The status of 'canonical SVO sentences' in French: a developmental study of the on-line processing of dislocated sentences.
This on-line study investigates the processing of word order by 30 French children (6;6, 8;6, 10;6) and 10 adults. Its main objective is to show that the privileged status granted to 'canonical SVO sentences' is inadequate to account for the on-line processing of pronominal utterances in spoken French. Using a word monitoring task, we showed that word order (NVN vs NNV): (1) is a significant factor in sentences containing no clitic pronoun; (2) stops being significant when sentences contain either one or two clitic pronouns. These results suggest that processing complexity depends upon co-reference ('linear', 'crossed' or 'embedding') assignment constraints rather than upon word order per se. We conclude that, in French, word-order processing always interacts with acceptability considerations provided by cliticization.
Charvillat
A
A
Université René Descartes, Paris, France.
Kail
M
M
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D005260:Female; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008606:Mental Processes; D012660:Semantics