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The role of prosodic and visual information in disambiguating wh-indeterminates: The case of Korean three-year-olds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2021

Hye-Jung CHO Open the ORCID record for Hye-Jung CHO [Opens in a new window] ,
Jieun KIAER Open the ORCID record for Jieun KIAER [Opens in a new window] ,
Naya CHOI Open the ORCID record for Naya CHOI [Opens in a new window]  and
Jieun SONG Open the ORCID record for Jieun SONG [Opens in a new window]
Hye-Jung CHO
Affiliation:
Department of Child Development and Family Studies, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea
Jieun KIAER*
Affiliation:
Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Naya CHOI
Affiliation:
Department of Child Development and Family Studies, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea
Jieun SONG
Affiliation:
Department of Speech, Hearing & Phonetic Sciences, University College London, UK Department of Linguistics, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea
*
Address for correspondence: Jieun Kiaer, Oriental Institute, University of Oxford (Pusey Lane, Oxford, OX1 2LE, UK) E-mail: jieun.kiaer@orinst.ox.ac.uk
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Abstract

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 yes-no 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.

Keywords

prosodic cuecontextual cueyoung childrendisambiguationwh-phrasesKorean
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , March 2022 , pp. 326 - 348
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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