{ "paper_id": "Y10-1042", "header": { "generated_with": "S2ORC 1.0.0", "date_generated": "2023-01-19T13:40:17.770548Z" }, "title": "Why the English Easiest Type Became the Hardest in Russian, or Russian Adults' Comprehension of before and after Sentences *", "authors": [ { "first": "Olga", "middle": [], "last": "Fedorova", "suffix": "", "affiliation": { "laboratory": "", "institution": "Lomonosov Moscow State University", "location": { "addrLine": "Leninskie Gory", "postCode": "119991", "settlement": "Moscow", "country": "Russia" } }, "email": "olga.fedorova@msu.ru" } ], "year": "", "venue": null, "identifiers": {}, "abstract": "Thirty four Russian speaking adults were tested for their comprehension of four complex adverbial sentence types expressing the temporal order of events. Three hypotheses put forward in the literature and tested in English state respectively that: (i) adverbial clause placement, (ii) conjunction choice, and (iii) order of mention effect on participants' adverbial sentences comprehension. The results of the study demonstrated that none of the three hypotheses were relevant for Russian material. A new explanation was proposed.", "pdf_parse": { "paper_id": "Y10-1042", "_pdf_hash": "", "abstract": [ { "text": "Thirty four Russian speaking adults were tested for their comprehension of four complex adverbial sentence types expressing the temporal order of events. Three hypotheses put forward in the literature and tested in English state respectively that: (i) adverbial clause placement, (ii) conjunction choice, and (iii) order of mention effect on participants' adverbial sentences comprehension. The results of the study demonstrated that none of the three hypotheses were relevant for Russian material. A new explanation was proposed.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Abstract", "sec_num": null } ], "body_text": [ { "text": "Comprehension of four English sentence types expressing the temporal order of events, as in example (1a-d) below, has been studied in children acquiring language (Clark 1971; Amidon and Carey 1972) , aphasic adults (Ansell and Flowers 1982; Sasanuma and Kamio 1976) , and normal adults (Clark and Clark 1968; Smith and McMahon 1970) . These constructions can be associated with three variables at a time: (i) syntax -the adverbial clause precedes (1a, c, hereafter designated as 'Sub-Main' sentence) or follows (1b, d, 'Main-Sub' sentence) the main clause; (ii) semantics -adverb before (1a, d, hereafter designated as 'Before1' and 'Before2' respectively) or adverb after (1b, c, 'After1' and 'After2' respectively) is used; and (iii) pragmatics -the order of mention of the events in a sentence may coincide with the order of occurrence in the real world, (1c, d, OOM sentences), or may not coincide (1a, b, NOOM sentences).", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 162, "end": 174, "text": "(Clark 1971;", "ref_id": "BIBREF7" }, { "start": 175, "end": 197, "text": "Amidon and Carey 1972)", "ref_id": "BIBREF0" }, { "start": 215, "end": 240, "text": "(Ansell and Flowers 1982;", "ref_id": "BIBREF1" }, { "start": 241, "end": 265, "text": "Sasanuma and Kamio 1976)", "ref_id": "BIBREF15" }, { "start": 286, "end": 308, "text": "(Clark and Clark 1968;", "ref_id": "BIBREF8" }, { "start": 309, "end": 332, "text": "Smith and McMahon 1970)", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": "1" }, { "text": "(1) a. Before the boy runs, the girl jumps. b.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": "1" }, { "text": "The boy runs after the girl jumps. c.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": "1" }, { "text": "After the girl jumps, the boy runs. d.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": "1" }, { "text": "The girl jumps before the boy runs.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": "1" }, { "text": "With respect to syntax, Clark and Clark (1968) argued that 'Main-Sub' sentences (rightbranching with conjunction embedded) could be considered transformationally simpler than 'Sub-Main' sentences (left-branching with conjunction preposed). Some early experiments (Clark and Clark 1968; Smith and McMahon 1970) have really shown that on a sentence verbatim recall task normal adults made significantly fewer errors remembering the sense of 'Main-Sub' sentences, as in (1b, d), than of ' as in (1a, c) . However, studies of normal adults (Smith and McMahon 1970) , kindergarten-and school-age children (Clark 1971; Natsopoulos and Abadzi 1986) , and aphasics with relatively preserved auditory comprehension (Ansell and Flowers 1982) indicated that on a sentence comprehension task clause order did not significantly affect the comprehension accuracy.