Production-comprehension (A)Symmetry: Individual differences in the acquisition of prosodic focus-marking
Previous work based on different groups of children has
shown that four- to five-year-old children are similar to adults
in both producing and comprehending the focus-toaccentuation
mapping in Dutch, contra the alleged productionprecedes-
comprehension asymmetry in earlier studies. In the
current study, we addressed the question of whether there are
individual differences in the production-comprehension
(a)symmetricity. To this end, we examined the use of prosody
in focus marking in production and the processing of focusrelated
prosody in online language comprehension in the same
group of 4- to 5-year-olds. We have found that the relationship
between comprehension and production can be rather diverse
at an individual level. This result suggests some degree of
independence in learning to use prosody to mark focus in
production and learning to process focus-related prosodic
information in online language comprehension, and implies
influences of other linguistic and non-linguistic factors on the
production-comprehension (a)symmetricity
Share this page