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Children's epistemic inferences through modal verbs and prosody

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2020

Meghan ARMSTRONG Open the ORCID record for Meghan ARMSTRONG [Opens in a new window]
Meghan ARMSTRONG*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
*
Address for correspondence: 420 Herter Hall, 161 President's Drive, UMass Amherst, Amherst, MA01001, USA. E-mail: armstrong@umass.edu
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Abstract

This study explores how young children infer nuances in epistemic modality through prosody. A forced-choice task was used, testing children's (ages three to seven) comprehension of the might/will distinction (modal condition) as well their ability to modulate the strength of might through two prosodic tunes (prosody condition). Positive and negative valence conditions were included. Younger children were shown to start off performing above chance for the modal condition, and at around chance for the prosody condition, but after age four performance on the prosody condition quickly improved. For both modal verbs and prosody, children performed significantly better when valence was positive. By age seven, children performed at ceiling for all conditions. Qualitative analysis of children's justifications for prosody responses showed metalinguistic awareness of prosodic meaning as early as age four, with the ability to relate prosody to epistemic modal meaning becoming quite common by age seven.

Keywords

prosodyintonationmodal verbsepistemic modalitybelief state languagespeaker commitment
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 47 , Issue 6 , November 2020 , pp. 1132 - 1169
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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