Production Of Relative Clauses Research Articles

Production of relative clauses in Cantonese-speaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) has been explained as either a deficit deriving from an abstract representational deficit or as emerging from difficulties in acquiring and coordinating multiple interacting cues guiding learning. These competing explanations are often difficult to decide between when tested on European languages. This paper reports an experimental study of relative clause (RC) production in Cantonese-speaking children with and without DLD, which enabled us to test multiple developmental predictions derived from one prominent theory − emergentism. Children with DLD (N = 22; aged 6;6–9;7) were compared with age-matched typically-developing peers (N = 23) and language-matched, typically-developing children (N = 21; aged 4;7–7;6) on a sentence repetition task. Results showed that children’s production across multiple RC types was influenced by structural frequency, general semantic complexity, and the linear order of constituents, with the DLD group performing worse than their age-matched and language-matched peers. The results are consistent with the emergentist explanation of DLD.

The production of relative clauses in Italian-speaking children with DLD

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have been shown to struggle with the acquisition of complex structures requiring structural embedding and movement of a sentential element from its original position. This study examines the production of subject and object relative clauses (RCs) by Italian children, investigating whether: i) seven-year-old children with DLD are impaired in embedding or movement operations; ii) specific factors, such as animacy of the arguments, affect the production of sentences with movement and embedding, iii) the linguistic profile of children with DLD is qualitatively different from that of typically developing (TD) children. We elicited the production of RCs with animate and inanimate arguments in 12 Italian-speaking children with DLD (mean age = 7;2) and in two TD control groups: age matched (AM) and language matched (LM). Children with DLD produced fewer RCs than either control group and made different errors, showing a slightly different developmental path. Animacy mismatch did not improve RC production in any group. Results suggest that seven-year-old children with DLD are in a transitional stage: they can use embedding but still have difficulties with movement operations, especially in object RCs. This indicates that the language competence of children with DLD improves with age, but long-distance dependencies continue to be challenging.

The Role of Animacy in Turkish Relative Clause Production and Distribution.

Relative clause (RC) production has been a major tool used for understanding language production mechanism in experimental linguistics. The present study analyzes language production mechanisms in Turkish by utilizing animacy effect on RC production. A picture description task was applied to two participant groups. The data were combined and analyzed to see how animacy influenced RC formation. The outcomes were also compared to the distributions of RC use in corpus data. Both participant and corpus data demonstrated significant level of passivization for RCs with animate heads, strongly affirming the grammatical function assignment proposal by Bock and Warren (Cognition 21(1):47-67, 1985) as well as the premise of Production-Distribution-Comprehension account (MacDonald in Front Psychol 4:226, 2013), emphasizing the relationship between language production mechanisms and typology. However, the corpus data were observed to have higher numbers of passivization with animate condition. Accordingly, a coarse comparison of the participant RC production proportions in the current study with some other crosslinguistic research suggests that some language-specific or discourse-related interventions can also compete with the animacy accessibility during the sentence planning procedure, which needs an extra inquiry especially in Turkish language.

Animate or Inanimate: How Does Animacy Affect Relative Clauses Production for Indonesian and Foreign Learners

In second language learning, relative clauses are widely studied. However, research comparing Indonesian and foreign learners’ clauses based on animacy has not been widely done. Besides, animacy affects the difficulty of producing relative clauses. Therefore, this study investigates the role of animacy in the production of relative clauses, the relationship between movement distance and the production of relative clauses, and the role of animacy in conformity with the rules of relative clauses. This research employs a descriptive case study. Data was collected from documents on popular article texts of Indonesian and foreign learners of the University of Muhammadiyah Malang. The data were analyzed based on the generative transformation theory developed by Noam Chomsky. The study results show that animacy plays a significant role in producing relative clauses. Indonesian and foreign learners compose more relative clauses on inanimate nouns, which function as subjects, objects, and complements. Foreign learners create more relative objects than subjects. Based on distance, short-movement relative clauses are very productive for Indonesian and foreign learners. Most Indonesian (97%) and foreign (85%) learners have produced relative clauses that conform to the rules. However, relative clauses with inanimate head nouns often break the rules.

