The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. The study investigated the effects of two factors on question formation: (a) whether the question contains a simple interrogative word like ‘who’ or a complex one like ‘which princess’, and (b) whether the question word was related to the sentential subject or object position of the verb. The findings show that there is considerable variation among languages, but the two factors mentioned consistently affect children’s performance. The cross-linguistic variation shows that three linguistic factors facilitate children’s understanding of questions: having overt case morphology, having a single lexical item for both ‘who’ and ‘which’, and the use of synthetic verbal forms.
AdaniF.ForgiariniM.GuastiM. T.Van der LelyH. K. J. (2014). Number dissimilarities facilitate the comprehension of relative clauses in children with (Grammatical) Specific Language Impairment. Journal of Child Language, 41, 811–841. doi:10.1017/S0305000913000184
2.
AdaniF.van der LelyH. K. J.ForgiariniM.GuastiM. T. (2010). Grammatical feature dissimilarities make relative clauses easier: A comprehension study with Italian children. Lingua, 120, 2148–2166. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2010.03.018
3.
AlexiadouA. (1999). On the properties of some Greek word order patterns. In AlexiadouA.HorrocksG.StavrouM. (Eds.), Studies in Greek syntax (pp. 45–65). Berlin, Germany: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-94-015-9177-5_3
4.
Armon-LotemS.HamanE.de LopezK. J.SmoczynskaM.YatsushiroK.SzczerbinskiM.van der LelyH. (2016). A large-scale crosslinguistic investigation of the acquisition of passive. Language Acquisition, 23, 27–56. doi:10.1080/10489223.2015.1047095
5.
ArosioF.GuastiM. T.StucchiN. (2011). Disambiguating information and memory resources in children’s processing of Italian relative clauses. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 40, 137–154. doi:10.1007/s10936-010-9160-0
6.
ArosioF.YatsushiroK.ForgiariniM.GuastiM. T. (2011). Morphological information and memory resources in children’s processing of relative clauses in German. Language Learning and Development, 8, 340–364. doi:10.1080/15475441.2011.634691
7.
AvrutinS. (2000). Comprehension of discourse-linked and non-discourse- linked questions by children and Broca’s aphasics. In GrodzinskyY.ShapiroL.SwinneyD. (Eds.), Language and the brain: Representation and processing (pp. 295–313). San Diego, CA: Academic Press. doi:10.1016/B978-012304260-6/50017-7
8.
BatesD.MaechlerM.BolkerB.WalkerS.ChristensenR. H. B.SingmannH.. . . GrothendieckG. (2015). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using ‘Eigen’ and S4 (Version 1.1-10). Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
9.
BercowJ. (2008). Bercow review of services for children and young people (0–19) with speech, language and communication needs: Interim report. London, England: Department for Children, Schools and Families.
10.
BishopD. V. M. (2003). Test for reception of grammar (TROG-2). Oxford, UK: Pearson.
11.
BishopD. V. M. (2010). Which neurodevelopmental disorders get researched and why?PLoS ONE, 5(11), e15112. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015112
12.
BurzioL. (1986). Italian syntax: A government-binding approach. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
13.
ChomskyN. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague, The Netherlands: Mouton.
14.
ChomskyN. (1981). Lectures on government and binding: The Pisa lectures. Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
15.
ChomskyN. (1995). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
16.
CinqueG.KayneR. S. (Eds.). (2005). The Oxford handbook of comparative syntax. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195136517.001.0001
17.
ClahsenH.BartkeS.GöllnerS. (1997). Formal features in impaired grammars: A comparison of English and German SLI children. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 10, 151–171. doi:10.1016/S0911-6044(97)00006-7
18.
CostaJ. (2004). Subject positions and interfaces: The case of European Portuguese. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
19.
FriedmannN.BellettiA.RizziL. (2009). Relativized relatives: Types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies. Lingua, 119, 67–88. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2008.09.002
20.
FriedmannN.NovogrodskyR. (2011). Which questions are most difficult to understand?: The comprehension of wh questions in three subtypes of SLI. Lingua, 121, 367–382. doi:0.1016/j.lingua.2010.10.004
21.
GardnerH.FroudK.McClellandA.van der LelyH. (2006). Development of the grammar and phonology screening (GAPS) test to assess key markers of specific language and literacy difficulties in young children. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 41, 513–540. doi:10.1080/13682820500442644
22.
GoodluckH. (2010). Object extraction is not subject to child relativized minimality. Lingua, 120, 1516–1521. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2009.10.005
23.
GrilloN. (2009). Generalized minimality: Feature impoverishment and comprehension deficits in agrammatism. Lingua, 119, 1426–1443. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2008.04.003
24.
GuastiM. T.BranchiniC.ArosioF. (2012). Interference in the production of Italian subject and object wh-questions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 185–223. doi:10.1017/S0142716411000324
25.
GuastiM. T.StavrakakiS.ArosioF. (2012). Cross-linguistic differences and similarities in the acquisition of relative clauses: Evidence from Greek and Italian. Lingua, 122, 700–713. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2012.02.001
26.
HartshorneM. (2006). The cost to the nation of children’s poor communication. London, England: I CAN.
JaegerF. T. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 434–446. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.11.007
29.
JohnsonV. E.de VilliersJ. G.SeymourH. N. (2005). Agreement without understanding? The case of third person singular /s/. First Language, 25, 317–330. doi:10.1177/0142723705053120
30.
