Joao Costa Assimetria

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Subjectobject asymmetries in the acquisition of Portuguese relativeclauses: Adults vs. children

Joao Costa *, Maria Lobo, Carolina Silva

FCSH-Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

1. Introduction

A-bar dependencies established via movement, like those involved in the formation of questions, relative clauses or

topicalization constructions, are a well-studied domain in language acquisition. Recent studies reveal that children are able

to perform this type of movement operation, confirming early findings by Borer and Wexler (1987). However, unlike these

authors suggest, it is not the case that all subtypes of A-bar dependencies are produced or comprehended by children at the

same time. Several studies, conducted for many different languages, lead to the conclusion that dependencies in which the

subject is moved are acquired earlier than those in which the object is moved ( Adams, 1990; Berman, 1997; Brown, 1972;

Correa, 1982, 1995; de Villiers et al., 1994; de Vincenzis, 1991; Friedmann et al., 2009; Friedmann and Novogrodsky, 2004;

Hakansson and Hansson, 2000; McKee et al., 1998; Roth, 1984; Sheldon, 1974; Tavakolian, 1981; Vasconcelos, 1991 ). Some

of these studies further show that the difficulties in production and in comprehension of object dependencies are higher

when the moved object crosses an intervening lexically overt subject, as depicted in (1):

(1) [ Obj [ Subj [ V t

[

(1) [ Obj [ Subj [ V t

If, for instance, the subject is null, no intervention effect arises, and childrens ability to produce and comprehend the

dependencies improves substantially (e.g. Friedmann et al., 2009; Friedmann and Costa, 2010).

Lingua 121 (2011) 10831100

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Received 1 June 2010

Received in revised form 2 November 2010

Accepted 3 February 2011

Keywords:

Subject relative

Object relative

Acquisition

Production

Comprehension

European Portuguese

A B S T R A C T

Several studies reveal an asymmetry between the acquisition of subject and object relative

clauses (Adams, 1990; Berman, 1997; Brown, 1972; Correa, 1982, 1995; de Villiers et al.,

1994; de Vincenzis, 1991; Friedmann et al., 2009; Friedmann and Novogrodsky, 2004;

Hakansson and Hansson, 2000; McKee et al., 1998; Roth, 1984; Sheldon, 1974; Tavakolian,

1981; Vasconcelos, 1991). The goal of this paper is to show that a similar asymmetry is

found in the acquisition of European Portuguese. FollowingBelletti and Contemori (2010),

we show that, in production, the adult control group also fails to produce object relative

clauses. However, similarly to what was found for Italian by Belletti and Contemori, a

closer look into the types of productions made by adults and children reveals that only the

latter fail to produce relatives. Adults, instead, opt for other grammatical alternative

strategies.

2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

* Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: [email protected](J. Costa),[email protected](M. Lobo),[email protected](C. Silva).

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0024-3841/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2011.02.001
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The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we will show that the well-studied subjectobject asymmetries found in the

production of A-bar dependencies, more specifically in the production of relative clauses, are also found in European

Portuguese, providing further support to the crosslinguistic robustness of relative clauses as an area of linguistic development.

The second goal of the paper is methodological in nature. We will show that a first look at the adult control group data reveals

that, just like children, adults also exhibit a subjectobject asymmetry in the production of relative clauses. In order to

understandthis behavior, we willarguethat a qualitativeanalysis of theperformanceof bothgroups (children andadults), anda

comparison between their performances in a production task and in a comprehension task is needed. In a nutshell, following

Friedmann et al. (2009), we show that children do not produce object relatives, because they are not able to deal with the

intervention created in the syntactic dependency, whereassome adults do not produce object relatives justbecause theyprefer

to produce alternative structures, like passives. The fact that the results of the two groups are qualitatively different provides

evidence for claiming that children and adults have different underlying reasons for avoiding object relatives.

The article is organized in the following way.

In section2, we provide an overview of work on this topic as background to this study, our research questions and

hypotheses. In section 3, an experiment eliciting the production of subject and object relative clauses in European

Portuguese, borrowed from Novogrodsky and Friedmann (2006), is presented. In section4, we present the results of an

experiment on the comprehension of subject and object relatives in European Portuguese, modeled after Friedmann and

Novogrodsky (2004). Section 5 provides a discussion of the results obtained for children and for adults, which tries to explain

why adults apparently fail to produce object relatives in the elicitation experiment. Section6synthesizes the papers main

conclusions.

