Object Wh-questions Research Articles

Involvement of the anterior insula and frontal operculum during wh-question comprehension of wh-in-situ Korean language.

In this research, we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neurological basis for understanding wh-questions in wh-in-situ languages such as Korean, where wh-elements maintain their original positions instead of moving explicitly within the sentence. Our hypothesis centered on the role of the salience and attention network in comprehending wh-questions in wh-in-situ languages, such as the discernment of wh-elements, the demarcation between interrogative types, and the allocation of cognitive resources towards essential constituents vis-à-vis subordinate elements in order to capture the speaker's communicative intent. We explored subject and object wh-questions and scrambled wh-questions, contrasting them with yes/no questions in Korean. Increased activation was observed in the left anterior insula and bilateral frontal operculum, irrespective of the wh-position or scrambling of wh-element. These results suggest the interaction between the salience and attentional system and the syntactic linguistic system, particularly the left anterior insula and bilateral frontal operculum, in comprehending wh-questions in wh-in-situ languages.

Morphosyntactic skills in Arabic-speaking children with autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from error patterns in the sentence repetition task.

Although autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has not traditionally been associated with morphosyntactic impairments, some children with ASD manifest significant difficulties in this domain. Sentence Repetition (SRep) tasks are highly reliable tools for detecting morphosyntactic impairment in different languages and across various populations, including children with ASD. This study is among the first to evaluate morphosyntactic abilities of Palestinian-Arabic (PA) speaking children using a PA SRep task. A total of 142 PA-speaking children, aged 5-11, participated in the study: 75 children with typical language development (TLD) and 67 children with ASD. The PA SRep task targeted morphosyntactic structures of varying complexity (simple subject-verb-object [SVO] sentences, biclausal sentences, wh-questions, relative clauses). Children's accuracy scores were assessed across these structures and error patterns encompassing morphosyntactic and pragmatic aspects were analyzed. Two subgroups of ASD emerged: 43% showed age-appropriate language skills (ASD + NL) pairing up with TLD peers, while 57% showed signs of morphosyntactic impairment (ASD + LI). Children in both groups exhibited a higher frequency of morphosyntactic errors than pragmatic ones. Children with ASD + LI showed difficulties with producing complex morphosyntactic structures, such as relative clauses and object wh-questions. Error analysis revealed that children in the ASD + LI group produced sentence fragments and simplified constructions when complex structures were targeted. The current study extends the cross-linguistic evidence of the heterogeneity of morphosyntactic profiles in children with ASD to Arabic-speaking children. Error analysis indicates that poor morphosyntax, rather than pragmatics, challenges children's performance on the SRep task. Our results emphasize the importance of comprehensive language assessment in children with ASD and underscore the need for tailored intervention plans targeting impaired morphosyntactic structures in some children with ASD.

Comprehension of who- and which-questions in monolingual and bilingual acquisition: Explicating the difficulty of set restriction

Objectives: Object wh-questions are more difficult for monolingual children to comprehend than subject questions. Especially difficult are object- which questions that appear to be significantly more difficult than both (object/subject) who and subject- which questions. Our research examines the manifestation of this difficulty among bilingual preschool children (L1-English, L2-Hebrew) as compared with their Hebrew monolingual peers, exploring the two languages of the bilinguals. Approach: Using a character selection task, the empirical goal of the study is to analyze the differences between monolinguals and bilinguals and between the languages of the bilinguals. The theoretical goal is to explain the difficulty which cuts across the two populations, namely, the comprehension of object- which questions. Data and Analysis: A total of A total of 55 preschool children, aged 4.4–6.4, participated in the study: 20 monolinguals and 35 bilinguals. A mixed linear model analysis, a general linear model, multiple linear regression analyses, and chi-square tests were used to analyze the data. Findings: (1) Monolingual and bilingual children (in their L2) have similar trajectories: object- which questions present difficulties to all participants, and their comprehension systematically follows the comprehension of object- who questions; (2) similar trajectories are also found in the two languages of the bilingual children, with L1-English object- which questions lagging behind L2-Hebrew object- which questions. Originality: The comparison between the two populations, and especially between the two languages of the bilinguals, led us to take a closer look at the syntactic processing of which-questions. We explored the possibility that the set restriction computation is the source of children’s difficulty, overloading their working memory resources. Significance: Our research demonstrates that monolingual and bilingual (syntactic) development is essentially the same. However, when syntactic processes interact with additional factors, such as working memory resources and language-specific properties, as is the case in object- which questions in Hebrew versus English, the gap between the two populations might widen.

