Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T02:08:49.071Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Given–new/new–given? Children's sensitivity to the ordering of information in complex sentences

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2013

BIANCA JUNGE ,
ANNA L. THEAKSTON  and
ELENA V. M. LIEVEN
BIANCA JUNGE
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
ANNA L. THEAKSTON*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
ELENA V. M. LIEVEN
Affiliation:
University of Manchester and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Anna L. Theakston, School of Psychological Sciences, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK. E-mail: anna.theakston@manchester.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

English and many other languages allow flexible ordering of main and subordinate clauses in complex sentences. Processing, discourse-pragmatics, and semantics have an impact on the ordering of information. Three-year-olds, 5-year-olds, and adults heard complex sentences containing main and subordinate clauses with differing informational status. Using an act-out method, we analyzed participants’ sensitivity to the ordering of new/given information and its interaction with clause order. All age groups changed the order of information to given–new when exposed to a new–given structure, whereas only adults changed the clause order to subordinate–main when exposed to the reverse. We suggest that children are sensitive to information structure but not clause order in complex sentences. The results are discussed in the context of possible limited processing capacities or understanding of clause order function in complex sentences.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , May 2015 , pp. 589 - 612
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Allen, S. (2000). A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut. Linguistics, 38, 483–521.Google Scholar
Allen, S. E. M., Skarabela, B., & Hughes, M. (2008). Using corpora to examine discourse effects in syntax. In Behrens, H. (Ed.), Corpora in language acquisition research: Finding structure in data (pp. 99–137). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Ariel, M. (1988). Referring and accessibility. Journal of Linguistics, 24, 65–87.Google Scholar
Ariel, M. (1994). Interpreting anaphoric expressions: A cognitive versus a pragmatic approach. Journal of Linguistics, 30, 3–42.Google Scholar
Arnold, J. E., Wasow, T., Losongco, A., & Ginstrom, R. (2000). Heaviness vs. newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering. Language, 76, 28–55.Google Scholar
Baker, N. D., & Greenfield, P. M. (1988). The development of new and old information in young children's early language. Language Sciences, 10, 3–34.Google Scholar
Birner, B., & Ward, G. (1998). Information status and noncanonical word order in English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bittner, D. (2007). Early functions of definite determiners and DPs in German first language acquisition. In E. Stark, Leiss, E., & Abraham, W. (Eds.), Nominal determination: Typology, context constraints and historical emergence (pp. 213–238). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bock, J. K., & Irwin, D. E. (1980). Syntactic effects of information availability in sentence production. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 467–484.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., Cueni, A., Nikitina, T., & Baayen, H. (2007). Predicting the dative alternation. In Boume, G., Kraemer, I., & Zwarts, J. (Eds.), Cognitive foundations of interpretation (pp. 69–94). Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.Google Scholar
Brown, M., Savova, V., & Gibson, E. (2012). Syntax encodes information structure: Evidence from online reading comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 66, 194–209.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. L. (1970). Meaning and the structure of language. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. L. (1976). Givenness, contrastiveness, definiteness, subjects, topics, and point of view. In Li, C. N. (Ed.), Subject and topic (pp. 25–55). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. (1984). How people use adverbial clauses. Berkeley Linguistics Society, 10, 437–449.Google Scholar
Clark, E. (1973). How children describe time and order. In Ferguson, C. A. & Slobin, D. I. (Eds.), Studies of child language development (pp. 585–606). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Clark, E. V., & Clark, H. H. (1979). When nouns surface as verbs. Language, 55, 767–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Sengul, C. J. (1979). In search of referents for nouns and pronouns. Memory and Cognition, 7, 35–41.Google Scholar
Clark, S. E., & Haviland, H. H. (1974) Psychological processes as linguistic explanation. In Cohen, D. (Ed.), Explaining linguistic phenomena. Washington, DC: V. H. Winston.Google Scholar
Clifton, C. Jr., & Frazier, L. (2004). Should given information appear before new? Yes and no. Memory & Cognition, 32, 886–895.Google Scholar
De Cat, C. (2011). Information tracking and encoding in early L1: Linguistic competence vs. cognitive limitations. Journal of Child Language, 38, 828–860.Google Scholar
Diessel, H. (2001). The ordering distribution of main and adverbial clauses: A typological study. Language, 77, 345–365.Google Scholar