2. Background, research questions and hypotheses

As mentioned in section1, the acquisition of A-bar dependencies involving movement has received a lot of attention in

the literature on child language and language development (seeGuasti, 2002for a summary). Relative clauses instantiate a

case of an A-bar dependency with movement. As shown in (2), in European Portuguese, like in most worlds languages,

relative clauses may be headed by a relative pronoun which is either the subject (as in 2a) or the object (as in 2b)of its clause:

(2) a. Eu vi o rapaz que abracou a mae.

I saw the boy that hugged the mother

b. Eu vi o rapaz que a mae abracou.

I saw the boy that the mother hugged

Assuming that the two types of relative clauses involve the creation of an A-bar dependency via movement of the relative

operator, thecrucial difference between thetwo structures is that only (2b), the object relative clause, involves a dependencyin which a constituent the subject intervenes in between the moved operator and the arguments original position (the

complement of the verb). Results found for several languages suggest that it is intervention, rather than movement, that

causes childrens difficulties in comprehending and producing relative clauses, since they only fail with object relatives (e.g.

Friedmann and Novogrodsky, 2004; Friedmann et al., 2009). An interesting aspect of this type of analysis is that it is based on

a rather abstract level of representation (the nature of the dependency created), and not on any type of surface characteristic

of relative clauses. As such, it is predicted that the difficulties with object relative clauses hold crosslinguistically, whenever

the relevant abstract configuration emerges, and independently of the actual lexical material used in each language for the

creation of these structures. Based on this background, we are interested in evaluating the crosslinguistic robustness of the

findings on relative clauses, by assessing their production by children acquiring European Portuguese. We, therefore,

formulate the following hypothesis:

(3) H1: If the difficulties with object relative clauses depend on an abstract dependency in which there is intervening

material between the gap and the displaced element, and not on the specific relative pronoun or complementizerused in each language, children acquiring European Portuguese are expected to exhibit problems in the

production and comprehension of object relative clauses, as was found for other languages.

Friedmann and Novogrodsky (2004)explain the difficulties with object relative clauses in thematic terms: the intervention

of the subject makes it difficult for children to know which argument the trace position must associate with: the moved

operator or the subject. This problem with assignment of the relevant interpretation is subject to development. As such,

adults are not expected to have a problem in the interpretation and production of this type of dependencies with intervening

arguments.1 Based on this, we can formulate our second hypothesis:

(4) H2: If the problems in comprehending and producing crossing dependencies are subject to development,

children and adults are expected to diverge in the production and comprehension of object relative clauses.

1 Correa (1995)also provides evidence for the relevance of intervening lexical material in the comprehension of object relatives in Brazilian Portuguese.

J. Costa et al. / Lingua 121 (2011) 108311001084


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We will test these two hypotheses with the presentation of a production task and a comprehension test on relative clauses in

European Portuguese.

3. Experiment 1: production of subject and object relative clauses in European Portuguese

Methodology. In order to elicit subject and object relative clauses, we borrowed a test used in Novogrodsky and

Friedmann (2006), consisting of a preference test, in which children were asked to indicate their preferences after a

question posed by the experimenter. In this task, the child is invited to participate in an interview, in which s/he is

presented with two situations, and has to tell the experimenter which one s/he prefers. The elicitation of the relative

clause is guaranteed by the only rule the child has to follow: s/he must start all his/her answers by saying: I prefer to

be the child. . .. In (5a) and (5b), we provide an example of a test item for the elicitation of a subject relative and an object

relative, respectively2:

(5) a. Ha dois meninos. . . Um menino come chocolate, o outro menino come

Have-3sg two boys. . .one boy eats chocolate, the other boy eats

gelado. Que menino eque gostavas mais de ser?

Icecream. Which boy is that liked-impf-2sg more of be-inf

Comeca com: Gostava de ser o menino. . .

Start with liked-impf-1sg of be-inf the boy. . .

There are two boys. . .

One boy eats chocolate, the other boy eatsice cream. Which boy would you rather be?