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 24, "end": 46, "text": "Clark and Clark (1968)", "ref_id": "BIBREF8" }, { "start": 263, "end": 285, "text": "(Clark and Clark 1968;", "ref_id": "BIBREF8" }, { "start": 286, "end": 309, "text": "Smith and McMahon 1970)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 486, "end": 496, "text": "as in (1a,", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 497, "end": 499, "text": "c)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 536, "end": 560, "text": "(Smith and McMahon 1970)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 600, "end": 612, "text": "(Clark 1971;", "ref_id": "BIBREF7" }, { "start": 613, "end": 641, "text": "Natsopoulos and Abadzi 1986)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 706, "end": 731, "text": "(Ansell and Flowers 1982)", "ref_id": "BIBREF1" } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": "1" }, { "text": "As for semantics, Bever (1970) proposed that any sentence with before is easier to understand than any sentence with after. The hypothesis arises from the combination of two general principles of comprehension. The first principle states that the assertion of a sentence is the basis and the presupposition is organized as subsidiary to it; the second principle states that relations are organized by starting with the first event, so other events are subsidiary to the first. Thus, the before-sentences are easier than after-sentences because the assertion, which is in the main clause, also describes the first event, whereas in after-sentences the assertion describes the second event. Clark (1971) , however, argued that sentences with before are easier than sentences with after because the term before is linguistically less complex than after. She proposed that the Semantic Feature Model could account for the acquisition of before and after. The model holds that word meanings are learned one feature at a time, with general features learned before specific features, and a feature's positive value learned before its negative value. In the temporal domain, the relevant features are 'Time', 'Simultaneous' and 'Prior'. Thus, Clark predicted that before was understood at an early age than after, since '+Prior' was learned before than '\u2500Prior'. Without necessarily supporting the Semantic Feature Model, a number of studies supported Clark's finding that English children (Munro and Wales 1982, a.m.o.) and aphasic adults (Ansell and Flowers, 1982) produced more errors of temporal order on after than before sentences. However, Sasanuma and Kamio (1976) investigated comprehension of these sentence types in Japanese speaking aphasics. The authors reported that significantly more order errors occurred on before than after sentences. This result was contrary to what one would expect based on Clark's (1971) hypothesis. Moreover, Carni and French (1984) found out that performance of three-and four-year-olds English children was significantly better in response to after-question than before-questions. Rather than conclude that participants in this study understood after better than before, the authors suggested that since children have acquired the basic meanings of before and after by age three (or may be earlier, as Nelson (1982) argued), they lack the ability to apply this knowledge flexibly in a variety of situations.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 18, "end": 30, "text": "Bever (1970)", "ref_id": "BIBREF2" }, { "start": 689, "end": 701, "text": "Clark (1971)", "ref_id": "BIBREF7" }, { "start": 1482, "end": 1512, "text": "(Munro and Wales 1982, a.m.o.)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 1532, "end": 1558, "text": "(Ansell and Flowers, 1982)", "ref_id": "BIBREF1" }, { "start": 1639, "end": 1664, "text": "Sasanuma and Kamio (1976)", "ref_id": "BIBREF15" }, { "start": 1905, "end": 1919, "text": "Clark's (1971)", "ref_id": "BIBREF7" }, { "start": 1942, "end": 1965, "text": "Carni and French (1984)", "ref_id": "BIBREF5" }, { "start": 2337, "end": 2350, "text": "Nelson (1982)", "ref_id": "BIBREF14" } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": "1" }, { "text": "The pragmatic order-of-mention hypothesis of Clark and Clark (1968) states as follows: When the order of mention of events in a sentence corresponds to the order of occurrence of the events themselves, comprehension is facilitated. In accordance with this hypothesis, studies of complex adverbial sentences have shown that on a sentence recall task normal adults made significantly fewer errors remembering the sense of OOM than NOOM sentences (Clark and Clark 1968; Smith and McMahon 1970) . The hypothesis was also confirmed in the comprehension experiments with normal and educable mentally retarded Greek children (Natsopoulos and Xeromeritou 1988) . However, others studies of 5-year-olds children (Amidon and Carey 1972) and aphasics with relatively preserved auditory comprehension (Ansell and Flowers 1982) demonstrated that participants used the OOM strategy only when they did not understand the terms before and after.