Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2013
Abstract
The present study used a preferential looking paradigm to examine the types of structural cues used by 24- and 21-months-old Korean children when processing the meaning of sentences with a novel verb in Korean. In the first two of the three experiments, participants were shown two videos positioned adjacent to each other, depicting independent or causative behaviors, and were made to listen to sentences with a nominative or accusative case marker. It was found that in Experiment 1, the 24-month-old infants looked at causative rather than independent behaviors for longer in the accusative condition, but not in the nominative condition. In Experiment 2, the 21-month old infants looked at independent behaviors for longer durations regardless of the sentence type. In Experiment 3, one- and two-noun sentences were used without any case markers. The 21-month old infants looked at causative behaviors for longer when hearing two-noun rather than one-noun sentences. These results suggest that by the age of 24 months, Korean children use morphological cues when understanding the meaning of a novel verb, while younger children might exploit the number of noun cues rather than case markers.
Recommended Citation
Lee, W.-Y., Kim, M., & Song, H.-J. (2013). The development of Korean children's abilities to use structural cues for sentence comprehension. Korean Journal of Developmental Psychology, 26(4), 125-139.
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License
Included in
Child Psychology Commons, First and Second Language Acquisition Commons, Morphology Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in Korean Journal of Developmental Psychology, volume 26, issue 4, in 2013.