Academic Paper |
|
|
|
|
| Title: | Children's ability to answer different types of questions |
| Author: | Dorothé Salomo |
| Institution: | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology |
| Author: | Elena V. Lieven |
| Institution: | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology |
| Author: | Michael Tomasello |
| Institution: | Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology |
| Linguistic Field: | Language Acquisition |
| Abstract: | Young children answer many questions every day. The extent to which they do this in an adult-like way – following Grice's Maxim of Quantity by providing the requested information, no more no less – has been studied very little. In an experiment, we found that two-, three- and four-year-old children are quite skilled at answering argument-focus questions and predicate-focus questions with intransitives in which their response requires only a single element. But predicate-focus questions for transitives – requiring both the predicate and the direct object – are difficult for children below four years of age. Even more difficult for children this young are sentence-focus questions such as “What's happening?”, which give the child no anchor in given information around which to structure their answer. In addition, in a corpus study, we found that parents ask their children predicate-focus and sentence-focus questions very infrequently, thus giving children little experience with them. |
|
|
|
|
This article appears in Journal of Child Language Vol. 40, Issue 2, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
|
|
|
|
Back
Add a new paper Return to Academic Papers main page Return to Directory of Linguists main page |
|
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
Business Plan,Business Ideas,Advanced Energy,High Technology,Healthy Diets,Healthy Foods,Games Guides,Games Cheats,Travel Guides,Travel Tips,Study Skills,Study Tips,Health Tips,Health Guides,Jewelry Stores,Jewellery UK Online,Digital Camera Reviews,Digital Camera Buying Guide,Replica Handbags,Replica Bags,Jackets on Sale,Jackets Clearance,WoW Gold,Cheap WoW Gold,Buy WoW Gold,WOW Gold,Swtor Credits