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 45, "end": 67, "text": "Clark and Clark (1968)", "ref_id": "BIBREF8" }, { "start": 444, "end": 466, "text": "(Clark and Clark 1968;", "ref_id": "BIBREF8" }, { "start": 467, "end": 490, "text": "Smith and McMahon 1970)", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 618, "end": 652, "text": "(Natsopoulos and Xeromeritou 1988)", "ref_id": "BIBREF13" }, { "start": 703, "end": 726, "text": "(Amidon and Carey 1972)", "ref_id": "BIBREF0" }, { "start": 789, "end": 814, "text": "(Ansell and Flowers 1982)", "ref_id": "BIBREF1" } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": "1" }, { "text": "Note that although no general explanation of this phenomenon was found, the latest paper on this topic, to our best knowledge, is (Natsopoulos and Xeromeritou 1988) . The main goal of the current experiment is to consider the problem on Russian material.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 130, "end": 164, "text": "(Natsopoulos and Xeromeritou 1988)", "ref_id": "BIBREF13" } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Introduction", "sec_num": "1" }, { "text": "The present study was undertaken to investigate Russian speaking adults' comprehension of complex adverbial sentences. Based on the studies reviewed above, the following three hypotheses were tested, see 2. 2Hypotheses (i) Russian adults produced significantly fewer errors on 'Main-Sub' sentences than 'Sub-Main' sentences; (ii)", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Hypotheses", "sec_num": "2.1" }, { "text": "Russian adults produced significantly fewer errors on before-sentences than after-sentences; (iii)", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Hypotheses", "sec_num": "2.1" }, { "text": "Russian adults produced significantly fewer errors on OOM-sentences than NOOM-sentences.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Hypotheses", "sec_num": "2.1" }, { "text": "The features of experimental sentences tested in our study are summing up in Table 1 . Note that each of the three hypotheses predicts (1d) to be the easiest sentence type: (i) in (1d) the main clause comes first, while in (1a, c) it does not; (ii) before in (1d) is less complex than after in (1b, c); (iii) the order of mention of the two events in (1d) corresponds to the order of occurrence, while in (1a, b) it does not.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 77, "end": 84, "text": "Table 1", "ref_id": "TABREF0" } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Hypotheses", "sec_num": "2.1" }, { "text": "Participants. Thirty four undergraduate students from the St.-Petersburg State University took part in this experiment. All were native Russian speakers who had lived in Russia all their lives, and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision and hearing; they were paid to participate in the experiment. Sentence Stimuli and Design. Twenty complex adverbial sentences were presented to each participant. Each set contained five sentences of each of the four sentence types: 'Before1', 'Before2', 'After1' and 'After2'. A sample of each sentence type (in Russian) with English translations is shown in (3).", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Method", "sec_num": "2.2" }, { "text": "In Russian, as in English, pered tem kak 'before' and posle togo kak 'after' relate a dependent clause event to a main clause event when either preposed (examples (3a, c)) or embedded (examples (3b, d)) in the construction. The dependent clause with pered tem kak always come next in time to the main clause event whereas the dependent clause event with posle togo kak always precedes in time the main clause event.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Method", "sec_num": "2.2" }, { "text": "(3) Examples from the experiment a.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Method", "sec_num": "2.2" }, { "text": "Teper' pered tem kak perelozhete oranzhevuju svechu v paket, goluboj gvozd' polozhite v banku. 'Now before moving orange candle in the paper bag, blue nail put in the jar.' b.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Method", "sec_num": "2.2" }, { "text": "A teper' kori\u010dnevuju no\u017eku polo\u017eite v korobku, posle togo kak peredvinete sinij korablik pod samolet. 'And now put the brown foot into the box after moving the blue ship under the plane.' c.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Method", "sec_num": "2.2" }, { "text": "Teper' posle togo kak peredvinete krasnuju korovu na skovorodku, zelenyj jakor' polozhite v korobku. 