On the acquisition of syntax in Tamil: a comment on Garman (1974).
Garman (1974), reporting on twenty Tamil children aged three to five, postulated a linguistic strategy and two prelinguistic strategies to explain the results of a question-picture choice task involving sentences with embedded and subordinate clauses. In a reanalysis of his data, we identify four processing strategies and show that some of Garman's findings are better explained not as the outcome of prelinguistic strategies but as an artefact of the experimental design. In fact the data provide evidence of a grammatical sensitivity which is consonant with a sensitivity--demonstrated in recent language--acquisition studies-to the branching direction of the language being acquired.
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Department of Human Development and Family Studies, New York State College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca 14853-4401.
Eisele
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D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D007194:India / Q000208:ethnology; D007804:Language Development; D007807:Language Tests; D008037:Linguistics; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards; D014705:Verbal Behavior