The role of person in subject auxiliary inversion in English wh-questions: Evidence from Korean-English bilingual children

• Autores: Sunny K Park-Johnson
• Localización: International Journal of Bilingualism: interdisciplinary studies of multilingual behaviour, ISSN 1367-0069, Vol. 23, Nº. 1, 2019, págs. 313-328
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Aims:

    The present study investigates whether Korean-English (K-E) bilingual children develop subject auxiliary inversion (SAI) in English wh-questions differently from monolingual English (M-E) speaking children. Specifically, an experimental study was designed to determine whether there is an effect of subject person in their acquisition of SAI in English wh-questions, a factor that had been suggested but not tested as a contributing factor in SAI in a previous study.

    Design:

    Twenty-six K-E bilingual and 20 M-E preschool-aged children were recruited for an elicitation study testing the effect of person on the use of SAI in wh-questions in English. The experiment consisted of having children interact with puppets in a guessing game that elicited first, second, and third person object-what questions in English.

    Data and analysis:

    Data from the experiment were analyzed through a binomial logistic regression, which accounts for the binary nature of the data (auxiliary inversion: present or absent) and identified which variables contribute significantly to the presence and absence of SAI.

    Findings/conclusions:

    Results indicated a significant difference between K-E and M-E groups and a significant main effect for person on SAI for the K-E group. The paper proposes that the [prs] feature is part of the bundle of features that drives the movement of the features in T to C.

    Originality:

    The paper contributes evidence for a link between the person feature and SAI, a link that has not been seen before for wh-question research.

    Significance/implications:

    The new evidence of a possible link between subject person and auxiliary inversion may open a window to new avenues for wh-question acquisition research.