Relative clause production abilities of Hebrew-speaking children with ASD

ABSTRACT Relative clauses (RCs) are complex syntactic structures because they consist of multiple clauses and involve syntactic movement. RCs are known as a reliable clinical marker of syntactic impairment across many different languages and populations. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle with the comprehension and production of RCs, and it remains unclear whether these difficulties stem from a pragmatic or a syntactic origin. The aim of the current study is to obtain evidence about the nature of the RC production difficulties of Hebrew-speaking children with ASD. To do so, we attempted to isolate the mechanism(s) that may be disrupting RC production by using a novel in-depth error analysis scheme. The current study tested 101 Hebrew-speaking children—37 children with ASD (Mage = 11.4, SD = 2.2) and 64 Typically Developing (TD) children; 25 children aged 8-9 years (Mage = 8.8, SD = 0.3) and 39 TD children aged 10-11 (Mage = 10.7, SD = 0.39) on an RC elicitation definition task. Responses were coded for correct RC production, and an error analysis scheme was built based on the productions seen among the ASD participants. TD children produced more RCs than children with ASD, and a significant difference was found between the two TD groups (older children produced more RCs). Children with ASD produced mainly pronoun errors and produced single words instead of sentences, patterns not seen among the TD group and sometimes characteristic of Hebrew-speaking children at younger ages. The current study contributes to the discussion regarding syntactic differences seen in the production of some children with ASD and whether such differences are a specific form of language deficit, or merely a delay in language acquisition.

Complex Syntax Methods of Assessment: Relative Clauses

Relative clauses are a type of complex syntax in which a clause modifies a noun (e.g., “the dog that runs in the house”). Some children struggle to produce relative clauses and their difficulties may impact their academic performance. Assessments that measure children’s relative clause skill are thus needed to assess and monitor progress of intervention in children’s relative clause skill to increase these children’s communication and in turn, academic performance. The aim of this study was to compare commonly used assessments in the research literature, two sentence imitation tasks (a straight imitation task and a delayed imitation task) and one elicitation task (a toy elicitation task), to identify the most efficient measure that captures child skill. An age effect was found for the straight imitation task which suggests that this task can capture growth over time. There were no statistically significant differences between the straight imitation and toy elicitation tasks. This lack of statistical significance indicates that the straight imitation task, which appeared to yield similar results to the elicitation task and is more efficient to administer, may provide an equally valid measure of relative clause production skills. The use of a straight imitation task is suggested to provide speech-language pathologists and researchers with a relative clause assessment tool that will aid in relative clause intervention that is efficient, captures growth, and truly captures relative clause skill.

Exploring the effects of animacy and verb type on the processing asymmetry between SRC and ORC among Chinese EFL learners

This study investigates the production and comprehension of subject relative clause (SRC) and object relative clause (ORC) in English by Chinese EFL learners. Two experiments are reported. Using a sentence completion task to elicit the production of relative clauses (RCs), Experiment 1 examined the distributional patterns of SRC and ORC and showed that SRC was more frequently distributed than ORC. In addition, animacy and verb type had effects on the asymmetric distribution of SRC and ORC. Using a word-by-word moving-window self-paced reading paradigm, Experiment 2 further compared reading times (RTs) of SRC and ORC containing different animacy and verb type configurations. Reading difficulties in ORC were observed, and comprehension difficulties of certain configurations of animacy and verb type just mirrored their frequencies in the first experiment. Taken together, the processing asymmetry of SRC and ORC has been observed in both comprehension and production processes. Comprehension difficulties are believed to stem from the asymmetric distributions of sentence patterns involving different animacy and verb type configurations. These findings suggest that comprehension difficulties are correlated with the distributional patterns, which could provide strong support to the Production-Distribution-Comprehension account, the experience-based approach applicable in language acquisition.

Restrictive relative clauses in Greek Heritage speakers in the US

This paper investigates the production of restrictive relative clauses (henceforth RRCs) in Heritage Greek in contact with US English. In Greek, RRCS are introduced either by the pronoun o opios ‘the who’ which agrees with the nominal head it modifies and is preferred in formal registers; or by the un-inflected complementizer pu 'that', which appears mostly in colloquial speech. In English, RRCs are introduced by the non-agreeing pronouns who and which and by the complementizer that. The findings suggest that both groups favour the production of pu RRCs but we cannot attribute the overuse of pu RRCs by HSs to English interference. There is no clear evidence that o opios is preferred in formal registers by monolinguals and we argue that HSs avoid o opios RRCs as they have difficulties with establishing agreement between nouns and modifiers. This is corroborated by their use of the English non-agreeing pronouns who and which.

On the production of restrictive pied-piping relative clauses in Italian: evidence from populations with typical and atypical language development

Restrictive relative clauses are among the most frequently studied structures in language development across different languages and different populations. While much literature is devoted to the acquisition and use of subject and object relatives introduced by that, pied-piping (prepositional and genitive) relatives have been less studied. This paper offers an overview of some recent studies in which these structures were investigated in Italian typically developing (TD) individuals and in individuals with learning difficulties (LD) using the same procedures, namely repetition and/or elicited production. Early studies found that pied-piping relatives are acquired not earlier than 10 years of age. Much subsequent research on Italian found that the rate of production of these structures increases with age increase, but it never reaches ceiling effects. Although percentages increase for both populations, the level of accuracy for individuals with LD is lower than for TD individuals. This is expected, since pied-piping relatives are typical of a formal, written register, to which people with LD have difficult access. However, low frequency in speech cannot be the only explanation for the low rate of production. Syntactic complexity, agreement phenomena, and number of arguments that receive thematic role explains the difficulties with these structures.

