The interplay of syntax and form in sentence production: A cross-linguistic study of form effects on agreement

Data from an experiment on gender acquisition with 160 Spanish children from four to eleven years of age are presented in this paper. In Spanish there are three possible clues (semantic, morphophonological and syntactic), that speakers can use to determine the gender of a noun and the agreement of other variable elements accompanying it. Items where only one of the clues was present, items where there was a combined effect of two of them in agreement (both were feminine or masculine), and items where clues were in conflict (one masculine and the other feminine) were introduced in the experiment. This experimental manipulation made it possible to test the relative strength of the different types of competing clues. In particular, the aim of the present study was to determine the relative importance of intralinguistic and extralinguistic clues, as evidenced by the ability of Spanish children to recognize the gender of a noun upon hearing it in a particular frame, and consequently, to establish the agreement of other variable elements accompanying it. A procedure similar to that used by Karmiloff-Smith (1979) was employed. The results (which are compared with those obtained in other languages) give support to the theoretical view that children pay for more attention to syntactic and morphophonological (intralinguistic) information than to semantic (extralinguistic) information.