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Answering hard questions: Wh-movement across dialects and disorder

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2008

JILL DE VILLIERS ,
THOMAS ROEPER ,
LINDA BLAND-STEWART  and
BARBARA PEARSON
JILL DE VILLIERS*
Affiliation:
Smith College
THOMAS ROEPER
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts
LINDA BLAND-STEWART
Affiliation:
George Washington University
BARBARA PEARSON
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Jill de Villiers, Department of Psychology, Smith College, Northampton, MA 01063. E-mail: jdevil@smith.edu
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Abstract

A large-scale study of complex wh-questions with 1,000 subjects aged 4–9 years is reported. The subjects' dialects were Mainstream American English or African American English, and approximately one-third were language impaired. The study examined when children permit long distance wh-movement, and when they respect a variety of syntactic barriers to movement. Thirteen different structures were compared, and the results suggest that typically developing children and disordered children at all the ages studied are capable of long-distance movement and obedience to abstract barriers. In no case was dialect a significant factor in the children's linguistic performance on these tasks.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , January 2008 , pp. 67 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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