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Children's production and comprehension of questions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Dorothy Tyack  and
David Ingram
Dorothy Tyack
Affiliation:
Scottish Rite Institute for Childhood Aphasia, San Francisco
David Ingram
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Abstract

This study examined children's production and comprehension of questions, with the aim of discovering possible patterns in question acquisition. For the production study, questions were collected from 22 children aged 2; 0–3; 11. The data show a high frequency of yes-no, what, and where questions by age 2; 0. Why and how questions were infrequent but they increased with age. Who and when questions were rarely asked by children of any age. From the frequency data a rough chronological order of acquisition was inferred: what, where, why, how, when. In the comprehension study 100 children were tested, aged 3; 0–5; 5. The test controlled syntax and vocabulary and varied specific wh- question-words. The frequency of correct answers increased with the age of the children. When children made mistakes, their answers were not random but appeared to be following certain question-answering strategies. These included attention to semantic features of verbs and especially the placement of verbs in the sentence.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 1977 , pp. 211 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported in large part by the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke Grant NS 07514.

References

REFERENCES

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