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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The role of iconicity in children's production of adverbial clauses
AU - Zhang, Shijie
AU - Brandt, Silke
AU - Theakston, Anna
PY - 2025/6/30
Y1 - 2025/6/30
N2 - Young children’s comprehension of adverbial clauses is significantly affected by iconicity, which refers to whether the order of information in the sentence reflects the order of events in the real world. In contrast, clause order (main-subordinate vs. subordinate-main) and input frequency of specific adverbial clauses do not seem to play independent roles (De Ruiter et al., 2018). The present study tests children’s sentence production across four different connective types (after, before, because, if) to determine whether the factors that underpin the comprehension of adverbial clauses also apply to production, which involves utterance planning and articulation. 42 four-year-old, 42 five-year-old, and 22 eight-year-old monolingual English-speaking children, along with 20 adult controls, completed a sentence completion task. The results showed that both four- and five-year-olds produced all type of sentences in iconic order (“She builds a tower, before she breaks her train”; “After she builds a tower, she breaks her train”) more accurately than in non-iconic order. This suggests that while comprehension and production likely impose different demands on children, iconicity as a general semantic strategy benefits children’s early processing of adverbial clauses. Moreover, the effect of iconicity persisted in older children’s production, but only for their because- and if-sentences, which could be related to their semantic complexity and the pragmatic properties they encode.
AB - Young children’s comprehension of adverbial clauses is significantly affected by iconicity, which refers to whether the order of information in the sentence reflects the order of events in the real world. In contrast, clause order (main-subordinate vs. subordinate-main) and input frequency of specific adverbial clauses do not seem to play independent roles (De Ruiter et al., 2018). The present study tests children’s sentence production across four different connective types (after, before, because, if) to determine whether the factors that underpin the comprehension of adverbial clauses also apply to production, which involves utterance planning and articulation. 42 four-year-old, 42 five-year-old, and 22 eight-year-old monolingual English-speaking children, along with 20 adult controls, completed a sentence completion task. The results showed that both four- and five-year-olds produced all type of sentences in iconic order (“She builds a tower, before she breaks her train”; “After she builds a tower, she breaks her train”) more accurately than in non-iconic order. This suggests that while comprehension and production likely impose different demands on children, iconicity as a general semantic strategy benefits children’s early processing of adverbial clauses. Moreover, the effect of iconicity persisted in older children’s production, but only for their because- and if-sentences, which could be related to their semantic complexity and the pragmatic properties they encode.
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106119
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106119
M3 - Journal article
VL - 259
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
SN - 0010-0277
M1 - 106119
ER -