Cover not available

Article published In: Language, Interaction and Acquisition
Vol. 11:2 (2020) ► pp.163–195

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

The processing of passive sentences in German

Evidence from an eye-tracking study with seven- and ten-year-olds and adults

 | Goethe University Frankfurt
 | TU Dortmund University
Published online: 25 November 2020
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lia.19013.cri
Abstract
This study examines the processing and interpretation of passive sentences in German-speaking seven-year-olds, ten-year-olds, and adults. This structure is often assumed to be particularly difficult to understand, and not yet fully mastered in primary school (Kemp, K., Bredel, U., & Reich, H. H. (2008). Morphologisch-syntaktische Basisqualifikation. In K. Ehlich, U. Bredel, & H. H. Reich (Eds), Referenzrahmen zur altersspezifischen Sprachaneignung – Forschungsgrundlagen (pp. 63–82). Bonn/Berlin: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), i.e. in children aged between six and eleven. Few studies provide empirical data concerning this age range; it is therefore unknown whether this assumption is warranted. Against this background, we tested whether the three age groups differed in their off-line comprehension of passive sentences. In addition, we employed Visual World eye-tracking to measure processing difficulties that may differ between age groups and may not be reflected in the final interpretations. Previous studies on adult language processing in German and English have documented a preference to interpret sentences according to an agent-first strategy. Our results show that all three groups make use of this strategy, and that all of them are able to revise this interpretation once the first cue indicating a passive sentence is encountered (the auxiliary verb form wurde). We conclude that at least from age seven on, children have the linguistic and cognitive prerequisites to process the passive morphosyntax of German and to revise initial sentence misinterpretations.
Résumé
Cette étude examine le traitement et l’interpretation de phrases passives chez les enfants germanophones de sept ans et dix ans et chez des adultes. Cette structure est souvent considérée comme difficile, même pour des enfants à l’école primaire (6–11 ans en Allemagne) (Kemp, K., Bredel, U., & Reich, H. H. (2008). Morphologisch-syntaktische Basisqualifikation. In K. Ehlich, U. Bredel, & H. H. Reich (Eds), Referenzrahmen zur altersspezifischen Sprachaneignung – Forschungsgrundlagen (pp. 63–82). Bonn/Berlin: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Cependant, peu d’études ont fourni des données empiriques sur les enfants de cette tranche d’âge, de sorte que nous ne savons pas si cette hypothèse est corroborée. Nous avons donc vérifié si les trois groupes d’âge différaient dans leur compréhension off-line des phrases passives. De plus, nous avons utilisé le paradigme du monde visuel pour mesurer les difficultés de traitement qui peuvent différer d’un groupe d’âge à l’autre et qui peuvent ne pas être reflétées dans les interprétations finales. Des études antérieures sur le traitement adulte en allemand et en anglais ont révélé une préférence pour l’interprétation des phrases selon une stratégie ‘agent en premier’. Nos résultats montrent que les trois groupes utilisent cette stratégie et qu’ils sont tous capables de réviser l’interprétation qui en résulte après le premier indice signalant le passif (la forme verbale auxiliaire wurde). Nous concluons qu’à partir de sept ans au moins, les enfants ont les prérequis linguistiques et cognitifs nécessaires pour traiter la morphosyntaxe passive en allemand et pour réviser des interprétations erronées initiales.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The agent-first strategy: Theoretical accounts
    • 1.2Acquisition of passives: Evidence from off-line comprehension studies
    • 1.3On-line processing of passive sentences in children
    • 1.4Off-line and on-line comprehension of passive sentences in adults
  • 2.The current study
    • 2.1Research questions and predictions
    • 2.2Participants
    • 2.3Materials
    • 2.4Procedure
    • 2.5Analyses of the eye-tracking data
    • 2.6Statistical analysis
      • Off-line data
      • On-line data
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Accuracy
    • 3.2Eye movement data
  • 4.General discussion
    • Implications for a language processing model
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
References (60)
References
Abbot-Smith, K., & Behrens, H. (2006). How known constructions influence the acquisition of other constructions: The German passive and future constructions. Cognitive Science, 30(6), 995–1026. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Abbot-Smith, K., Chang, F., Rowland, C., Ferguson, H., Pine, J. (2017). Do two and three year old children use an incremental first-NP-as-agent bias to process active transitive and passive sentences?: A permutation analysis. PLoS ONE, 12(10): e0186129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Adani, F., & Fritzsche, T. (2015). On the relation between implicit and explicit measures of child language development: Evidence from relative clause processing in 4-year-olds and adults. In E. Grillo & K. Jepson (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (Vol. 11, pp. 14–26). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aschermann, E., Gülzow, I., & Wendt, D. (2004). Differences in the comprehension of passive voice in German- and English-speaking children. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 63(4), 235–245. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baayen, R. H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255–278. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bates, E., & MacWhinney, B. (1989). Functionalism and the Competition Model. In B. MacWhinney & E. Bates (Eds.), The Crosslinguistic study of sentence processing (pp. 3–76). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Becker, T. (2006). Erwerb und Verarbeitung komplexer grammatischer Strukturen bei Grundschulkindern. In T. Becker & C. Peschel (Eds.), Diskussionsforum Deutsch: Bd. 20. Gesteuerter und ungesteuerter Grammatikerwerb (pp. 156–173). Baltmannsweiler: Schneider Verlag Hohengehren.