Cover not available

In:The Pragmatics of Discourse Coherence: Theories and applications
Edited by Helmut Gruber and Gisela Redeker
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 254] 2014
► pp. 209–242

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

“Why? Because I’m talking to you!” Parental input and cognitive complexity as determinants of children’s connective acquisition

 | Utrecht University
 | Utrecht University
 | Utrecht University
 | Utrecht University
Published online: 26 November 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.254.08vee
We report a series of longitudinal studies on children’s acquisition of Dutch, English and German causal connectives supporting a model in which children’s cognitive development, parental input and the cognitive complexity of different types of causality are brought into a systematic relationship. The data reveal that less complex connectives are acquired first, and that parental connective input has both short- and long-term effects, although children are not simply parroting their parents. Audience design in connective input is not at stake: parents’ independent connective use is stable over time, but their elicited connective use increases as children grow older and start asking why-questions themselves. Still, parental why-questions are scaffolds of children’s connective use and of their ability to ask why-questions themselves.
References (69)
Abbot-Smith, Kirsten, and Michael Tomasello. 2006. “Exemplar-learning and Schematization in a Usage-based Account of Syntactic Acquisition.” The Linguistic Review 23: 275–290. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Behrens, Heike. 2006. “The Input-output Relationship in First Language Acquisition.” Language and Cognitive Processes 21: 2–24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. “Usage-based and Emergentist Approaches to Language Acquisition.” Linguistics 47: 383–411. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berman, Ruth. 2004. “Between Emergence and Mastery: The Long Development Route of Language Acquisition.” In Language Development across Childhood and Adolescence, ed. by Ruth Berman, 9–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bloom, Lois, Margaret Lahey, Lois Hood, Karin Lifter, and Kathleen Fiess. 1980. “Complex Sentences: Acquisition of Syntactic Connectives and the Semantic Relations They Encode.” Journal of Child Language 7: 235–261. Reprinted 1991 in Language development from two to three, ed. by Lois Bloom, 261–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bol, Gerard W. 1996. “Optional Subjects in Dutch Child Language.” In Proceedings of the Groningen Assembly on Language Acquisition Held at the University of Groningen, 7–9 September 1995, ed. by Charlotte Koster, and Frank Wijnen, 125–135. Groningen: Center for ­Language and Cognition Groningen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borovsky, Arielle, and Jeffrey Elman. 2006. “Language Input and Semantic Categories: A Relation between Cognition and Early Word Learning.” Journal of Child Language 33: 759–790. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bowerman, Melissa. 1979. “The Acquisition of Complex Sentences.” In Language Acquisition: Studies in First Language Development, ed. by Paul Fletcher, and Michael Garman, 285–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Braunwald, Susan. 1997. “The Development of BECAUSE and SO: Connecting Language, Thought, and Social Understanding.” In Processing Interclausal Relationships: Studies in the Production and Comprehension of Text, ed. by Jean Costermans, and Michel Fayol, 121–137. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Britton, Bruce K. 1994. “Understanding Expository Text. Building Mental Structures to Induce Insights.” In Handbook of Psycholinguistics, ed. by Morton A. Gernsbacher, 641–674. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Roger. 1973. A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Eve V. 1978. “Discovering What Words Can Do.” In Papers from the Parasession on the Lexicon, ed. by Donka Farkas, Wesley M. Jacobsen, and Karol W. Todrys, 34–57. Chicago IL: Chicago Linguistic Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. First Language Acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Eve V. Clark. 1977. Psychology and Language; an Introduction to Psycholinguistics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, Herbert H., and Gregory L. Murphy. 1982. “Audience Design in Meaning and Reference.” In Language and Comprehension, ed. by Jean-Francois LeNy, and Walter Kintsch, 287–299. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth. 1996. “Intonation and Clause Combining in Discourse: The Case of Because.” Pragmatics 6 (3): 389–426.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Degand, Liesbeth, and Henk Pander Maat. 2003. “A Contrastive Study of Dutch and French Causal Connectives on the Speaker Involvement Scale.” In Usage-Based Approaches to Dutch, ed. by Arie Verhagen, and Jeroen van de Weijer, 175–199. Utrecht: LOT.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Villiers, Jill, and Peter de Villiers. 1973. “A Cross-sectional Study of the Acquisition of Grammatical Morphemes in Child Speech.” Journal of Psycholinguistics Research 2: 267–178. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Diessel, Holger. 2004. The Acquisition of Complex Sentences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eisenberg, Ann R. 1980. “A Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis of Conjunction.” Stanford Papers and Reports on Child Language Development 19: 70–78.