THE INFLUENCE OF REVERSIBILITY AND TRUNCATION ON THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PASSIVE VOICE BY YOUNG CHILDREN

Abstract

Reversible and non‐reversible active and passive sentences, half of which were truncated and half not, were presented to children aged between three and seven years. Comprehension of each sentence was tested by the simultaneous presentation of picture pairs, one of which showed the actor and object in the same roles and the other in the opposite roles to that described by the sentence. Selection of the pictures which the children considered to match the sentences confirmed the prediction that children whose comprehension of passive sentences was imperfect were aided not only by non‐reversibility but also by agent‐deletion. The most difficult type of passive to comprehend was one which was reversible and contained an agent. Non‐reversibility was also found to aid comprehension of active sentences by the younger subjects.