Abstract
Preschool children acquiring English and Brazilian Portuguese display a peculiar behavior when prompted to produce multi-clause wh-questions. In elicited production tasks, structures with an extra wh-element in medial position are sometimes produced. Such medial questions are impossible in the adult languages being acquired. Following a hypothesis put forth by Grolla & Lidz (2018), we propose that children’s productions are not generated by children’s grammar, but reflect difficulties of their developing cognitive system. More specifically, we propose that children’s more limited inhibition control capacity leads them to pronounce elements with high activation levels in wrong places of the structure. Experimental data on both languages are provided which corroborate this claim. These data show that children with more limited inhibition control capacity are more likely to produce medial wh-questions.
Highlights
IntroductionYoung children are not capable of providing judgments on the grammaticality of sentences or discussing the possible meanings a sentence might have
Studying the development of language in young children is a daunting task
Comparing ((1)a) and ((1)b) above, we might erroneously conclude that English and BrP have the same restrictions on multi-clause questions
Summary
Young children are not capable of providing judgments on the grammaticality of sentences or discussing the possible meanings a sentence might have In addition to this lack of meta-linguistic capacity, children are developing other aspects of cognition, besides language. Researchers working on language development must bear this in mind when they encounter non-adult linguistic behavior in children. We discuss a case where children acquiring two typologically different languages (English and Brazilian Portuguese ( BrP)) exhibit similar non-adult linguistic behavior. We will argue that children acquiring English (and BrP) are on target with respect to multi-clause wh-questions and that the errors they produce are due to their limited inhibition control capacities.
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