Pragmatic children

How German children interpret sentences with and without the focus particle only

Anja Müller | Goethe University Frankfurt

Petra Schulz | Goethe University Frankfurt

Barbara Höhle | Potsdam University

Our study investigated the abilities of 6-year-old German-speaking children to interpret sentences with and without the focus particle nur (only). We report two experiments: In Experiment 1 the study by Paterson et al. (2003) on English was replicated in German. We found that German-speaking children do not interpret only-sentences target-like. This supports Paterson et al. that children ignore information that is not verbally given. The second experiment investigated children’s pragmatic ability to judge underinformative sentences. The results indicate that children take into account information that is showed on a picture, but not verbally introduced. We argue that children’s performance in Experiment 1 is not caused by an insufficient pragmatic knowledge but rather to its methodological set up.

Published online: 14 April 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.175.05mul

Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

BERGER, FRAUKE & BARBARA HÖHLE

2012. Restrictions on addition: children's interpretation of the focus particles auch ‘also’ and nur ‘only’ in German. Journal of Child Language 39:2 ► pp. 383 ff.

Foppolo, F. & F. Panzeri

2017. In Linguistic and Psycholinguistic Approaches on Implicatures and Presuppositions, ► pp. 151 ff.

Topaloğlu, Simge & Mine Nakipoğlu

2017. Sınırlayıcı Odak Parçacığı Sadece’nin Edinimi. Dilbilim Araştırmaları Dergisi 28:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

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