International Centre for Language and Communicative Development: The Effect of Animacy on Children and Adult's Comprehension of Relative Clauses, 2014-2020

We investigated the influence of animacy on online processing of semantically reversible SRCs and ORCs using lexically inanimate items that were perceptually animate due to motion (e.g.,“where is the tractor that the cow is chasing”). Across three experiments we collected data from 141 children (aged 4;5–6;9) and 64 adults listened to sentences that varied in the lexical animacy of the NP1 head-noun (Animate/Inanimate) and relative clause (RC) type (SRC/ORC) with an animate NP2 , while viewing two images depicting opposite actions. As expected, inanimate head-nouns facilitated the correct interpretation of ORCs in children, however online data revealed children were more likely to anticipate a SRC as the RC unfolded when an inanimate head-noun was used, suggesting processing was sensitive to perceptual animacy.. Across the experiments, offline measures show that lexical animacy influenced children’s interpretation of ORCs, while online measures reveal that as RCs unfolded, children were sensitive to the perceptual animacy of lexically inanimate NPs, which was not reflected in the offline data.