The link between lexical semantic features and children’s comprehension of English be-passives
Emma Nguyen, Lisa Pearl
March 2021 

Children seem to be relatively delayed in their comprehension of the verbal be-passive in English, compared to their acquisition of other constructions of object-movement such as wh-questions and unaccusatives. Prior work has found that children’s performance on passives can be affected by the verb’s lexical semantics. Through a meta-analysis of experimental studies assessing English-speaking children’s age of acquisition for the verbal passive, we identify a developmental trajectory composed of five classes, where each class has a distinct lexical semantic profile. A Truth-Value Judgment (TVJ) Task assessing English children’s comprehension of verbal passives supports this developmental trajectory. Together, the meta-analysis and TVJ study underscore the importance of lexical semantics for understanding the development of the English verbal passive.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/005315 (please use that when you cite this article)
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keywords:	passives, lexical semantics, meta-analysis, truth-value judgment task, english, semantics, syntax
previous versions:	v1 [July 2020]
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