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elbers, Loekie, and Frank Wijnen. 1992. “Effort, Production Skill, and Language Learning.” In Phonological Development: Models, Research, Implications, ed. by Charles A. Ferguson, Lise Menn, and Carol Stoel-Gammon, 337–368. Timonium, MD: York Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evers-Vermeul, Jacqueline. 2005. The Development of Dutch Connectives: Change and Acquisition as Windows on Form-function Relations. PhD dissertation. Utrecht University. LOT: Utrecht. Available at: [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evers-Vermeul, Jacqueline, Liesbeth Degand, Benjamin Fagard, and Liesbeth Mortier. 2011. “Historical and Comparative Perspectives on Subjectification: A Corpus-based Analysis of Dutch and French Causal Connectives.” Linguistics 49 (2): 445–478. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Evers-Vermeul, Jacqueline, and Ted Sanders. 2009. “The Emergence of Dutch Connectives; How Cumulative Cognitive Complexity Explains the Order of Acquisition.” Journal of Child Language 36: 829–854. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. “Discovering Domains – On the Acquisition of Causal Connectives.” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1645–1662. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garrod, Simon, and Martin J. Pickering. 2004. “Why is Conversation so Easy?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8: 8–11. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goldstein, Harvey. 1999. Multilevel Statistical Models. London: Arnold.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Granger, Sylviane. 2004. “Computer Learner Corpus Research. Current Status and Future Prospects.” In Applied Corpus Linguistics. A Multidimensional Perspective, ed. by Ulla Connor, and Thomas Upton, 123–145. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Günthner, Susanne. 1996. “From Subordination to Coordination? Verb-second in German Clausal and Concessive Constructions.” Pragmatics 6 (3): 323–356.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A. K., and Ruqaiya Hasan. 1976. Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hobbs, Jerry R. 1979. “Coherence and Coreference.” Cognitive Science 3: 67–90. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Keller, Rudi. 1995. “The Epistemic Weil.” In Subjectivity and Subjectivisation: Linguistic Perspectives, ed. by Dieter Stein, and Stein Wright, 16–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kidd, Evan, Elena V. M. Lieven, and Michael Tomasello. 2006. “Examining the Role of Lexical Frequency in the Acquisition and Processing of Sentential Complements.” Cognitive Development 21: 93–107. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Klee, Thomas, Mary Schaffer, Susan May, Irene Membrino, and Karen Mougey. 1989. “A Comparison of the Age-MLU Relation in Normal and Specifically Language-impaired Preschool Children.” Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders 54: 226–233. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kuczaj, Stan. 1976. -Ing, -s and -ed: A Study of the Acquisition of Certain Verb Inflections. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Minnesota.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kyratzis, Amy, Jiansheng Guo, and Susan Ervin-Tripp. 1990. “Pragmatic Conventions Influencing Children’s Use of Causal Constructions in Natural Discourse.” In Proceedings of the 16th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, ed. by Kira Hall, Jean Pierre Koenig, Michael Meacham, Sondra Reinman, and Laurel A. Sutton, 205–214. Berkeley, CA: BLS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
MacWhinney, Brian. 2000. The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk, 3rd ed. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCabe, Allyssa, and Carol Peterson. 1997. “Meaningful ‘Mistakes’: The Systematicy of Children’s Connectives in Narrative Discourse and the Social Origins of this Usage About the Past.” In Processing Interclausal Relationships: Studies in the Production and Comprehension of Text, ed. by Jean Costermans, and Michel Fayol, 139–154. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Jon F., and Robin S. Chapman. 1981. “The Relation between Age and Mean Length of Utterance in Morphemes.” Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 24: 154–161. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Max. 1979. The Logic of Language Development in Early Childhood. Berlin: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noordman, Leo G. M., and Wietske Vonk. 1997. “The Different Functions of a Conjunction in Constructing a Representation of the Discourse.” In Processing Interclausal Relationships. Studies in the Production and Comprehension of Text, ed. by Jean Costermans, and Michel Fayol, 75–93. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pander Maat, Henk, and Ted Sanders. 2000. “Domains of Use or Subjectivity? The Distribution of Three Dutch Causal Connectives Explained.” In Cause, Condition, Concession and Contrast: Cognitive and Discourse Perspectives, ed. by Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen, and Bernd Kortmann, 59–81. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. “Subjectivity in Causal Connectives: An Empirical Study of Language in Use.” Cognitive Linguistics 12: 247–273.