Word order and information structure in Czech 3- and 4-year-olds’ comprehension

Abstract

This article reports on an experiment that examined the comprehension of transitive sentences in Czech children and its relationship to case marking, word order and information structure. A total of 107 Czech children aged 2;9–4;5 were tested for comprehension of noun-verb-noun sentences in which word order and given-new status of individual nouns were manipulated. The results confirmed that noncanonical, object-initial sentences are generally more difficult to comprehend than sentences with the standard word order, but that many children can interpret noncanonical sentences before 4 years of age. Information structure did not have any clear effect on sentence comprehension. Overall, the results indicate that children have some abstract knowledge of word order and case marking when they first show evidence of transitive sentence comprehension, but initially they cannot use this knowledge when word order and case marking signal conflicting interpretations. Information structure is not a major factor in early sentence comprehension.