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Early perception–late comprehension of grammar? The case of verbal -s: a response to de Villiers & Johnson (2007)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2008

MELANIE SODERSTROM
MELANIE SODERSTROM*
Affiliation:
Brown University
*
Address for correspondence: Melanie Soderstrom, Department of Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences, Brown University Box 1978, 190 Thayer St., Providence, RI 02912. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Two recent papers (de Villiers & Johnson, 2007; Johnson, de Villiers & Seymour, 2005) have claimed that children have difficulty with verbal -s until five–six-years-old. This contrasts with perceptual studies showing evidence for sensitivity to the grammatical properties of verbal -s as young as 1; 4. These apparently conflicting findings can be reconciled by differentiating between early perceptual grammatical knowledge and later semantic comprehension.

Type
Brief Research Report
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 35 , Issue 3 , August 2008 , pp. 671 - 676
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

Thanks to Dr Katherine S. White and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on this manuscript.

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