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Cited by 103Language Development and DisordersSyntax, Semantics, Linguistic VariationNeurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 48 of the 49 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

English-Speaking Children's Comprehension of Relative Clauses: Evidence for General-Cognitive and Language-Specific Constraints on Development

Open access
Kidd, Evan, Bavin, Edith L.·2002·Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
DOI 10.1023/a:1021265021141
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Abstract

Children must possess some ability to process input in a meaningful manner to acquire language. The present study reports on data from an experiment investigating 3- to 5-year-old English-speaking children's understanding of restrictive relative clauses manipulated for embeddedness and focus. The results of the study showed that English-speaking children acquire right-branching before center-embedded structures. Comparisons made with data from Portuguese-speaking children suggest general-cognitive and language-specific constraints on development, and with respect to English, a "clause expansion" approach to processing in development.

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  • Naturalistic and experimental studies suggest that children acquire subject relative clauses before object relative clauses.

    “Naturalistic and experimental studies suggest that children acquire subject RCs before object RCs (e.g. Diessel & Tomasello, 2000; Kidd & Bavin, 2002).”

    From The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition (2015) · cites this paper as Kidd & Bavin, 2002

    The Results (page unavailable) report no significant main effect of focus—the distinction between subject and object relative clauses. The Discussion (page unavailable) says children performed equally well on right-branching subject- and object-focus clauses. The paper instead identifies right-branching versus center-embedded structure as the developmental difference. (LLM, conf=0.87)

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1 of the 49 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 12

  1. Correa, L. M. (1982). Strategies in the acquisition of relative clauses. Working Papers of the London Psycholinguistic Research Group, 4, 37–49.
  2. Fragman, C., & Goodluck, H. (2000). Children's knowledge of the grammar of restrictive relative clauses. In C. Howell et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 24th Boston University Conference on Language Development (299–307). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
  3. Frazier, L., & Clifton, C., Jr. (1996). Construal. Cambridge: MIT Press.
  4. Hamburger, H., & Crain, S. (1982). Relative acquisition. In: S. Kuczaj II (Ed.), Language development Vol. 1: Syntax and semantics (245–274). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  5. Kuno, S. (1973). Constraints on internal clauses and sentential subjects. Linguistic Inquiry, 4, 363–385.
  6. Kuno, S. (1974). The position of relative clauses and conjunctions. Linguistic Inquiry, 5, 117–136
  7. MacWhinney, B., & Bates, E. (1989). The crosslinguistic study of sentence processing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  8. McCawley, J. D. (1988). The syntactic phenomena of English (Vols. 1 & 2). Chicago: UCP.
  9. Slobin, D. I. (Ed.). (1992). The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (Vol. 3). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  10. Smith, M. (1974). Relative clause formation between 29-36 months: a preliminary report. Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 8, 104–110.
  11. Smith, K., & McMahon, L. (1970). Understanding order information in sentences: Some recent work at Bell Laboratories. In: G. Flores d'Arcais & W. Levelt (Eds.), Advances in psycholinguistics (45–69). Amsterdam: North-Holland.
  12. Tavakolian, S. (1981). The conjoined clause analysis of relative clauses. In: S. Tavakolian (Ed.), Language acquisition and linguistic theory (167–187). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Metadata

Authors
Kidd, E., & Bavin, E. L.
Affiliations
La Trobe University (AU)
Corresponding author
Kidd, Evan
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2002-11
Volume
31
Issue
6
Pages
599-617
ISSN
  • 0090-6905 (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-6555
DOI
10.1023/a:1021265021141
OpenAlex
W294487447
Cited by
103
References
49
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 3 · 2013: 6 · 2012: 4
FWCI
2.65
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of Psycholinguistic Research (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
Keywords
relative clauses, restrictive relative clauses, child language acquisition, embeddedness, focus, Portuguese-speaking children, English-speaking children
MeSH terms
Child, Preschool, Cognition, Female, Humans, Language, Linguistics, Male, Speech Perception

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