Comprehension of wh-questions among Jordanian children with autism spectrum disorder and specific language impairment

This study investigates the comprehension of wh-questions among Jordanian Arabic-speaking children by comparing both (subject and object) “which” and “who” questions. The sample consisted of 45 Jordanian children: 15 with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), 15 with specific developmental language impairment (SDLI) and 15 typically developing (TD) children aged between 6 and 8 years. To achieve the objectives of this study, a binary task consisting of pictures with two-figure selection and pictures with three-figure selection was used. To analyze the data, a one-way repeated measures ANOVA was used to examine the comprehension of wh-questions among the three groups. The findings revealed that the ASD and SDLI groups performed better in subject wh-questions compared to object wh-questions. Moreover, the study also found that “which” questions constituted a problem for both ASD and SDLI Jordanian children. In addition, earlier grammatical competence acquired by children with ASD and SDLI (i.e., word order) guides their later wh-question comprehension. ASD and SDLI children showed impairment in answering subject and object questions. Meanwhile, the TD children showed better performance in who and which questions, although they exhibited difficulty in understanding object questions compared to subject questions. The conclusions indicate that the SDLI group performed better than the ASD group in terms of the number of correct answers and comprehension of wh-questions, while The ASD group performed better in the three-figures tasks over the two-figure tasks, in contrast to the children in the other groups, who performed better in the two-figure tasks.

The Positioning of WH Words in Modern Laos Sign Language

This article discusses the positioning of wh words in Modern Laos Sign Language. Research indicates that there are two common patterns for the position of wh words in spoken languages: the initial position and in situ (Dryer 2013). However, in some sign languages, it seems that wh word positioning is sentence-final, as shown in recent research (Woodward 2018) on Southeast Asian sign languages. This article discusses the positioning of wh words; some Southeast Asian sign languages have final wh word positioning, which differs from the majority of spoken languages (Dryer 2013). For instance, in the data that I have collected and analyzed from Modern Laos Sign Language, wh words always occurred at the end of the sentence. Moreover, the consultants that I interviewed rejected sentences with wh words in situ and at the beginning of sentences. This is true not only of simple subject and direct object wh questions, but also of several other grammatical structures.

The role of a consciousness-raising task in a focused-task sequence

This paper analyzes the role of explicit information on the learning of subject and object wh-questions in a sequence of tasks. Two sequences of focused tasks (ELLIS, 2003) were designed to incorporate flooded and enhanced subject and object wh-questions in the input. The activities were the same, except for a consciousness-raising task (C-RT) in one of the sequences, which was devised to promote learners’ explicit knowledge of the target structures. Two groups of EFL high school students participated in the study. The data were collected through a pre- and a post-test that required the production and the recognition of the structures. The groups’ performance was compared, and the results showed that the focused-task sequence containing the C-RT was not promising, possibly due to learners’ internal factors which may play down the role of explicit knowledge in the foreign language learning process.

Towards Understanding Sustained Neural Activity Across Syntactic Dependencies.

Sustained anterior negativities have been the focus of much neurolinguistics research concerned with the language-memory interface, but what neural computations do they actually reflect? During the comprehension of sentences with long-distance dependencies between elements (such as object wh-questions), prior event-related potential work has demonstrated sustained anterior negativities (SANs) across the dependency region. SANs have been traditionally interpreted as an index of working memory resources responsible for storing the first element (e.g., wh-phrase) until the second element (e.g., verb) is encountered and the two can be integrated. However, it is also known that humans pursue top-down approaches in processing long-distance dependencies-predicting units and structures before actually encountering them. This study tests the hypothesis that SANs are a more general neural index of syntactic prediction. Across three experiments, we evaluated SANs in traditional wh-dependency contrasts, but also in sentences in which subordinating adverbials (e.g., although) trigger a prediction for a second clause, compared to temporal adverbials (e.g., today) that do not. We find no SAN associated with subordinating adverbials, contra the syntactic prediction hypothesis. More surprisingly, we observe SANs across matrix questions but not embedded questions. Since both involved identical long-distance dependencies, these results are also inconsistent with the traditional syntactic working memory account of the SAN. We suggest that a more general hypothesis that sustained neural activity supports working memory can be maintained, however, if the sustained anterior negativity reflects working memory encoding at the non-linguistic discourse representation level, rather than at the sentence level.

