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On-line sentence processing in Swedish: cross-linguistic developmental comparisons with French*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2011

MICHÈLE KAIL ,
MARIA KIHLSTEDT  and
PHILIPPE BONNET
MICHÈLE KAIL*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire Structures Formelles du Langage, CNRS, UMR 7023 and Université de Paris VIII Saint Denis
MARIA KIHLSTEDT
Affiliation:
CNRS UMR 7114 MoDyCo and Université de Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense
PHILIPPE BONNET
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neuropsychologie Cognitive FRE 3292, CNRS-Paris Descartes
*
Address for correspondence: Michèle Kail, Laboratoire Structures Formelles du Langage, Centre CNRS Pouchet, 59 rue Pouchet, 75849 Paris cedex 17, France. e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This study examined on-line processing of Swedish sentences in a grammaticality-judgement experiment within the framework of the Competition Model. Three age groups from 6 to 11 and an adult group were asked to detect grammatical violations as quickly as possible. Three factors concerning cue cost were studied: violation position (early vs. late), violation span (intraphrasal vs. interphrasal) and violation type (agreement vs. word order). Developmental results showed that children were always slower at detecting grammatical violations. Irrespective of age, participants were faster at judging sentences with late violations, especially in the younger groups. Intraphrasal violations were more rapidly detected than interphrasal ones, particularly in adults. Finally, agreement violations and word order ones did not differ. The hierarchy of cue cost factors indicated that violation span was the dominant one. A cross-linguistic analysis with French (Kail, 2004) underlines the developmental processing abilities and the interdependence between cue cost and cue validity.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , January 2012 , pp. 28 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by a ‘School and Cognitive Sciences’ fellowship from the French Ministry of Research.

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