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peterson, Carol, Beulah Jesso, and Allyssa McCabe. 1999. “Encouraging Narratives in Preschoolers: An Intervention Study.” Journal of Child Language 26: 49–67. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Piaget, Jean. 1969. Judgement and Reasoning in the Child. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pit, Mirna. 2003. How to Express Yourself with a Causal Connective. Subjectivity and Causal Connectives in Dutch, German and French. Ph.D. Dissertation, Utrecht University. Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sachs, Jacqueline. 1983. “Talking about the There and Then: The Emergence of Displaced Reference in Parent–child Discourse.” In Children’s Language, ed. by Keith E. Nelson, Vol. 4, 1–28. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanders, Ted. 1997. “Semantic and Pragmatic Sources of Coherence: On the Categorization of Coherence Relations in Context.” Discourse Processes 24: 119–147. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanders, Ted, and Henk Pander Maat. 2006. “Cohesion and Coherence: Linguistic Approaches.” In Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd ed., ed. by Keith Brown, et al., Vol. 2, 591–595. London: Elsevier. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanders, Ted, and Wilbert Spooren. 2009. “Causal Categories in Discourse: Converging Evidence from Language Use.” In Causal Categories in Discourse and Cognition, ed. by Ted Sanders, and Eve Sweetser, 205–246. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanders, Ted, Wilbert Spooren, and Leo Noordman. 1992. “Toward a Taxonomy of Coherence Relations.” Discourse Processes 15: 1–35. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanders, Ted, and Eve Sweetser (eds). 2009. Causal Categories in Discourse and Cognition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Slobin, Dan I. 1973. “Cognitive Prerequisites for the Development of Grammar.” In Studies of Child Language Development, ed. by Charles A. Ferguson, and Dan I. Slobin, 175–208. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spooren, Wilbert, and Ted Sanders. 2008. “The Acquisition of Coherence Relations: On Cognitive Complexity in Discourse.” Journal of Pragmatics 40: 2003–2026. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stukker, Ninke, and Ted Sanders. 2012. “Subjectivity and Prototype Structure in Causal Connectives: A Cross-linguistic Perspective.” Journal of Pragmatics 44 (2): 169–190. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suppes, Patrick. 1974. “The Semantics of Children’s Language.” American Psychologist 29: 103–114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sweetser, Eve. 1990. From Etymology to Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael. 2000. “First Steps toward a Usage-based Theory of Language Acquisition.” Cognitive Linguistics 11: 61–82.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. “Acquiring Linguistic Constructions.” In Handbook of Child Psychology, ed. by Deanna Kuhn, and Robert S. Siegler, 255–298. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael, and Hannes Rakoczy. 2003. “What Makes Human Cognition Unique? From Individual to Shared to Collective Intentionality.” Mind and Language 18: 121–147. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Traxler, Matthew J., Michael D. Bybee, and Martin J. Pickering. 1997. “Influence of Connectives on Language Comprehension: Eyetracking Evidence for Incremental Interpretation.” The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 50A: 481–497. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Valian, Virginia, and Lyman Casey. 2003. “Young Children’s Acquisition of Wh-questions: The Role of Structured Input.” Journal of Child Language 30: 117–143. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Kampen, Jacqueline. 1997. First Steps in Wh-movement. Ph.D. dissertation, Utrecht University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Veen, Rosie. 2011. The Acquisition of Causal Connectives: The Role of Parental Input and Cognitive Complexity. PhD dissertation, Utrecht University. LOT: Utrecht. Available at: [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Veen, Rosie, Jacqueline Evers-Vermeul, Ted Sanders, and Huub van den Bergh. 2009. “Parental Input and Connective Acquisition in German: A Growth Curve Analysis.” First Language 29: 267–289. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013. “The Influence of Parental Input on Connective Acquisition: A Growth Curve Analysis of English Because and German Weil.” Journal of Child Language 40 (5): 1003–1031. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vygotsky, Lev. 1978. “Interaction between Learning and Development.” In Mind in Society, transl. by Michael Cole, 79–91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wijnen, Frank, and Maaike Verrips. 1998. “The Acquisition of Dutch Syntax.” In The Acquisition of Dutch, ed. by Steven Gillis, and Annick De Houwer, 223–299. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wood, David, Jerome S. Bruner, and Gail Ross. 1976. “The Role of Tutoring in Problem Solving.” Journal of Child Psychology and Child Psychiatry 17: 89–100. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

LUSTIGMAN, LYLE & RUTH A. BERMAN
2016. Form and function in early clause-combining. Journal of Child Language 43:1 ► pp. 157 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 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