L’uso del test di ripetizione per la valutazione della competenza sintattica del bambino sordo con impianto cocleare

Reduced language inputs due to hearing loss can affect the development of syntactically complex structures derived by syntactic movement. Cochlear implants (CIs) can provide a proper linguistic input to children with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss. However, despite an early diagnosis and intervention, and the development of lexical skills and speech perception similar to typically developing age peers, children with CIs still show a delay in the processing of movement-derived structures. Following previous studies on deaf or hard-of-hearing Hebrew, and German-speaking children, this study provides first data on the repetition of movement-derived syntactically complex structures in Italian-speaking children with CIs. Indeed, as shown by previous studies, resorting to a sentence repetition task allow to analyse both the participant’s ability in analysing structures derived by movement and their memory skills. It also allows to exclude memory causes in a misinterpretation of the stimuli. Results showed that children with CIs performed poorer than their typically developing age peers and showed many difficulties in all the structures characterized by a complex derivation. Interestingly, both groups showed several difficulties in the production of oblique and genitive relative clauses.

Subject Advantage in L1-English Learners’ Production of Chinese Relative Clauses

This study investigated whether L1-English Chinese learners show a subject preference in their oral production of Chinese relative clauses (RCs) and whether they show animacy effects. We conducted a picture-based elicited production experiment that compared subject and object RCs, varying the object animacy between animate and inanimate. The results from thirty learners showed more targetlike performance in subject RCs than in object RCs, both at group and individual levels, regardless of object animacy. Error analyses revealed that more object RCs were converted into subject RCs than vice versa. These results point toward a clear subject preference despite conflicted findings in previous research on RCs in Chinese as a foreign language. Animacy influenced subject and object RCs alike: both types were easier to produce when featuring an inanimate object. We suggested similarity-based interference or distribution-based effects to account for this finding.

Relative clauses in child heritage speakers of Turkish in the United States

Abstract How does complex syntax develop in heritage language children? This study investigates child Turkish heritage speakers’ comprehension and production of relative clauses (RCs) in Turkish and in English. RCs vary on their syntactic functions (subject, object) and show asymmetric patterns of acquisition and processing, which have been explained by linear distance, structural distance and input factors. Thirty-two child Turkish HS (ages 6–15) and 48 monolingual Turkish children (ages 3–15) completed a picture-sentence matching (comprehension) task and a sentence repetition (production) task in Turkish. The Turkish HS were tested on the RC comprehension and production tasks in English as well. The results indicated that the child HS showed (i) better performance in English than in Turkish with increasing age, (ii) better comprehension than production of Turkish RCs, (iii) replacement of complex RCs with simple juxtaposition in Turkish, and (iv) a subject advantage in comprehension. We take these findings to suggest that Turkish RCs do not fully develop in child HS of Turkish in the U.S., although the strength of this explanation must be corroborated by a study of child and adult HS. Overall, the findings are most compatible with the structural distance account and other factors that may affect production.

The acquisition of relative clauses by Spanish-Basque learners of L3 English: does dominance play a role?

Abstract Several studies in the area of third language acquisition (L3A) have considered various factors influencing this process, but the effect of language dominance has not been thoroughly examined. The main goal of this study is to investigate whether the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs) in L3 English is influenced by language internal factors, such as the syntactic features of the target language, or by external factors in the form of cross-linguistic influence (CLI). A total of 90 participants (40 Spanish-dominant, 40 Basque-dominant, 10 L1 Spanish-L2 English) and 10 native speakers of English completed a production and a comprehension task. Findings show that the L3 learners’ production of RCs seems to be driven by language internal factors, whereas their comprehension appears to be influenced by their previously acquired languages, mainly by Spanish. It is concluded that neither language dominance nor other traditionally considered factors play a determinant role in the acquisition of RCs in L3 English by these participants.

The Production of Relatives in Mandarin Children With Specific Language Impairment-From the Perspective of Edge Feature Underspecification Hypothesis.

This paper is a first attempt to investigate the production of Relative Clauses (RCs) in Mandarin children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (aged 4; 5 to 6; 0) and their typically developing (TD) peers. The data from a preference choice task suggested that (i) Children with SLI performed better on the subject-gapped than object-gapped RC; (ii) Children with SLI performed substantially worse than their TD peers on the RCs production; (iii) Children with SLI were more inclined to omitting the complementizer and using simple sentences and sentence fragments as avoidance strategies. The Edge Feature Underspecification Hypothesis may explain not only the asymmetry of production seen in children with SLI, but also the presence of errors and avoidance strategies used by this population in the task.

