Ditransitive structures in child language acquisition: an investigation of production and comprehension in children aged five to seven

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate the acquisition of ditransitive structures beyond production. We conducted an elicitation task (production) and a picture-sentence matching task measuring accuracy and response times (comprehension). We examined German five-to seven-year-old typically developing children and an adult control group. Our data showed quasi-perfect performance in comprehension in adults and in those children who had already mastered ditransitives productively. However, children who had not yet mastered the production of ditransitives showed comprehension abilities preceding production abilities. Unlike adults, in the comprehension task children did not react explicitly before the end of the auditory stimulus.