Diessel, H. (2004). The acquisition of complex sentences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Diessel, H. (2005). Competing motivations for the ordering of main and adverbial clauses. Linguistics, 43, 449–470.Google Scholar
Diessel, H. (2008). Iconicity of sequence: A corpus-based analysis of the positioning of temporal adverbial clauses in English. Cognitive Linguistics, 19, 465–490.Google Scholar
DuBois, J. A. (1985). Competing motivations. In Haiman, J. (Ed.), Iconicity in syntax (pp. 343–366). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
DuBois, J. A. (1987). The discourse basis of ergativity. Language, 64, 805–855.Google Scholar
Ferreira, V. S., & Dell, G. S. (2000). Effect of ambiguity and lexical availability on syntactic and lexical production. Cognitive Psychology, 40, 296–340.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ferreira, V. S., & Yoshita, H. (2003). Given-new ordering effects on the production of scrambled sentences in Japanese. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32, 669–692.Google Scholar
Ford, C. E. (1993). Grammar in interaction: Adverbial clauses in American English conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Foss, D. J., & Lynch, R. H. Jr. (1969). Decision processes during sentence comprehension: Effects of surface structure on decision times. Perception and Psychophysics, 5, 145–148.Google Scholar
Garrod, S., & Sanford, A. J. (1977). Interpreting anaphoric relations: The interpretation of semantic information while reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 16, 77–90.Google Scholar
Givón, T. (Ed.). (1983). Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Givón, T. (1990). Syntax: A functional–typological introduction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Graf, E. (2010). An experimental pragmatics approach to children's argument omissions. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Manchester.Google Scholar
Greenfield, P. (1973). Who is Dada? Some aspects of the semantic and phonological development of a child's first words. Language and Speech, 16, 34–43.Google Scholar
Greenfield, P. (1979). Informativeness, presupposition, and semantic choice in single-word utterances. In Ochs, E. & Schieffelin, B. B. (Eds.), Developmental pragmatics (pp. 159–166). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Grünloh, T., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2013). Young children's intonational marking of new, given and contrastive referents. Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Guerriero, S., Oshima-Takane, Y., & Kuriyama, Y. (2006). The development of referential choice in English and Japanese: A discourse-pragmatic perspective. Journal of Child Language, 33, 823–857.Google Scholar
Gundel, J., Hedberg, N., & Zacharski, R. (1993). Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language, 69, 274–307.Google Scholar
Gundel, J., Sera, M., Kowalski, M., & Page, S. (2001, May). Cognitive status, implicature, and children's use of referring forms in English and Spanish. Poster presented at the Society for Research in Child Development Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN.Google Scholar
Gundel, J., Sera, M., & Page, S. (1999). The acquisition of referring expressions in English and Spanish. Paper presented at the Child Language Research Forum, Stanford, CA, April 10.Google Scholar
Gundel, J. K. (1988). The role of topic and comment in linguistic theory. In Hankamer, G. (Ed.), Outstanding dissertations in linguistics. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 2. Journal of Linguistics, 3, 199–244.Google Scholar
Haviland, S. E., & Clark, H. H. (1974). What's new? Acquiring new information as a process in comprehension. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 13, 512–521.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (1994). A performance theory of order and constituency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, J. A. (2004). Efficiency and complexity in grammars. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hickmann, M., & Hendriks, H. (1999). Cohesion and anaphora in children's narratives: Comparison of English, French, German and Chinese. Journal of Child Language, 26, 419–452.Google Scholar
Hughes, M., & Allen, S. (2006). A discourse-pragmatic analysis of subject omission in child English. In Bamman, D., Magnitskaia, T., & Zaller, C. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 293–304). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Kaiser, E., & Trueswell, J. C. (2004). The role of discourse context in the processing of a flexible word-order language. Cognition, 94, 113–147.Google Scholar
Kidd, E., Brandt, S., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2007). Object relatives made easy: A crosslinguistic comparison of the constraints influencing young children's processing of relative clauses. Language and Cognitive Processes, 22, 860–897.Google Scholar
Lambrecht, K. (1994). Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus, and the mental representation of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lehmann, C. (1988). Towards a typology of clause linkage. In Haiman, J. & Thompson, S. A. (Eds.), Clause combining in grammar and discourse (pp. 181–226). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lempert, H., & Kinsbourne, M. (1985). Possible origin of speech in selective orienting. Psychological Bulletin, 97, 62–73.Google Scholar
