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Types of linguistic knowledge: interpreting and producing compound nouns*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Eve V. Clark  and
Ruth A. Berman
Eve V. Clark*
Affiliation:
Stanford University
Ruth A. Berman*
Affiliation:
Tel-Aviv University
*
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
Department of Linguistics, Tel-Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel.
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Abstract

The present study examined the types of linguistic knowledge that affect children's ability to understand and produce novel compounds in Hebrew. Sixty children aged 3;0–9;0, and 12 adults, were asked to interpret and to produce novel Noun + Noun compounds. Their comprehension was in advance of their production. In comprehension, morphological form of head nouns had little effect: from age four, children did equally well on all the compound forms tested; they identified head nouns and also possible relations between heads and their modifiers. In production, though, knowledge of morphological form was crucial. The fewer the changes children had to make in the forms of head nouns, the earlier they mastered that compound pattern. Finally, children who produced novel compounds correctly were also able to interpret novel compounds, but not vice versa.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , October 1987 , pp. 547 - 567
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NICHHD 5R01 18908) and in part by the Sloan Foundation. We would like to thank Roni Bilev for her invaluable role in pilot work and in collecting the data: without her this study could not have been done. We would also like to thank the suburban schools of Ramat Gan for their co-operation, and all the children who so willingly answered our questions. And we are indebted to Herbert H. Clark and Gary Holden, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.

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