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https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.51.1.13
Production of Attributive Relative Clauses in Early School-Age Children with Typical Language Development
Mirjana Lasan-Grevelhörster
; Poslijediplomski doktorski studij Poremećaji jezika, govora i slušanja, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Edukacijsko-rehabilitacijski fakultet
Gordana Hržica
; Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Edukacijsko-rehabilitacijski fakultet
Ana Leko Krhen
orcid.org/0000-0001-6118-1755
; Sveučilište u Zagrebu, Edukacijsko-rehabilitacijski fakultet
Sažetak
The study investigated the ability to produce relative clauses in early school – age children with typical language development. Fifty children between the ages of 6;5 and 9;6 took part. In a sentence repetition task, they reproduced sentences that were organised according to the criteria of the complexity of the main clause (simple/complex), the role of the relative pronoun (subject/object) and the position of the relative clause (center-embedded/right-branching). The results show that older children performed slightly better, but the age differences were not statistically significant. The key factor proved to be the complexity of the main clause: children made more errors in sentences with a more complex structure than in simpler ones. The role of the relative pronoun was only relevant in more complex sentences, while the position of the relative clause only became relevant in combination with other factors. The children made considerably more syntactic than lexical errors, especially in complex constructions, suggesting that working memory demands play an important role in processing these structures. The findings indicate that the interaction between working memory and syntactic complexity plays a key role in shaping the accuracy of relative clause repetition. This has important implications for theoretical accounts of relative clause production in Croatian and for clinical practice, particularly in the development of standardised language assessment tools.
Ključne riječi
relative clauses; syntactic complexity; early school-age children; working memory; language development
Hrčak ID:
340294
URI
Datum izdavanja:
30.12.2025.
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