Growing trees: The acquisition of the left periphery

We suggest here a Growing Trees approach for the description of the acquisition of various syntactic structures in Hebrew, based on the main results reported in Friedmann and Reznick (this volume) and on our own research on a corpus of natural productions. The heart of our account is that stages of acquisition follow the geometry of the syntactic tree, along the lines of the cartographic analysis of the clause, with early stages of acquisition corresponding to small portions of the adult syntactic tree, which keeps growing with the growth of the child. The lower parts of the tree are acquired first, and higher parts are acquired later. We propose three stages of acquisition connected to the development of functional layers of the syntactic tree. In the first stage, the IP is acquired, including the lexical and inflectional layers. This allows for the appearance of A-movement structures, including SV/VS alternations with unaccusative verbs, alongside SV sentences with unergative/transitive verbs. The second stage involves the acquisition of the lower part of the left periphery, up to QP, which allows for the acquisition of subject and object Wh questions, some adjunct questions, yes/no questions, and sentence-initial adverbs. In the third stage, the rich structure of the left periphery is completely acquired, including the higher CP field. This is the stage in which sentential embedding (of finite declarative and interrogative clauses), subject and object relative clauses, why questions, and topicalization appear. A further, different type of stage, which occurs on the already-grown tree and which is independent of structure building, is the acquisition of intervention configurations, allowing for the mastery of structures involving movement of a lexically-restricted object across an intervening lexically-restricted subject. The paper illustrates the fruitful dialogue between the science of syntax acquisition and the cartography of syntactic structures.

The time-course of competition from the L1 grammar in L2 sentence processing: Evidence from cross-linguistic structural priming

In two visual-world eye-tracking experiments, we explore the extent to which conflicting first-language (L1) based grammatical parses influence second-language (L2) learners’ on-line and off-line interpretation of sentences in the L2. We used cross-linguistic structural priming to potentially boost competition from the L1 grammar during the processing of wh-questions in English. For L1-German learners (Experiment 1), sentence-final interpretations showed effects of conflicting L1 parses in the greater number of misinterpretations of English subject as object wh-questions than vice versa. In a follow-up experiment with a comparison group of L1-Japanese learners (Experiment 2), we found the reverse pattern in sentence-final interpretations, with lower accuracy on English object than subject wh-questions. The asymmetry in comprehension accuracy between Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that the effect observed among L1-German learners reflected grammar competition from the L1 rather than general L2 effects. In both experiments, we observed cross-linguistic priming from L1 object questions to L2 object questions in on-line processing. Yet, cross-linguistic priming did not enhance competition from L1 object questions on L2 subject questions in Experiment 1 as reflected in comprehension accuracy or eye-gaze during processing. Together, these findings present evidence of cross-linguistic structural priming for equivalent interpretations (object–object), but indicate that priming does not extend to competing L1 interpretations of word-order equivalent structures cross-linguistically (object–subject). We suggest that interference from conflicting L1-based grammatical parses is narrowly delimited in intermediate to advanced L2 sentence processing.

Coconuts and curtain cakes: The production of wh-questions in ASD.

