Cover not available

Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2014
Edited by Anita Auer and Björn Köhnlein
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 31] 2014
► pp. 129–144

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF

Development of Dutch children’s comprehension of subject and object wh-questions

The role of topicality

 | University of Groningen
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 10 November 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.31.10str
While Dutch welke ‘which’-questions are structurally ambiguous, number agreement cues can disambiguate them. Despite such agreement cues, children misinterpret object questions as subject questions (Metz et al. 2010, 2012; Schouwenaars et al. 2014). We investigated if adding another cue, specifically, topicality in a discourse context, helps the interpretation of which-questions in two groups of Dutch children (5;5, n = 15 and 8;5, n = 21). Using a referent-selection task, we manipulated number on the verb and postverbal NP to create unambiguous wh-questions. Moreover, the questions were preceded by a discourse which established a topic, relating either to the wh-referent or the postverbal NP referent. Nevertheless, both 5- and 8-year-olds misinterpreted object questions as subject questions, ignoring the number and topicality cues to resolve the (local) ambiguity of which-questions. Our results confirm the effect of a subject-first bias in children’s interpretation of wh-questions. We conclude that topicality, in combination with number agreement, is not strong enough to overrule this subject-first bias.
References (28)
Adani, Flavia, Heather K.J. van der Lely, Matteo Forgiarini & Maria Teresa Guasti. 2010. Grammatical feature dissimilarities make relative clauses easier: A comprehension study with Italian children. Lingua 1201. 2148–2166. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Avrutin, Sergey. 2000. Comprehension of Wh-questions by children and Broca’s aphasics. In Yosef Grodzinsky, Lewis P. Shapiro & Dan A. Swinney (eds.), Language and the Brain: Representation and Processing, 295–312. San Diego: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bornkessel, Ina, Matthias Schlesewsky & Angela Friederici. 2003. Contextual information modulates initial processes of syntactic integration: The role of inter- versus intrasentential predictions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 291. 871–882. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deevy, Patricia & Lawrence B. Leonard. 2004. The comprehension of WH-questions in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing 471. 802–815. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ervin-Tripp, Susan. 1970. Discourse agreement: How children answer questions. In John R. Hayes (ed.), Cognition and Development of Language, 76–106. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frazier, Lyn & Giovanni B. Flores d’Arcais. 1989. Filler driven parsing: A study of gap filling in Dutch. Journal of Memory and Language 281. 31–344. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedman, Naama, Adriana Belletti & Luigi Rizzi. 2009. Relativized relatives: Types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies. Lingua 1191. 67–88. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedmann, Naama & Rama Novogrodsky. 2011. Which questions are most difficult to understand? The comprehension of wh-questions in three subtypes of SLI. Lingua 1211. 367–382. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1983. Topic continuity in discourse: An introduction. In Talmy Givón (ed.), Topic Continuity in Discourse: A Quantitative Cross-language Study, 5–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guasti, Teresa, Chiara Branchini & Fabrizio Arosio. 2012. Interference in the production of Italian subject and object wh-questions. Applied Psycholinguistics 331. 185–223. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hickok, Gregory & Sergey Avrutin. 1996. Comprehension of wh-questions in two Broca’s aphasics. Brain and Language 521. 314–327. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hollebrandse, Bart. 2004. Topichood and quantification in L1 Dutch. International Review of Applied Linguistics Teaching 421. 203–2015.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jakubowicz, Celia. 2011. Measuring derivational complexity: New evidence from typically developing and SLI learners of L1 French. Lingua 1211. 339–351. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information structure and sentence form: Topic, focus and the mental representations of discourse referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van der Lely, Heather & COST Consortium. 2010. How do 5-year-olds understand questions: Differences in languages across Europe. Presented at Let the children speak: Learning of critical language skills across 25 Languages , Wellcome Trust Conference Center, London.
