’ or ‘silly’ and modified the sentences to make them ‘silly’ or ‘sensible’. Children failed to differentiate correct and reversed-order sentences prior to age 7 or 8. There was no evidence of an order-of-mention response strategy, but ‘If X, Y’ and ‘If Y, X’ sentences were easier to judge than ‘Y if X’ and ‘X if Y’, suggesting that children prefer sentences in which stated order parallels temporal order. The strategies used to modify the sentences changed with age from content changes to order reversals. The modifications suggested that contingency becomes a component of the meaning of if before the child assigns unidirectional event order as a component of if.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , February 1980 , pp. 137 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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Footnotes

[*]

The author would like to thank Drs D. Bruce and V. Emerson for their comments on the manuscript. Thanks are also due to Miss V. B. Pratt, Headteacher, and all the teachers of the infant classes at Newnham Croft School, Cambridge, for their cooperation. Address for correspondence: Department of Psychology, Dawson College, 350 Selby St, Westmount, Quebec H3Z 1W7.

References

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