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been found to exhibit difficulties in wh-question production. It is unclear whether these difficulties are pragmatic or syntactic in nature. The current study used a question elicitation task to assess the production of subject and object wh-questions of children with ASD in two different languages (Hebrew and French) wherein the syntactic structure of wh-questions is different, a fact that may contribute to better understanding of the underlying deficits affecting wh-question production. Crucially, beyond the general correct/error rate we also performed an in-depth analysis of error types, comparing syntactic to pragmatic errors and comparing the distribution of errors in the ASD group to that of children with typical development (TD) and children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). Correct production rates were found to be similar for the ASD and DLD groups, but error analysis revealed important differences between the ASD groups in the two languages and the DLD group. The Hebrew- and French ASD groups were found to produce pragmatic errors, which were not found in children with DLD. The pragmatic errors were similar in the two ASD groups. Syntactic errors were affected by the structure of each language. Our results have shown that although the two ASD groups come from different countries and speak different languages, the correct production rates and more importantly, the error types were very similar in the two ASD groups, and very different compared to TD children and children with DLD.Implications: Our results highlight the importance of creating research tasks that test different linguistic functions independently and strengthen the need for conducting fine-grained error analysis to differentiate between groups and gain insights into the deficits underlying each of them.

Language deficits and motor asymmetry in children with SLI

The present study aims at investigating whether a link between language deficits and upper and lower limb motor asymmetry can be established. We assessed language skills, handedness, and footedness in a group of 13 children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and two control groups matched on language age (LA) and chronological age(CA) respectively. Specifically, we tested the production of object wh questions, object relative clauses and sigmatic past tense production for novel non-rhyming verbs, and administered hand and foot preferencequestionnaires. While significant between group differences were found in the language tasks, as participants with SLI performed significantly below CA controls, the same level of performance was shown for hand and foot preference. Further analysis revealed no correlation between foot and hand preference for the SLI group in contrast to typically developing children. Additional regression analysis showed that the non-right foot preference could predict participation in the SLI group. These results may be indicative of poor hand-foot coordination in the SLI group and increased chance for SLI individuals to be grouped as non-right footed. We interpret these findings as showing immature motor development in SLI and pointing to a weak correlation between motor laterality and language deficits. We discuss the implications of our findings for the characterisation of the deficit in SLI.

Verbal short-term memory and sentence comprehension in German children and adolescents with Down syndrome: Beware of the task

In individuals with Down syndrome (DS) deficits in verbal short-term memory (VSTM) and deficits in sentence comprehension co-occur, suggesting that deficits in VSTM might be causal for the deficits in sentence comprehension. The present study aims to explore the presumed relationship between VSTM and sentence comprehension in individuals with DS by specifically targeting the influence of task demands. The authors assessed VSTM skills in 18 German-speaking children/adolescents with DS by a nonword repetition (NWR) test and elicited data from three different tasks on the comprehension of complex sentence structures: two sentence-picture-matching tasks (TROG-D and a passive test) and one picture-pointing task on object wh-questions. Whereas performance in NWR yielded a significant degree of prediction for scores obtained in the TROG-D and in passive comprehension, no significant degree of prediction was found for NWR and object wh-question comprehension. Moreover, implicational scaling analyses indicated that mental-age adequate performance in sentence comprehension did not imply adequate performance in NWR. Research is needed that specifies the relation between memory systems and sentence comprehension while considering the influence of task demands.

Subjecthood and linear order in linguistic encoding: Evidence from the real-time production of wh-questions in English and Mandarin Chinese

Abstract We use visual world eye-tracking to provide a first look into the real-time production of an under-researched but communicatively crucial construction – wh-questions. We investigate whether the transition from abstract message to highly-structured utterances (linguistic encoding) is driven by linear order (positional processing) or subjecthood assignment (functional processing). Experiment 1 decouples positional and functional processes by comparing production of English declaratives versus object wh-questions (‘Which nurses did the maids tickle?’). Experiment 2 compares the production of declaratives versus object wh-questions in Mandarin Chinese to investigate potential information-focus effects on linguistic encoding and tests whether Experiment 1’s findings could be due to focus. Experiment 1 found that even though the articulation of a sentence is necessarily linear, speakers do not necessarily encode sentences in accordance with the linear order in which the words are uttered. Experiment 2 suggests that information-focus does not guide speakers' eye-movements during linguistic encoding.