van der Meer, Matthijs, Wouter van Atteveldt, Peter Coopmans & William Philip. 2001. Subject-object asymmetry in Dutch children’s comprehension of wie-questions. In Ton van der Wouden & Hans Broekhuis (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 20011, 167–176. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meng, Michael, Markus Bader & Joseph Bayer. 1999. Die Verarbeitung von Subjekt–Objekt Ambiguitäten im Kontext [The processing of subject-object ambiguities in context]. In Ipke Wachsmuth & Bernhard Jung (eds.), Proceedings der 4. Fachtagung der Gesellschaft für Kognitionswissenschaft, 244–249. St. Augustin: Infix Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Metz, Marijke, Angeliek van Hout & Heather van der Lely. 2010. Dutch children’s processing of wh-questions: Comprehension of who and which-questions in five- to nine-year-old children. Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik (GAGL) 511. 27–41. [URL] Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Subject interpretation of object questions by Dutch 5-year-olds: The role of number agreement in comprehension. In Marion Elenbaas & Suzanne Aalberse (eds.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 20121, 97–110. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Philip, William, Peter Coopmans, Wouter van Atteveldt & Matthijs van der Meer. 2001. Subject-object asymmetry in child comprehension of Wh-questions. In Anna H.-J. Do, Laura Dominguez & Aimee Johansen (eds.), Proceedings of the 25th BUCLD, 587–598. Somerville: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schouwenaars, Atty, Angeliek van Hout & Petra Hendriks. 2014. Word order overrules number agreement: Dutch children’s interpretation and production of which-questions. In Chia-Ying Chu, Caitlin E. Coughlin, Beatriz Lopez Prego, Utako Minai & Annie Tremblay (eds.), Selected proceedings of the 5th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2012), 60–71. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spenader, Jennifer, Erik-Jan Smits & Petra Hendriks. 2009. Coherent discourse solves the pronoun interpretation problem. Journal of Child Language 36(1). 23–52. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stewart, Jean & Hermine Sinclair (1975). Comprehension of questions by children between 5 and 9. Linguistics 1511. 17–26.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stowe, Laurie. 1986. Parsing WH-constructions: Evidence for on-line gap location. Language and Cognition Processes 11. 227–245. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strangmann, Iris & Angeliek van Hout. In progress. Context and the acquisition of Dutch object which-questions. Ms., University of Groningen.
Trueswell, John, Irina Sekerina, Nicole M. Hill & Marian L. Logrip. 1999. The kindergartenpath-effect: Studying on-line sentence processing in young children. Cognition 731. 89–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Vincenzi, Marica, Lisa S. Arduino, Laura Ciccarelli & Remo Job. 1999. Parsing strategies in children comprehension of interrogative sentences. In Sebastiano Bagnara (ed.), Proceedings of the European Conference on Cognitive Science, 301–308. Rome: Instituto di Psicologia del CNR.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wubs, Ellis, Petra Hendriks, John Hoeks & Charlotte Koster. 2009. Tell me a story! Children’s capacity for topic shift. In Jean Crawford, Koichi Otaki & Masahiko Takahashi (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 3), 313–324. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Sauerland, Uli, Kleanthes K. Grohmann, Maria Teresa Guasti, Darinka Anđelković, Reili Argus, Sharon Armon-Lotem, Fabrizio Arosio, Larisa Avram, João Costa, Ineta Dabašinskienė, Kristine de López, Daniela Gatt, Helen Grech, Ewa Haman, Angeliek van Hout, Gordana Hrzica, Judith Kainhofer, Laura Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė, Sari Kunnari, Melita Kovačević, Jelena Kuvac Kraljević, Katarzyna Lipowska, Sandrine Mejias, Maša Popović, Jurate Ruzaite, Maja Savić, Anca Sevcenco, Spyridoula Varlokosta, Marina Varnava & Kazuko Yatsushiro
2016. How do 5-year-olds understand questions? Differences in languages across Europe. First Language 36:3 ► pp. 169 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 2 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue