How do 5-year-olds understand questions? Differences in languages across Europe
Uli Sauerland
(1)
,
Kleanthes K. Grohmann
(2)
,
Maria Teresa Guasti
(3)
,
Darinka Anđelković
(4)
,
Reili Argus
(5)
,
Sharon Armon-Lotem
(6)
,
Fabrizio Arosio
(3)
,
Larisa Avram
(7)
,
João Costa
(8)
,
Ineta Dabašinskienė
(9)
,
Kristine de López
(10)
,
Daniela Gatt
(9)
,
Helen Grech
(11)
,
Ewa Haman
(12)
,
Angeliek van Hout
(13)
,
Gordana Hrzica
(14)
,
Judith Kainhofer
(15)
,
Laura Kamandulytė-Merfeldienė
(9)
,
Sari Kunnari
(16)
,
Melita Kovačević
(14)
,
Jelena Kuvac Kraljević
(14)
,
Katarzyna Lipowska
(12)
,
Sandrine Mejias
(17)
,
Maša Popović
(4)
,
Jurate Ruzaite
(9)
,
Maja Savić
(18)
,
Anca Sevcenco
(7)
,
Spyridoula Varlokosta
(19)
,
Marina Varnava
(2)
,
Kazuko Yatsushiro
(20)
1
ZAS -
Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft [Berlin]
2 UCY - University of Cyprus [Nicosia]
3 UNIMIB - Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca = University of Milano-Bicocca
4 University of Belgrade [Belgrade]
5 Tallinn University
6 Bar-Ilan University [Israël]
7 UniBuc - University of Bucharest
8 ULISBOA - Universidade de Lisboa = University of Lisbon
9 Institute of lithuanian language
10 AAU - Aalborg University [Denmark]
11 Mater Dei Hospital [Malta]
12 UW - University of Warsaw
13 University of Groningen [Groningen]
14 University of Zagreb
15 Universität Salzburg
16 University of Oulu
17 SCALab - Laboratoire Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives - UMR 9193
18 OU - University of Oklahoma
19 NKUA - National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
20 ZAS - Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft [Berlin]
2 UCY - University of Cyprus [Nicosia]
3 UNIMIB - Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca = University of Milano-Bicocca
4 University of Belgrade [Belgrade]
5 Tallinn University
6 Bar-Ilan University [Israël]
7 UniBuc - University of Bucharest
8 ULISBOA - Universidade de Lisboa = University of Lisbon
9 Institute of lithuanian language
10 AAU - Aalborg University [Denmark]
11 Mater Dei Hospital [Malta]
12 UW - University of Warsaw
13 University of Groningen [Groningen]
14 University of Zagreb
15 Universität Salzburg
16 University of Oulu
17 SCALab - Laboratoire Sciences Cognitives et Sciences Affectives - UMR 9193
18 OU - University of Oklahoma
19 NKUA - National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
20 ZAS - Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft [Berlin]
Résumé
The comprehension of constituent questions is an important topic for language acquisition research and for applications in the diagnosis of language impairment. This article presents the results of a study investigating the comprehension of different types of questions by 5-year-old, typically developing children across 19 European countries, 18 different languages, and 7 language (sub-)families. The study investigated the effects of two factors on question formation: (a) whether the question contains a simple interrogative word like ‘who’ or a complex one like ‘which princess’, and (b) whether the question word was related to the sentential subject or object position of the verb. The findings show that there is considerable variation among languages, but the two factors mentioned consistently affect children’s performance. The cross-linguistic variation shows that three linguistic factors facilitate children’s understanding of questions: having overt case morphology, having a single lexical item for both ‘who’ and ‘which’, and the use of synthetic verbal forms.