Compreensão e produção oral de interrogativas-Q em crianças portuguesas surdas com implante coclear

The present study investigates the comprehension and production of Portuguese wh-questions by hearing impaired children with cochlear implants. We investigate whether the asymmetries found in typically developing children are also present in our target group or whether the difficulties are more widespread. In particular, we investigate whether there are asymmetries between subject and (DP/PP) object wh-questions produced by these children, and whether wh-questions with a lexical restriction are more difficult than bare wh-questions. We also consider the importance of extra-linguistic variables, such as age of implantation, hearing age, early attendance of speech and language therapy sessions, and exposure to sign language.

Una evaluación de la comprensión de estructuras sintácticas con alto costo de procesamiento en niños en edad escolar

An evaluation of Spanish-speaking schoolchildren’s ability to comprehend highly-costly sentences is provided, which aimed to identify children at risk of Specific Language Impairment/Developmental Language Disorder. The investigation was guided by linguistic/psycholinguistic hypotheses concerning sentence processing cost. A battery of tests was used, which included passive sentences, relative clauses, WH/WH+N questions in different conditions. Reversible passives, and object relative and WH Questions were predicted to be more demanding. 390 children (6-12 years of age) from 2 elementary schools were tested. The schools were distinguished as a function of social/economical factors. The results are compatible with the predictions. Social-economical factors are shown to influence children’s overall performance. Children whose scores were 2SD below the mean of correct responses of the age group (8.7%) were considered to be at risk of syntactic impairment.

What can wh-questions tell us about real-time language production: Evidence from English and Mandarin

We present two visual-world eye-tracking experiments investigating how speakers begin structuring their messages for linguistic utterances, a process known as linguistic encoding. Specifically, we focus on when speakers first linearize the abstract elements of their messages (positional processing) and when they first assign a grammatical role to those elements (functional processing). Experiment 1 de-coupled the process of linearization from grammatical role assignment using English object wh-questions, where the subject is no longer sentence initial. Experiment 2 used Mandarin declaratives and questions, which have the same word order, to test the extent to which findings from Experiment 1 were linked to information focus associated with wh-questions. We find evidence of both grammatical role assignment and linearization emerging around 400-600 ms, but we do not find evidence of the +/- wh distinction influencing eye-movements during that same time window.

Comprehension of wh-questions in Turkish–German bilinguals with aphasia: A dual-case study

ABSTRACTThe aim of our study was to examine the extent to which linguistic approaches to sentence comprehension deficits in aphasia can account for differential impairment patterns in the comprehension of wh-questions in bilingual persons with aphasia (PWA). We investigated the comprehension of subject and object wh-questions in both Turkish, a wh-in-situ language, and German, a wh-fronting language, in two bilingual PWA using a sentence-to-picture matching task. Both PWA showed differential impairment patterns in their two languages. SK, an early bilingual PWA, had particular difficulty comprehending subject which-questions in Turkish but performed normal across all conditions in German. CT, a late bilingual PWA, performed more poorly for object which-questions in German than in all other conditions, whilst in Turkish his accuracy was at chance level across all conditions. We conclude that the observed patterns of selective cross-linguistic impairments cannot solely be attributed either to difficulty with wh-movement or to problems with the integration of discourse-level information. Instead our results suggest that differences between our PWA’s individual bilingualism profiles (e.g. onset of bilingualism, premorbid language dominance) considerably affected the nature and extent of their impairments.

A Deficit in Movement-Derived Sentences in German-Speaking Hearing-Impaired Children.

Children with hearing impairment (HI) show disorders in syntax and morphology. The question is whether and how these disorders are connected to problems in the auditory domain. The aim of this paper is to examine whether moderate to severe hearing loss at a young age affects the ability of German-speaking orally trained children to understand and produce sentences. We focused on sentence structures that are derived by syntactic movement, which have been identified as a sensitive marker for syntactic impairment in other languages and in other populations with syntactic impairment. Therefore, our study tested subject and object relatives, subject and object Wh-questions, passive sentences, and topicalized sentences, as well as sentences with verb movement to second sentential position. We tested 19 HI children aged 9;5–13;6 and compared their performance with hearing children using comprehension tasks of sentence-picture matching and sentence repetition tasks. For the comprehension tasks, we included HI children who passed an auditory discrimination task; for the sentence repetition tasks, we selected children who passed a screening task of simple sentence repetition without lip-reading; this made sure that they could perceive the words in the tests, so that we could test their grammatical abilities. The results clearly showed that most of the participants with HI had considerable difficulties in the comprehension and repetition of sentences with syntactic movement: they had significant difficulties understanding object relatives, Wh-questions, and topicalized sentences, and in the repetition of object who and which questions and subject relatives, as well as in sentences with verb movement to second sentential position. Repetition of passives was only problematic for some children. Object relatives were still difficult at this age for both HI and hearing children. An additional important outcome of the study is that not all sentence structures are impaired—passive structures were not problematic for most of the HI children

