Early perception-late comprehension of grammar? The case of verbal - s: a response to de Villiers & Johnson (2007).
Two recent papers (de Villiers & Johnson, 2007; Johnson, de Villiers & Seymour, 2005) have claimed that children have difficulty with verbal -s until five-six-years-old. This contrasts with perceptual studies showing evidence for sensitivity to the grammatical properties of verbal -s as young as 1; 4. These apparently conflicting findings can be reconciled by differentiating between early perceptual grammatical knowledge and later semantic comprehension.
Soderstrom
Melanie
M
Department of Cognitive & Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. melsod@brown.edu
D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014706:Verbal Learning