![]() Whereas most grammatical rules and phonological structures should be established at this age, additional task demands, as induced by writing, seem to dig out effects of the underlying prosodic structure. In their study, second graders avoided prosodic violation at the cost of grammatical rules such as omitting an obligatory determiner. For example, Domahs, Blessing, Kauschke, and Domahs ( 2016) report a systematic influence of prosody on written production. This leaves room for syntactically deviant but phonologically unmarked structures (e.g., promoting rhythmical alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables).Įvidence for the power of prosodic and rhythmic constraints in language production of older children is rather limited. Grammatical rules, like the obligatory presence of a determiner in a phrase like Mary tickled the doll, are not yet firmly established. ![]() 1 The apparent strength of prosodic/phonological leverage vis-à-vis syntax in child language might be due to a phonological template in language acquisition ( Gerken, 1994a) in combination with syntactic uncertainty. ![]() For instance, Gerken ( 1996) showed that English-speaking toddlers are more likely to produce grammatically ill-formed sentences (omitting obligatory elements) when this leads to rhythmic and prosodic well-formedness. ![]() However, one field in which phonological influences on sentence structure appear to be comparatively strong is child language. Nevertheless, phonological influences on word order are on record ( Breiss & Hayes, 2020 Büring, 2013 see Anttila, 2016 for a review), but they appear to be limited to sub-clausal environments ( Kentner & Franz, 2019). This follows from the logical directionality of language production, in which the semantic content of the message governs lexical choice and the assignment of syntactic function phonology can exert its role and endow the structure with sound only once a syntactic scaffold has been constructed ( Levelt, 1989). In normal, spontaneous language use, semantic constraints presumably control word order more immediately and to a stronger degree than phonological constraints. Semantic as well as phonological constraints are known to affect such word order decisions in speech production, and they do so to varying degrees. Syntax, however, does not fully determine word order instead, speakers often have to decide between possible word order variants when formulating their message. The transmission of thought into speech involves the retrieval of appropriate lexical items and their ordering according to the rules of syntax. In sum, our findings suggest a stronger influence of animacy compared to rhythmic well-formedness on conjunct ordering for German speaking children and adults, in line with findings by McDonald, Bock, and Kelly (1993) who investigated English speaking adults. In both groups, the latter result was significant when the two stimulus pictures did not vary with respect to animacy. Furthermore, the order of the conjuncts was affected by the rhythmic constraint, such that disrhythmic sequences, i.e., stress lapses, were avoided. In the group of preschoolers, the strength of the animacy effect correlated positively with age. Overall, children and adults preferably produced animate items before inanimate ones, confirming findings of Prat-Sala, Shillcock, and Sorace (2000). Participants were asked to produce coordinated bare noun phrases in response to picture stimuli (e.g., Delfin und Planet, ‘dolphin and planet’) without any predefined word order. In this study, we investigated the impact of two constraints on the linear order of constituents in German preschool children’s and adults’ speech production: a rhythmic (*LAPSE, militating against sequences of unstressed syllables) and a semantic one (ANIM, requiring animate referents to be named before inanimate ones).
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