'Now after moving red cow on the skillet, green anchor put in the box.'", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Method", "sec_num": "2.2" }, { "text": "A teper' rozovyj samoletik polozhite poverx krovati, pered tem kak perelozhete krasnuju tetrad' v chemodan. 'And now put the pink plane on top of the bed before moving red notebook into the suitcase.'", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "d.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "Procedure. Participants were tested individually in a single session of approximately 30 minutes duration. They were seated in front of a vertical plastic board comprising a three-bythree grid, in the center of which was a fixation cross. 'Object' pictures were colorized versions of black/white line drawings of common objects presented in (Cycowicz et al. 1997) , scaled to fit a 2.5\"x 2.5\" square, cut out and laminated. At the start of each trial, four object pictures were placed in cells of the grid. As the 'objects' were positioned, the experimenter named each of them (see example of experimental trial in (4)). Then the computer provided a recorded spoken instruction for the participant to move an object to a designated container. Participants were asked to listen to each of 20 trials and perform the required actions as quickly as possible. Each trial consisted of a preamble and three instructions. Teper' rozovyj samoletik polo\u017eite poverx krovatki. 'Now put the pink plane on top of the bed.' Instruction 3.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 341, "end": 363, "text": "(Cycowicz et al. 1997)", "ref_id": null } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "d.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "A teper' kori\u010dnevuju no\u017eku polo\u017eite v korobku, posle togo kak peredvinete sinij korablik pod samolet. 'And now put the brown foot in the box after moving the blue ship under the plane.'", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "d.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The second or the third instruction of each trial was experimental, the other instructions of the trial were fillers.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "d.", "sec_num": null }, { "text": "The results (see Table 2 below) showed that participants made a total of 133 errors (19,6%) out of 680 responses; participants did not make any 'item error' (moving one or two incorrect items) or 'number error' (moving only one item); all of errors were 'order errors' -participants moved the correct items but in the incorrect, i.e. reversal, order. Surprisingly, despite of expected errors distribution, 116 out of 133 errors (87%) occurred on the type (1d) -the easiest sentence type according to each of the three verified hypotheses. The English easiest type became the hardest in Russian! 3 Discussion", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 17, "end": 24, "text": "Table 2", "ref_id": "TABREF2" } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Results", "sec_num": "2.3" }, { "text": "Of the three factors presumed to affect Russian adults' comprehension of complex adverbial sentences none was significant. This finding seriously contrasts with previous studies the authors of which reported significantly more order errors on (i) 'Sub-Main' sentences, (ii) aftersentences, and (iii) NOOM-sentences. Therefore we need to find a new explanation. First, consider again the question about the canonical clause order in complex adverbial sentences cross-linguistically. As was mentioned above, the 'Main-Sub' ('Before2' and 'After2') sentences in English are considered transformationally simpler than 'Sub-Main' ('Before1' and 'After1') sentences. Hence, they are less difficult for understanding than sentences with ''Sub-Main' order. In contrast, in Japanese complex sentences the adverbial clause must precede the main clause. Consequently, in Japanese only 'Before1' and 'After1' sentences are permitted (Sasanuma & Kamio 1976) . As Sasanuma and Kamio pointed out, an explanation for the discrepancy between English and Japanese results (significantly more order errors occurred on before-than after-sentences in Japanese) might be related to this syntactic constraint of Japanese: Because after-sentence is OOM sentence and before-sentence is NOOM sentence, the first could be understood better. We suggest that Russian complex adverbial sentences lie between English and Japanese complex adverbial sentences (see Table 3 ): While Russian permits all the four adverbial constructions ('Before1', 'Before2', 'After1' and 'After2') , the canonical clause order in Russian complex adverbial sentences is 'Sub-Main'; the analysis of Russian National Corpus (www.ruscorpora.ru) confirmed the hypothesis. Hence, sentences with 'Main-Sub' order are more difficult for understanding than sentences with 'Sub-Main' order. Thus, we predict Russian counterparts of (1a, c) sentences to elicit