Open AccessThe development of language and its interaction with other aspects of cognition: the case of medial wh-questions in English and in Brazilian Portuguese
Author(s) -
Elaine Grolla,
Adam Liter,
Jeffrey Lidz
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
ilha do desterro
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.223
H-Index - 6
eISSN - 2175-8026
pISSN - 0101-4846
DOI - 10.5007/2175-8026.2020v73n3p169
Subject(s) - portuguese , cognition , grammar , linguistics , brazilian portuguese , control (management) , psychology , cognitive psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , philosophy , neuroscience
Preschool children acquiring English and Brazilian Portuguese display a peculiar behavior when prompted to produce multi-clause wh-questions. In elicited production tasks, structures with an extra wh-element in medial position are sometimes produced. Such medial questions are impossible in the adult languages being acquired. Following a hypothesis put forth by Grolla & Lidz (2018), we propose that children’s productions are not generated by children’s grammar, but reflect difficulties of their developing cognitive system. More specifically, we propose that children’s more limited inhibition control capacity leads them to pronounce elements with high activation levels in wrong places of the structure. Experimental data on both languages are provided which corroborate this claim. These data show that children with more limited inhibition control capacity are more likely to produce medial wh-questions.