Preschool children's sentence comprehension: strategies with respect to word order

1980/06/01 by Henrietta Lempert, Marcel Kinsbourne
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Language Development and Disorders #Reading and Literacy Development #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

paper · doi:10.1017/s0305000900002683

openalex publication_date 1980/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29

Abstract

ABSTRACT Fifty-two children aged 2; 5 to 6; 3 acted out the meaning of reversible passive and inverted cleft sentences. The younger children overgeneralized two strategies that led to passive sentence reversal. In order of frequency, they are: (1)‘agent + action’ (the noun preceding the verb being interpreted as agent even when it is the second noun), and (2) ‘order-of-mention’ (the first noun being treated as agent). Whereas younger children tended to use an individually consistent approach to both structures, older children were more likely to vary their approaches when they did not comprehend a structure.

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