Adquisición y procesamiento de modificadores nominales recursivos

Abstract

Previous studies have reported that three to six year-old English speakers misinterpret modifier sequences in phrases like the second blue star in a picture identification task. Children seem to make a coordinate interpretation like “the ball that is the second one and (that) is blue”. Such behavior has been attributed to the recursive nature of these structures. A recent eye-tracking study with Portuguese speakers revealed; however; that even adults’ comprehension would be affected by the way the task is presented (visual/linguistic stimuli presented simultaneously/sequentially). The results show that simultaneous presentation of visual/linguistic stimuli induces adults to an erroneous first search; compatible with a non-recursive interpretation. In the present study; a new comprehension experiment with children is reported in which the phrase/visual array pairs were presented sequentially. The results challenge the claim that comprehension problems stem from strictly linguistic factors and support the idea that four-year-old children are able to deal with recursive structures.