Leonard, L. B., & Schwartz, R. G. (1977). Focus characteristics of single word utterances after syntax. Journal of Child Language, 5, 151–158.Google Scholar
Levelt, W. J. M. (1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lieven, E., Salomo, D., & Tomasello, M. (2009). Two-year-old children's production of multiword utterances: A usage-based analysis. Cognitive Linguistics, 20, 481–508.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk (Vols. 1 & 2). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B., & Bates, E. (1978). Sentential devices for conveying givenness and newness: A cross-cultural developmental study. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17, 539–558.Google Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., Theakston, A., & Tomasello, M. (2006). The effect of perceptual availability and prior discourse on young children's use of referring expressions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 403–422.Google Scholar
Mishina-Mori, S. (2007). Argument representation in Japanese/English simultaneous bilinguals: Is there a crosslinguistic influence? In Caunt-Nulto, H., Kulatilake, S., & Woo, I. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 441–450). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Muir, D., & Field, J. (1979). Newborn infants orient to sound. Child Development, 50, 431–436.Google Scholar
Narasimhan, B., Budwig, N., & Murty, L. (2005). Argument realization in Hindi child caregiver discourse. Journal of Pragmatics, 37, 461–495.Google Scholar
Narasimhan, B., & Dimroth, C. (2008). Word order and information status in child language. Cognition, 1, 317–329.Google Scholar
Nelson, K. (1973). Structure and strategy in learning to talk. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 38(Serial No. 149).Google Scholar
Prince, E. (1981). Toward a taxonomy of given/new information. In Cole, P. (Ed.), Radical pragmatics (pp. 223–255). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Ramsay, V. (1987). The functional distribution of preposed and postposed if and when clauses in written discourse. In Tomlin, Russell (Ed.), Coherence and grounding in discourse (pp. 383–408). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Rowland, C. F., & Noble, C. H. (2011). The role of syntactic structure in children's sentence comprehension: Evidence from the dative. Language Learning and Development, 7, 55–75.Google Scholar
Rozendaal, M. I., & Baker, A. E. (2008). A cross-linguistic investigation of the acquisition of the pragmatics of indefinite and definite reference in two-year-olds. Journal of Child Language, 35, 773–807.Google Scholar
Salomo, D., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2010). Young children's sensitivity to new and given information when answering predicate-focus questions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 31, 101–115.Google Scholar
Serratrice, L. (2005). The role of discourse pragmatics in the acquisition of subjects in Italian. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 437–462.Google Scholar
Serratrice, L. (2006). Referential cohesion in the narratives of bilingual English–Italian children and monolingual peers. Journal of Pragmatics, 39, 1058–1087.Google Scholar
Siewierska, A. (1993). Syntactic weight vs. information structure and word order variation in Polish. Journal of Linguistics, 29, 233–265.Google Scholar
Silva, M. (1991). Simultaneity in children's narratives: The case of “when,” “while” and “as.” Journal of Child Language, 18, 641–662.Google Scholar
Skarabela, B. (2006). The role of social cognition in early syntax: The case of joint attention in argument realization in child Inuktitut. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Boston University.Google Scholar
Tanenhaus, M. K., & Carroll, J. M. (1975). The clausal processing hierarchy and . . . nouniness. In Grossman, R. J. San & Vance, T. (Eds.), Papers from the parasession on functionalism, Chicago Linguistic Society (pp. 499–512). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Theakston, A. L. (2012). “The spotty cow tickled the pig with a curly tail”: How do sentence position, preferred argument structure, and referential complexity affect children's and adults’ choice of referring expression? Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 691–724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Theakston, A. L., Lieven, E. V., Pine, J., & Rowland, C. (2001). The role of performance limitations in the acquisition of verb argument structure. Journal of Child Language, 28, 127–152.Google Scholar
Thompson, S. (1987). “Subordination” and narrative event structure. In Tomlin, R. (Ed.), Coherence and grounding in discourse (pp. 435–454). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Verstraete, J. C. (2004). Initial and final position of adverbial clauses in English: The constructional basis of the discursive and syntactic differences. Linguistics, 42, 819–853.Google Scholar
Wasow, T. (1997a). End-weight from the speaker's perspective. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26, 347–361.Google Scholar
Wasow, T. (1997b). Remarks on grammatical weight. Language Variation and Change, 9, 81–105.Google Scholar
Wiemann, L. A. (1976). Stress patterns in early child language. Journal of Child Language, 3, 283–286.Google Scholar