On-line Processing of Passives in L1 and L2 Children

Research on first language (L1) acquisition has shown that typically developing children acquire a large part of morpho-syntax by the age of 4 (Guasti, 2002). Similarly, studies investigating how children process morpho-syntactic information have revealed that by the same age, their processing routines do not differ from those used by adults (Clahsen & Felser, 2006). However, there is one structure that seems to be problematic for L1 children even at a later age. Until the age of 6, L1 children make errors in the comprehension and production of passives. In contrast to the substantial literature on L1 acquisition, relatively few studies have investigated the acquisition of morpho-syntax in children acquiring a second language (L2). These have shown that at an early stage of development, L2 children show evidence of transfer from their L1 to the L2 (Haznedar, 1997; Unsworth, 2005), and their language abilities resemble those of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) (Paradis, 2005). Finally, there is a controversy as to whether or not L2 children follow similar patterns of development to L1 children or L2 adults (Schwartz, 2006; Weerman, Bisschop, & Punt, 2003). The present paper addresses the issues above by investigating the acquisition and processing of passives in monolingual English children and Turkish-English L2 children using a novel on-line methodology. This can reveal not only how successfully children comprehend passives, but also whether or not they are able to make use of morphological cues when they process actives and passives in real-time.