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Comprehension of the copula: preschoolers (and sometimes adults) ignore subject–verb agreement during sentence processing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2019

Benjamin DAVIES Open the ORCID record for Benjamin DAVIES [Opens in a new window] ,
Nan XU RATTANASONE  and
Katherine DEMUTH
Benjamin DAVIES*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia, and ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, NSW2109, Australia
Nan XU RATTANASONE
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia, and ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, NSW2109, Australia
Katherine DEMUTH
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia, and ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, NSW2109, Australia
*
*Corresponding author: Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. E-mail: ben.davies@mq.edu.au
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Abstract

Subject–verb (SV) agreement helps listeners interpret the number condition of ambiguous nouns (The sheep is/are fat), yet it remains unclear whether young children use agreement to comprehend newly encountered nouns. Preschoolers and adults completed a forced choice task where sentences contained singular vs. plural copulas (Where is/are the [novel noun(s)]?). Novel nouns were either morphologically unambiguous (tup/tups) or ambiguous (/geks/ = singular: gex / plural: gecks). Preschoolers (and some adults) ignored the singular copula, interpreting /ks/-final words as plural, raising questions about the role of SV agreement in learners’ sentence comprehension and the status of is in Australian English.

Keywords

language changecomprehensionagreement
Type
Brief Research Reports
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 695 - 708
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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