less errors than those of (1b,d). Secondly, we argue that when a participant (e.g., due to limitations of the working memory) does not fully understand a task demand she follows the specific strategy: Because a participant knows that she must fulfill both commands, she act out first the command of the clause that is kept in the working memory in the least stable and the least accessible form. Now, the question is: Which clause is kept in the working memory in the least stable and the least accessible form? According to the study of (Townsend and Ravelo 1980) , there are three different clausal processing strategies. First, the clause-by-clause approach (Caplan 1972) implies that immediately after one hears a sentence, the semantic form of the initial clause is more accessible than that of the final clause. Secondly, the structural-presuppositional approach (Townsend and Bever 1977) states that the semantic form of an asserted main clause is more accessible than that of a presupposed subordinate clause just after the sentence has been heard. According to the third, the causal-temporal approach, the semantic form of an initial clause which is more likely to be interpreted as the causal event for the other event mentioned is more accessible just after the sentence has been heard (Townsend and Bever 1978) .", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 921, "end": 944, "text": "(Sasanuma & Kamio 1976)", "ref_id": "BIBREF15" }, { "start": 1502, "end": 1513, "text": "('Before1',", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 1514, "end": 1524, "text": "'Before2',", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 1525, "end": 1547, "text": "'After1' and 'After2')", "ref_id": null }, { "start": 2438, "end": 2464, "text": "(Townsend and Ravelo 1980)", "ref_id": "BIBREF16" }, { "start": 2561, "end": 2574, "text": "(Caplan 1972)", "ref_id": "BIBREF4" }, { "start": 2769, "end": 2794, "text": "(Townsend and Bever 1977)", "ref_id": "BIBREF17" }, { "start": 3197, "end": 3222, "text": "(Townsend and Bever 1978)", "ref_id": "BIBREF18" } ], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 1432, "end": 1439, "text": "Table 3", "ref_id": "TABREF3" } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Results", "sec_num": "2.3" }, { "text": "The three predictions mentioned above are summing up in Table 4 below. (Caplan, 1972 ) final structural-presuppositional (Townsend and Bever, 1977) subordinate causal-temporal (Townsend and Bever, 1978) final", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 71, "end": 84, "text": "(Caplan, 1972", "ref_id": "BIBREF4" }, { "start": 121, "end": 147, "text": "(Townsend and Bever, 1977)", "ref_id": "BIBREF17" }, { "start": 176, "end": 202, "text": "(Townsend and Bever, 1978)", "ref_id": "BIBREF18" } ], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 56, "end": 63, "text": "Table 4", "ref_id": "TABREF4" } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Results", "sec_num": "2.3" }, { "text": "It is evident that any of the three approaches predicts that a participant acts out first the command of 'Before2' or 'After2' clauses (i.e. 'Main-Sub' sentence). It is important that for sentences with 'After2', like 'And now put the brown foot into the box after moving the blue ship under the plane', this strategy leads to correct results, but for sentences with 'Before2', like 'And now put the pink plane on top of the bed before moving red notebook into the suitcase', results become incorrect.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Results", "sec_num": "2.3" }, { "text": "In sum, the two hypotheses -(i) the canonical (hence, the simplest) clause order in Russian complex adverbial sentences is 'Sub-Main' (i.e. 'Before1' and 'After1' sentences are simpler than 'Before2' and 'After2' sentences), and (ii) due to limitations of the working memory a participant acts out first the hardest command (i.e. the command of 'Before2' or 'After2' clauses) -allow us to correctly predict the pattern of the results of our experiment. However, both of them need further empirical justification in new studies on Russian materials.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "The Results", "sec_num": "2.3" }, { "text": "Here we consider two new paradigms of our complex adverbial sentences comprehension studies, namely working memory (WM) and developmental pilot experiments.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Current Experiments", "sec_num": "4" }, { "text": "A number of experimental results have provided evidence that syntactic processing in comprehension requires the allocation of WM resources. Many research has found the fact that sentences that have more complex syntactic structures are more difficult and time consuming to understand (e.g., see (MacDonald 1997)). The results experiments in which such on-line methodologies as eye-tracking, self-paced word-by-word reading, and lexical decision task are used provided evidence that eye fixation durations, self-paced reading and lexical decision times increase at the points in a sentence where models of sentence processing predict an increased processing load.