Subject interpretation of object questions by Dutch 5-year-olds ; The role of number agreement in comprehension

We investigated the interpretation of Dutch wie ‘who’- and welke ‘which’-questions in Dutch 5-year-olds. In contrast to wh-questions in many languages, Dutch wh-questions are structurally ambiguous between a subject and an object reading. We used test items in which the ambiguity was resolved by number agreement. The participants (N = 20) heard a wh-question and had to choose the corresponding picture out of a set of four; this method revealed their interpretation as either subject or object question. The results show that 5-year-olds interpret all question types as subject questions, independ... Mehr ...