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The nature and frequency of relative clauses in the language children hear and the language children read: A developmental cross-corpus analysis of English complex grammar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2022

Yaling HSIAO Open the ORCID record for Yaling HSIAO [Opens in a new window] ,
Nicola J. DAWSON ,
Nilanjana BANERJI  and
Kate NATION
Yaling HSIAO*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, UK
Nicola J. DAWSON
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, UK
Nilanjana BANERJI
Affiliation:
Oxford University Press, UK
Kate NATION
Affiliation:
University of Oxford, UK
*
Corresponding author: Yaling Hsiao, Department of Experimental Psychology, Anna Watts Building, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX2 6GG. E-mail: yaling.hsiao@psy.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

As written language contains more complex syntax than spoken language, exposure to written language provides opportunities for children to experience language input different from everyday speech. We investigated the distribution and nature of relative clauses in three large developmental corpora: one of child-directed speech (targeted at pre-schoolers) and two of text written for children – namely, picture books targeted at pre-schoolers for shared reading and children’s own reading books. Relative clauses were more common in both types of book language. Within text, relative clause usage increased with intended age, and was more frequent in nonfiction than fiction. The types of relative clause structures in text co-occurred with specific lexical properties, such as noun animacy and pronoun use. Book language provides unique access to grammar not easily encountered in speech. This has implications for the distributional lexical-syntactic features and associated discourse functions that children experience and, from this, consequences for language development.

Keywords

grammatical developmentreadingchild-directed speechcorpus analysisrelative clausessentence processing
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 50 , Issue 3: Special issue on Cross-cultural language development , May 2023 , pp. 555 - 580
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© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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