İKİNCİ DİLİ ÖĞRENEN YETİŞKİNLERİN ÖZNE-NESNE KONUMUNDAKİ SIFAT CÜMLECİKLERİNİ EDİNİMİ

Studies on the acquisition, production and comprehension of relative clauses have been increasing dramatically in recent decades. Various models have been proposed to explain the mechanism and dynamics of relative clauses. The relative complex nature of relative clauses has been challenging linguists and cognitive scientists. However, one of the commonalities in these models is that object relative clauses are harder to process, comprehend and produce than subject relative clauses. This study aimed to focus on the adult learners’ acquisition of relative clauses. Therefore, four tasks were developed to elicit the data regarding the production and comprehension of subject-object relative clauses. Hamilton’s subject-object hypothesis was tested. Five international participants learning Turkish and seven Turkish individuals learning English were involved in the study. The results show that all of the participants produced and comprehended subject relative clauses more easily than object relative clauses. The findings of the study support those of the related literature in that object relative clauses are harder to process, produce and comprehend.

Korean EFL Learners’ Use of English Direct Object RCs in Written Discourse

English relative clauses (RCs) are one of the complex English structures because they include the filler-gap dependency. Because of the structural and linear distance, English direct object RCs are considered much more difficult to produce and comprehend than subject RCs. Previous works have shown that important factors such as animacy of the head nouns can decrease processing difficulty of direct object RCs. The present study analyzes fifty Korean EFL high school students’ production of RCs in argumentative essays. The results show that a total of 100 natural RCs were found in the essays. The findings of the present work indicate that (1) the learners made more subject RCs than direct object RCs; (2) all direct object RCs used by high school learners had an inanimate head nouns; and (3) the subject of direct object RCs include pronouns. Therefore, the results manifest that the learners used particular processing strategies for producing direct object RCs, and these lend support to previous findings in empirical and theoretical works in SLA.

Production of English Oblique RCs with Different Distance

Previous research has shown subject relative clauses (RCs) are much easier to produce than direct object RCs in L1 acquisition field. However, many researchers have raised a point for a pure cause of processing English RCs because this traditional comparison had compounding factors such as animacy and word-order canonicity. The current study aims to test whether the distance between the filler and the gap has an effect on child’s production of English oblique RCs. Two types of oblique RCs, which have directional prepositional phrases, are compared in the present study. 21 English-native adults and 21 English-speaking children participated in the study. An elicited production task was used to measure whether they produce two oblique RCs differently. The results showed both English-speaking adults and children had more difficulty in producing English oblique RCs with longer filler-gap dependency (FGD) than with (relatively) shorter FGD. Both accuracy rates and the patterns of errors indicating the asymmetry among two oblique RCs strongly support the distance effect.

Cognitive Aspects of Relative Clause Production In Oral and Written Narratives

The present study aims to investigate relative clause production in Chinese and English from a cognitivefunction approach that explores underlying cognitive, semantic, and discourse-pragmatic factors operative in discourse processing. With this approach we are able to account for both general and specific distributional patterns of RCs between the two languages on the one hand and between speech and writing on the other, using narrative data elicited from native speakers of both languages.

Subject-Object Asymmetry in the Production of Relative Clauses in Cantonese

Abstract In the literature about processing of relative clauses (RCs), subject relatives (SRs) are reported to be easier than object relatives (ORs) in a number of languages, but the status of prenominal ORs in languages where the object follows the verb (SVO) is still partly controversial. This study explores the production of RCs in Cantonese in two elicited production experiments and two corpus studies. In the first elicited experiment, an overwhelming preference for SRs was observed. In two corpus studies where the context and the feature of arguments were uncontrolled, the reverse pattern was observed. In order to reconcile the two datasets, we speculate that what counts in object dependencies is the featural endowment of the subject, as in the intervention hypothesis implemented in Friedmann et al. 2009. A second elicited experiment was run to test this hypothesis. The results suggest that production of RCs in Cantonese displays a subject preference in general and that object dispreference is modulated by featural mismatch.

Resumptive elements in Spanish relative clauses and processing difficulties: A multifactorial analysis

AbstractSpanish relative clauses, as in other languages, can contain a resumptive pronoun or other resumptive element. This study attempts to explain what factors favor the presence of such resumptive elements in the production of Spanish relative clauses. In order to do so, 1237 relatives clauses were extracted from an oral corpus of Peninsular Spanish conversations. A total of 18 factors, some new and some known from previous studies, pertaining to semantic and syntactic processing difficulties, were coded as potentially influencing the choice of a resumptive pronoun. Multivariate analysis (conditional tree and random forest) was then used to determine the significant factors and the most explicative minimal model. The results suggest that the conditions with the most impact are related to difficulties in determining the function of the relativizer. A discussion follows about how these difficulties relate to the different factors studied and how they could be due to a looser relationship between the clauses involved.