The role of prosodic and visual information in disambiguating wh-indeterminates: The case of Korean three-year-olds
저자 : Hye-Jung Cho, Jieun Kiaer, Naya Choi, Jieun Song
저널명(출판사명) : Journal of Child Language
발행연도(출간연도) : 2021년
권호사항(ISBN) : doi:10.1017/S0305000921000143
초록 (내용소개)
In Korean language, questions containing ambiguous WH-WORDS may be interpreted as either wh-questions or yes-no questions. This study investigated 43 Korean three-year-olds’ ability to disambiguate eight indeterminate questions using prosodic and visual cues. The intonation of each question provided a cue as to whether it should be interpreted as a wh-question or a yesno question. The questions were presented alongside picture stimuli, which acted as either a matched (presentation of corresponding auditory-visual stimuli) or a mismatched contextual cue (presentation conflicting auditory-visual stimuli). Like adults, the children preferred to comprehend questions involving ambiguous wh-words as wh-questions, rather than yes-no questions. In addition, children were as effective as adults in disambiguating indeterminate questions using prosodic cues regardless of the visual cue. However, when confronted with conflicting auditory-visual stimuli (mismatched), the quality of children’s responses was less accurate than adults’ responses.