KatsosN.EzeizabarrenaM.-J.GavarróA.Kuvac KraljevicJ.HrzicaG.GrohmannK. K.. . . NoveckI. (2012). The acquisition of quantification across languages: Some predictions. In BillerA. K.ChungE. Y.KimballA. E. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th annual Boston University conference on language development (pp. 258–268). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
31.
LawJ.ZengB.LindsayG.BeechamJ. (2012). Cost-effectiveness of interventions for children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN): A review using the Drummond and Jefferson (1996) ‘referee’s checklist’. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 47, 1–10. doi:10.1111/j.1460-6984.2011.00084.x
32.
LeonardL. B. (2014). Specific language impairment across languages. Child Development Perspectives, 8, 1–5. doi:10.1111/cdep.12053
33.
LevyH.FriedmannN. (2009). Treatment of syntactic movement in syntactic SLI: A case study. First Language, 29, 15–49. doi:10.1177/0142723708097815
34.
MetzM.van HoutA.van der LelyH. (2010). Understanding who and which questions in five to nine-year-old Dutch children: The role of number. GAGL: Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik, 51, 27–41. Retrieved from http://irs.ub.rug.nl/dbi/4ef4a1ef1c357
35.
MetzM.van HoutA.van der LelyH. (2012). Subject interpretation of object questions by Dutch 5-year-olds: The role of number agreement in comprehension. Linguistics in the Netherlands, 29, 97–110. doi:10.1075/avt.29.08met
36.
PesetskyD. (1987). Wh-in-situ: Movement and unselective binding. In ReulandE.ter MeulenA. (Eds.), The representation of (in)definiteness (pp. 98–129). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
37.
R Core Team. (2012). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing.
38.
RizziL. (1990). Relativized minimality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. doi:10.9793/elsj1984.8.154
39.
RizziL. (2004). Locality and the left periphery. In BellettiA. (Ed.), Structures and beyond: The cartography of syntactic structures (pp. 223–251). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
RubenR. J. (2000). Redefining the survival of the fittest: Communication disorders in the 21st century. The Laryngoscope, 110, 241–245. doi:10.1097/00005537-200002010-00010
42.
SauerlandU.AnderssenJ.YatsushiroK. (2005). The plural is semantically unmarked. In KepserS.ReisM. (Eds.), Linguistic evidence – Empirical, theoretical, and computational perspectives (pp. 413–434). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110197549.413
43.
SchouwenaarsA.van HoutA.HendriksP. (2012). Word order overrules number agreement: Dutch children’s interpretation and production of which-questions. In ChuC.-Y.. (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 5th GALANA conference (pp. 60–71). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
44.
SeidlA.HollichG.JusczykP. W. (2003). Early understanding of subject and object wh-questions. Infancy, 4, 423–436. doi:10.1207/S15327078IN0403_06
45.
StrangmannI.SlompA.van HoutA. (2014). Development of Dutch children’s comprehension of subject and object wh-questions: The role of topicality. Linguistics in the Netherlands, 31, 129–144. doi:10.1075/avt.31.10str
46.
StromswoldK. (1995). The acquisition of subject and object wh-questions. Language Acquisition, 4, 5–48. doi:10.1080/10489223.1995.9671658
47.
ThorntonR. J. (1990). Adventures in long-distance moving: The acquisition of complex wh-questions. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Connecticut, Storrs.
48.
TieuL.BillC.RomoliJ.CrainS. (2014). Plurality inferences are scalar implicatures: Evidence from acquisition. In SniderT.D’AntonioS.WeigandM. (Eds.), Proceedings of SALT 24 (pp. 122–136). Washington, DC: Linguistic Society of America. doi:10.3765/salt.v24i0.2421
49.
TribushininaE.van den BerghH.Kilani-SchochM.Aksu-KoçA.DabasinskieneI.HrzicaG.. . . DresslerW. (2013). The role of explicit contrast in adjective acquisition: A cross-linguistic longitudinal study of adjective production in spontaneous child speech and parental input. First Language, 33, 594–616. doi:10.1177/0142723713503146
50.
van der LelyH. K. J.BattellJ. (2003). Wh-movement in children with grammatical SLI: A test of the RDDR hypothesis. Language, 79, 153–181. doi:10.1353/lan.2003.0089
51.
van der LelyH. K. J.GardnerH.McClellandA. G. R.FroudK. E. (2007). Grammar and phonology screening test (GAPS). London, England: DLDCN.com.
52.
van der LelyH. K. J.PinkerS. (2014). The biological basis of language: Insight from developmental grammatical impairments. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 586–595. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.07.001
53.
VarlokostaS.BellettiA.CostaJ.FriedmannN.GavarróA.GrohmannK. K.. . . YatsushiroK. (2016). A cross-linguistic study of the acquisition of clitic and pronoun production. Language Acquisition, 23, 1–26. doi:10.1080/10489223.2015.1028628
54.
VarlokostaS.NerantziniM.PapadopoulouD. (2015). Comprehension asymmetries in language acquisition: A test for relativized minimality. Journal of Child Language, 42, 618–661. doi:10.1017/S0305000914000257
55.
VarnavaM.GrohmannK. K. (2014). Developments in the acquisition of wh-interrogatives in Cypriot Greek. Linguistic Variation Yearbook, 14, 69–108. doi:10.1075/lv.14.1.04var
56.
XanthosA.LaahaS.GillisS.StephanyU.Aksu-KogA.ChristofidouA.. . . DresslerW. U. (2011). On the role of morphological richness in the early development of noun and verb inflection. First Language, 31, 461–479. doi:10.1177/0142723711409976
