Marshall --
My understanding (just from reading) was that kids go through a "don't
understand passives" --> "understand passives" transition" some time
between 3 and 6, that all things being equal you'd expect variation
among kids in terms of where they fall in that range when they make the
transition, and that the transition itself is near the same time as they
show evidence of recognizing lying/sarcasm (that last part might be out
of date, though -- it stuck in my head when I read it, but that was
quite a while ago). Common NVN patterns have agents as subjects (and
themes); pulling that cluster apart takes time. But.... all these
respondents were over 16.
My first suspicion is that the group having trouble were actually having
trouble with what we might call the genre of social-science experiment
prompts, but the column indicates that those kinds of effects weren't at
issue. I'll have to read the actual article, of course.
--- Bill Spruiell
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Myers, Marshall
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 4:23 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Interesting (but maybe problematic) study
William,
My study of language acquisition among youngsters says that 5 year-olds
have difficulty with passive constructions, too. I would think that
having learned the NVN pattern in most English clauses leads them to
that misinterpretation.
Of course, there's much more to the story than just that.
Marshall
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Spruiell, William C
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 3:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Interesting (but maybe problematic) study
I ran across the following in ScienceDaily today. It's the kind of
research result for which I'd really, really want to see multiple
followup studies. The researchers found that a proportion of their
(adult) test subjects couldn't understand passive sentences; I can't
help suspecting that the journalist hyped the results in some way or
there are other factors involved. Population variation in comprehension
of particular constructions is something I think is highly likely
(absolute phrases, anyone?), but.... the passive? That's always struck
me as part of the basic toolkit.
At any rate, I thought it might be of interest to the list, even if I
want to take it with a bucket of salt. -- Bill Spruiell
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100706082156.htm
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