Investigating the Grammatical and Pragmatic Origins of Wh-Questions in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Compared to typically developing children, children with autism (ASD) show delayed production of wh-questions. It is currently controversial the degree to which such deficits derive from social-pragmatic requirements and/or because these are complex grammatical structures. The current study employed the intermodal preferential looking (IPL) paradigm, which reduces social-pragmatic demands. The IPL paradigm can help distinguish these proposals, as successful comprehension promotes the “pragmatics-origins” argument whereas comprehension difficulties would implicate a “grammatical-origins” argument. Additionally, we tested both the linguistic and social explanations by assessing the contributions of children's early grammatical knowledge (i.e., SVO word order) and their social-pragmatic scores on the Vineland to their later wh-question comprehension. Fourteen children with ASD and 17 TD children, matched on language level, were visited in their homes at 4-month intervals. Comprehension of wh-questions and SVO word order were tested via IPL: the wh-question video showed a costumed horse and bird serving as agents or patients of familiar transitive actions. During the test trials, they were displayed side by side with directing audios (e.g., “What did the horse tickle?”, “What hugged the bird?”, “Where is the horse/bird?”). Children's eye movements were coded offline; the DV was their percent looking to the named item during test. To show comprehension, children should look longer at the named item during a where-question than during a subject-wh or object-wh question. Results indicated that TD children comprehended both subject and object wh-questions at 32 months of age. Comprehension of object-wh questions emerged chronologically later in children with ASD compared to their TD peers, but at similar levels of language. Moreover, performance on word order and social-pragmatic scores independently predicted both groups' later performance on wh-question comprehension. Our findings indicate that both grammar and social-pragmatics are implicated in the comprehension of wh-questions. The “grammatical-origins” argument is supported because the ASD group did not reveal earlier and stable comprehension of wh-questions; furthermore, their performance on SVO word order predicted their later success in linguistic processing of wh-questions. The “pragmatic-origins” argument is also supported because children's earlier socialization and communication scores strongly predicted their successful performance on wh-question comprehension.

Wh-questions in Hodeidi Arabic: A Phase-based Approach

The study investigates the syntax of wh-questions in Hodeidi Arabic, presents a satisfactory account of their syntactic behavior, and provides an answer to the following questions within Chomsky's (1999, 2000, 2001, 2005, and 2006) Phase-Based approach. 1. Does Hodeidi Arabic allow the fronting of wh-questions to the left periphery of the clause in overt syntax? 2. Can wh-questions in Hodeidi Arabic be accounted for neatly within Chomsky's Phase-Based approach? It shows that wh-phrase movement in Hodeidi Arabic is an obligatorily syntactic movement where the wh-phrase has to undergo fronting to the left periphery of the clause. In exploring the interaction between wh-questions in Hodeidi Arabic and the Phase-Based analysis, it has been shown that the minimalist analysis proposed in Hodeidi Arabic can provide further support to Chomsky's Phase-Based approach. It can be observed that Hodeidi Arabic obeys the Phase Impenetrability Condition proposed in Chomsky (2001); it has been observed that when all syntactic operations in a given phase have been completed, the complement or the domain of the phase becomes impenetrable to any further syntactic operations. This happens when the structure is sent to the interface levels for interpretation. Furthermore, in the syntactic derivation of subject and object wh-questions, it can be observed that both the subject and object wh-phrases have to pass through certain phases till they reach [Spec, CP]. At the end of the derivation, the head C and its specifier (the subject/object wh-phrase) undergo transfer to the PF and LF levels for proper representations, and hence the clause is interpreted as an interrogative.