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Working Memory and Complex Adverbial Sentence Comprehension", "sec_num": "4.1" }, { "text": "The purpose of our new experiment was to test the WM effect, so twenty four High Span participants with WM\u22654 and twenty four Low Span participants with WM<4 on a Russian adaptation of Daneman and Carpenter (1980) took part in the experiment. The experiment was more complicate -a participant was forced to save information about four items out of nine disposed on the table, while in the first experiment she dealt with only four items. The results showed (1) that the second experiment really involved more resource-consuming computation (29% versus 19,6%); (2) strong WM effect: 20% for High-Spans and 37,5% for Low-Spans. Our two-factor hypothesis confirmed as well: 'Before2' was the hardiest type and 'After2' was the easiest one. However, we need further empirical justification of the fact on the experimental materials of our main experiment.", "cite_spans": [ { "start": 184, "end": 212, "text": "Daneman and Carpenter (1980)", "ref_id": "BIBREF9" } ], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Working Memory and Complex Adverbial Sentence Comprehension", "sec_num": "4.1" }, { "text": "Several different experiments examined the developmental changes of the comprehension of complex adverbial sentences with before and after cross-linguistically. In our pilot developmental study on Russian material, twenty children (from 4 to 7 year-olds), twenty teenagers (from 12 to 15 year-olds), twenty students (from 19 to 25 year-olds), and twenty adults (from 40 to 50 year-olds) acted out the events of four complex adverbial sentence types that were less complicate than sentences for our main experiment described above, e.g. Pered tem kak ty peredvinesh' poezd, peredvin' samolet 'Before you move a train, move a plane'.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Age and Complex Adverbial Sentence Comprehension", "sec_num": "4.2" }, { "text": "The results (see the histogram on the Figure 1 below) show that the number of errors decreases from children (54 errors out of 160 sentences) to students (13 errors out of 160 sentences) and slightly increases from students to adults (23 errors out of 160 sentences). Note that the type 'Before2' was the hardest type in this experiment again, but the difference between 'Before2' type and the other types was not so huge as for our main experiment (because, in our opinion, sentences for the experiment were less complicate). Our current experiment with three-and five-year-olds Russian children tests the following continuity hypothesis that children processing mechanisms work just like adults: Children as adults make significantly more errors in Before2 sentences than in other adverbial sentences.", "cite_spans": [], "ref_spans": [ { "start": 38, "end": 53, "text": "Figure 1 below)", "ref_id": "FIGREF0" } ], "eq_spans": [], "section": "Age and Complex Adverbial Sentence Comprehension", "sec_num": "4.2" } ], "back_matter": [], "bib_entries": { "BIBREF0": { "ref_id": "b0", "title": "Why five-year-olds cannot understand before and after", "authors": [ { "first": "\u0410", "middle": [], "last": "Amidon", "suffix": "" }, { "first": "P", "middle": [], "last": "Carey", "suffix": "" } ], "year": 1972, "venue": "Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior", "volume": "11", "issue": "", "pages": "417--423", "other_ids": {}, "num": null, "urls": [], "raw_text": "Amidon, \u0410., and P. Carey 1972. 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ExampleSentence typeClause orderConjunction typeOrder of mention
1a.Before1Sub-Main+PriorNOOM
1b.After2Main-Sub\u2500PriorNOOM
1c.After1Sub-Main\u2500PriorOOM
1d.Before2Main-Sub+PriorOOM
" }, "TABREF2": { "num": null, "text": "Results of the experiment.", "type_str": "table", "html": null, "content": "
ExampleSentence typeErrors, number (out of 170)Errors, percent
1aBefore163,8
1bAfter274,4
1cAfter142,5
1dBefore211672
total13319,6
" }, "TABREF3": { "num": null, "text": "Clause Order Cross-linguistically.", "type_str": "table", "html": null, "content": "
LanguageConstructions permittedClause order permittedCanonical clause order
EnglishBefore2 After2 Before1 After1Main-Sub Sub-MainMain-Sub
JapaneseBefore1 After1Sub-MainSub-Main
RussianBefore2 After2 Before1 After1Main-Sub Sub-MainSub-Main
" }, "TABREF4": { "num": null, "text": "Predictions on clause accessibility.", "type_str": "table", "html": null, "content": "
approach, by
" } } } }