Asymmetry in children's comprehension of raising*. Issue 3 (11th April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: CHOE, JINSUN; O'GRADY, WILLIAM
• Is Part Of: Journal of child language. Volume 44:Issue 3(2017)
• Page Start: 752
• Page End: 765
• Publication Date: 2016-04-11
• Subjects: Children -- Language -- Periodicals; 401.9305
• DOI: 10.1017/S0305000916000179
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0305-0009

Abstract

Abstract: This paper investigates English-speaking children's acquisition of raising constructions (e.g. John seems to Mary to be happy ) and finds an asymmetric effect of NP type on their comprehension: an improvement in performance is observed when a lexical NP is raised across a pronominal experiencer (e.g. John seems to her to be happy ) compared to when a pronoun is raised across a lexical NP experiencer (e.g. He seems to Mary to be happy ). These results are consistent with a processing-based approach to intervention effects, which reduces children's difficulty with raising to a performance limitation, rather than a grammatical deficit.