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bever, T. G. (1970). The cognitive basis for linguistic structures. In J. R. Hayes (Ed.), Cognition and the development of language (pp. 279–362). New York: Wiley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brinker, K. (1971). Das Passiv im heutigen Deutsch. Form und Funktion. Heutiges Deutsch Reihe 1: Vol. 2. München/Düsseldorf: Hueber/Schwann.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Choi, Y., & Trueswell, J. C. (2010). Children’s (in)ability to recover from garden paths in a verb-final language: Evidence for developing control in sentence processing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 106(1), 41–61. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Christianson, K., Hollingworth, A., Halliwell, J. F., & Ferreira, F. (2001). Thematic roles assigned along the garden path linger. Cognitive Psychology, 42(4), 368–407. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Christianson, K., Luke, S. G., & Ferreira, F. (2010). Effects of plausibility on structural priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(2), 538–544.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dąbrowska, E., & Street, J. (2006). Individual differences in language attainment: Comprehension of passive sentences by native and non-native English speakers. Language Sciences, 28(6), 604–615. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Davidson, M. C., Amso, D., Anderson, L. C., & Diamond, A. (2006). Development of cognitive control and executive functions from 4 to 13 years: Evidence from manipulations of memory, inhibition, and task switching. Neuropsychologia, 44(11), 2037–2078. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dittmar, M., Abbot-Smith, K., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2008). Young German children’s early syntactic competence: A preferential looking study. Developmental Science, 11(4), 575–582. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2014). Familiar verbs are not always easier than novel verbs: How German pre-school children comprehend active and passive sentences. Cognitive Science, 38(1), 128–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dryer, M. S. (1995). Frequency and pragmatically unmarked word order. In P. A. Downing & M. Noonan (Eds.), Word order in discourse (pp. 105–135). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eisenberg, P. (2013). Der Satz (4., aktualisierte und überarb. Aufl.). Grundriss der deutschen Grammatik: Bd. 2. Stuttgart: Metzler.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferreira, F. (2003). The misinterpretation of noncanonical sentences. Cognitive Psychology, 47(2), 164–203. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferreira, F., Bailey, K. G. D., & Ferraro, V. (2002). Good-enough representations in language comprehension. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 11(1), 11–15. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ferreira, F., & Patson, N. D. (2007). The good enough approach to language comprehension. Language and Linguistics Compass, 1(1–2), 71–83. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedmann, N., & Novogrodsky, R. (2004). The acquisition of relative clause comprehension in Hebrew: A study of SLI and normal development. Journal of Child Language, 31(3), 661–681. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fritzenschaft, A. (1994). Activating passives in child grammar. In R. Tracy & E. Lattey (Eds.), Linguistische Arbeiten: Vol. 309. How tolerant is universal grammar?: Essays on language learnability and language variation (pp. 155–184). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Givón, T. (1995). Functionalism and grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gogolin, I., & Lange, I. (2011). Bildungssprache und Durchgängige Sprachbildung. In S. Fürstenau & M. Gomolla (Eds.), Migration und schulischer Wandel: Mehrsprachigkeit (pp. 107–127). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grillo, N., Alexiadou, A., Gehrke, B., Hirsch, N., Paolazzi, C., & Santi, A. (2019). Processing unambiguous verbal passives in German. Journal of Linguistics, 551, 523–562. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grimm, H. (1975). Verstehen, Imitation und Produktion von Passivsätzen. In H. Grimm, Scholer, H., & M. Wintermantel (Eds.), Zur Entwicklung sprachlicher Strukturformen bei Kindern (pp. 73–99). Heinheim: J Beltz Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hartshorne, J. K., & Germine, L. T. (2015). When does cognitive functioning peak? The asynchronous rise and fall of different cognitive abilities across the lifespan. Psychological Science, 26(4), 433–443. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huang, Y., Gerard, J., Hsu, N., Kowalski, A., & Novick, J. (2016). Cognitive-control effects on the kindergarten path: Separating correlation from causation. Poster presented at the 29th Annual CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing. March 3–5, 2016, Gainesville, FL.
Huang, Y. T., Zheng, X., Meng, X., & Snedeker, J. (2013). Children’s assignment of grammatical roles in the on-line processing of Mandarin passive sentences. Journal of Memory and Language, 69(4), 589–606. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jaeger, T. F. (2008). Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed models. Journal of Memory and Language, 59(4), 434–446. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Järvikivi, J., Pyykkönen-Klauck, P., Schimke, S., Colonna, S., & Hemforth, B. (2013). Information structure cues for 4-year-olds and adults: Tracking eye movements to visually presented anaphoric referents. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(7), 877–892. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kamide, Y., Scheepers, C., & Altmann, G. T. M. (2003). Integration of syntactic and semantic information in predictive processing: Cross-linguistic evidence from German and English. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 32(1), 37–55. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Karimi, H., & Ferreira, F. (2016). Good-enough linguistic representations and on-line cognitive equilibrium in language processing. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(5), 1013–1040. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kemp, K., Bredel, U., & Reich, H. H. (2008). Morphologisch-syntaktische Basisqualifikation. In K. Ehlich, U. Bredel, & H. H. Reich (Eds), Referenzrahmen zur altersspezifischen Sprachaneignung – Forschungsgrundlagen (pp. 63–82). Bonn/Berlin: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kidd, E., Stewart, A. J., & Serratrice, L. (2011). Children do not overcome lexical biases where adults do: The role of the referential scene in garden-path recovery. Journal of Child Language, 38(1), 222–234. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klein, W., & Perdue, C. (1997). The Basic Variety (or: Couldn’t natural languages be much simpler?). Second Language Research, 13(4), 301–347. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Knoeferle, P., Crocker, M. W., Scheepers, C., & Pickering, M. J. (2005). The influence of the immediate visual context on incremental thematic role-assignment: Evidence from eye-movements in depicted events. Cognition, 95(1), 95–127. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. P. (1974). Children who get worse at understanding the passive: a replication of Bever. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31), 65–74. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marinis, T. (2007). On-line processing of passives in L1 and L2 children. In A. Belikova, L. Meroni, & M. Umeda (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA) (pp. 265–276). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marinis, T., & Saddy, D. (2013). Parsing the Passive: Comparing children with specific language impairment to sequential bilingual children. Language Acquisition, 20(2), 155–179. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Matin, E., Shao, K. C., & Boff, K. R. (1993). Saccadic overhead: Information-processing time with and without saccades. Perception & Psychophysics, 53(4), 372–380. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mills, A. E. (1977). Parallel studies in first and second language acquisition. Ludwigsburg: R. O. U. Strauch Ludwigsburg.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1985). The acquisition of German. In D. I. Slobin (Ed.), The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition (pp. 141–254). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Novick, J. M., Hussey, E., Teubner-Rhodes, S., Harbison, J. I., & Bunting, M. F. (2013). Clearing the garden-path: Improving sentence processing through cognitive control training. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 29(2), 186–217. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Patterson, C. (2012). The effect of local discourse coherence on pronoun resolution: an eye-tracking study. Essex Graduate Student Papers in Language and Linguistics On-line, 131, 98–119. Colchester: Department of Language and Linguistics, 961. URL: [URL]
R Development Core Team. (2012). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Vienna: R foundation for Statistical Computing. [URL]
Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 372–422. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rickheit, G. (1975). Zur Entwicklung der Syntax im Grundschulalter. Düsseldorf: Pädagogischer Verlag Schwann.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schouwenaars, A., Hendriks, P., & Ruigendijk, E. (2018). German children’s processing of morphosyntactic cues in wh-questions. Applied Psycholinguistics, 39(06), 1279–1318. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slobin, D. I., & Bever, T. G. (1982). Children use canonical sentence schemas: A crosslinguistic study of word order and inflections. Cognition, 121, 229–265. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stromswold, K., Eisenband, J., Norland, E., & Ratzan, J. (2002). Tracking the acquisition and processing of English passives: Using acoustic cues to disam-biguate actives and passives. Paper presented at the CUNY Conference on Sentence Processing. New York, NY.
Tanenhaus, M. K., Spivey-Knowlton, M. J., Eberhard, K. M., & Sedivy, J. C. (1995). Integration of visual and linguistic information during spoken language comprehension. Science, 2681, 1632–1634. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Townsend, D. J., & Bever, T. G. (2001). Sentence comprehension: The integration of habits and rules. Cambridge, Ma. u.a.: Bradford Books. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Trueswell, J. C., Sekerina, I., Hill, N. M., & Logrip, M. L. (1999). The kindergarten-path effect: Studying on-line sentence processing in young children. Cognition, 73(2), 89–134. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Turner, E. A., & Rommetveit, R. (1967a). The acquisition of sentence voice and reversibility, Child Development, 381, 649–660. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weighall, A. R. (2007). The kindergarten-path effect revisited : Children’s use of context in processing structural ambiguities. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 99(2), 75–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wittek, A., & Tomasello, M. (2005). German-speaking children’s productivity with syntactic constructions and case morphology: Local cues act locally. First Language, 25(1), 103–125. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Bryant, Doreen & Benjamin Siegmund
2024. Passiv im Schulalter: Irritationen, Inkonsistenzen und Implikationen. In Empirische Zugänge zu Bildungssprache und bildungssprachlichen Kompetenzen [Sprachsensibilität in Bildungsprozessen, ], ► pp. 121 ff. DOI logo
Shin, Gyu‐Ho & Seongmin Mun
2023. Explainability of neural networks for child language: Agent‐First strategy in comprehension of Korean active transitive construction. Developmental Science 26:6 DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 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