Gender attribution and gender agreement in 4- to 10-year-old French children |
| |
Authors: | Yves Boloh Laure Ibernon |
| |
Institution: | Department of Psychology, University Paul Valéry, Montpellier III, Route de Mende, 34000 Montpellier, France |
| |
Abstract: | Grammatical gender is generally considered an early and error-free acquisition in French children. This article first examines how children cope with the gender attribution problem, i.e., how they determine the gender of individual nouns. We consider the plausibility and requirements of an account in which tacit phonological assignment rules are put to use to solve attribution problems and contrast it with a simple “masculine as default” strategy. Elicited production data from three experiments, involving 312 4–10-year-old French children and 40 adult controls, were found compatible with this latter scenario and to provide only scant support for the former one. Second, we argue that previous studies have overestimated French children's gender agreement abilities, and that French children's ability to make the article and the adjective agree can be assumed from age 7 onwards, but not before. |
| |
Keywords: | Language development Gender attribution Gender agreement |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|