2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Sentences with 'only' and Question-Answer Congruence in the acquisition study: Comparative study in Japanese and English
Project/Area Number |
16K16856
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Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
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Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
Research Field |
English linguistics
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Research Institution | Mie University |
Principal Investigator |
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Project Period (FY) |
2016-04-01 – 2018-03-31
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Keywords | 焦点 / only / focus / 質問回答整合性 |
Outline of Final Research Achievements |
In the experiment where a prompt question is a "broad-question," the accuracy of the Subject-only sentences by children was 29.6%, while in the experiment where a prompt question is a "narrow-question," the accuracy was 70.8%. In the experiment where a numeral is used in the subject position of a sentence with 'only,' the accuracy for the 3-year-olds was 65%, that for the 4-year-olds was 61.5%, that for the 5-year-olds was 69.2%, that for the 6-year-olds was 94.2%. Previous literature argues that the difficulty that children have toward comprehending sentences with 'only' in the subject position is due to the lack of grammar at that stage. However, the results of this study suggest that children do have the grammar, but what is missing is the knowledge of how to locate the focus in a given sentence with 'only.'
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Free Research Field |
第一言語獲得
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