Start with: Id rather be the boy. . .

b. Ha dois meninos. . . A mae penteia um menino, o vizinho penteia o

Have-3sg two boys. . .the mother combs one boy, the neighbor combs the

outro menino. Que menino eque gostavas mais de ser?

other boy. Which boy is that liked-impf-2sg more of be-inf

Comeca com: Gostava de ser o menino. . .

Start with liked-impf-1sg of be-inf the boy. . .

There are two boys. . . The mother combs a boy, the neighbor combs the

other boy. Which boy would you rather be?

Start with: Id rather be the boy. . .

In the test, twentyrelative clauses were induced, ten of each type (subject and object).The stimuli includedbothreversible and

nonreversible predicates. That is, in bothconditions, one can find relatives with a reversible predicate, as in I would liketo bethe

boythat themotherhugs (itcould be thecasethatthe motherhugsthe boy or the boyhugsthe mother),and relatives with a non-

reversible predicate, as inI would like to be the boy that the alarm clock wakes up (in this case, only the alarm clock can be the

subject). As can be seen in Appendix A, the stimuli included 8 reversible predicates (6 in the subject condition, 2 in the object

condition), and 12 non-reversible predicates (4 in the subject condition, 8 in the object condition). Controlling for

thereversibility of thepredicate is important, since we are concerned about the thematic interpretationof thearguments. In the

case of non-reversible predicates, the meaning of the verb may turn out to be an important cue, whereas with reversible

predicates there is no help given by the verb. In order to control for the effects of animacy (cf. Goodluck and Tavakolian, 1982),

some of the non-reversibleitems include animate and inanimate DPs, both in the subjectand in the objectconditions. As canbe

seen inAppendix A,the stimuli included 14 animate predicates (6 in the subject condition, 8 in the object condition) and 6

inanimate DPs (4 in thesubjectcondition,2 in the object condition).Thestimuli alsoincludedboth definiteand indefinite DPs inboth conditions. As can be seen in Appendix A, the stimuli included 10 definite DPs (2 in the subject condition, 8 in the object

condition) and 10 indefinite DPs(8 in the subject condition, 2 in the object condition). As we will show, therewas a generalized

good performance on subject relatives independently of reversibility, animacy and definiteness.

All participants were tested individually in a quiet room by two experimenters. One of the experimenters prompted the

sentences, and the other transcribed the childs response (the same role was played by the same experimenter for all

children). No time limit was imposed, and no stimulus or correction was given depending on the type of response, besides

general encouragement to pursue the task and a final reward after completion of the task (for the children only). The tests

were recorded using a digital voice recorder. Childrens productions were fully transcribed during and after the session by

the two experimenters. One transcription was made by one of the experimenters during the session, right after the childs

utterance. A second transcription was made on the basis of the audio recording by the other experimenter. In case of false

2

We refer the reader toFriedmann et al. (in preparation), in which the details of the adaptation of this test to sixteen different languages are presented.SeeAppendix Afor the list of sentences used in the elicitation task.

J. Costa et al. / Lingua 121 (2011) 10831100 1085


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starts or reformulations, everything was transcribed, but only the last utterance of the child was counted and coded. The

second transcriptions were double-checked by the two experimenters, and compared with the original transcriptions for

reliability. This means that each experimenter heard the recordings and checked the transcriptions, comparing the final

transcript and the original one. No case of disagreement between the original and the final transcript occurred.

Thesentences were coded as targetor non-target. We considered targetall theproductions includinga relative clauseof

the type being elicited,and non-target allthe productions that didnot include a relative clauseof thetypebeingelicited. All

non-target responses were scored as grammatical or ungrammatical. They were further classified according to a

description of theresponsestrategy used(e.g. passive,resumptive pronoun,omission of the relativepronoun, thematicrole

reversal, repetition of the antecedent, head change, and chopping relative). In section 5, we present the most relevant

categories used in the coding of grammatical and ungrammatical strategies, and examples for each of the strategies

referred to here.

Participants.The childrens group included 60 typically developing monolingual children acquiring European Portuguese

(25 male, 35 female), aged between 3;9 and 6;2 (mean: 5;1). No child had any history of social, emotional, cognitive or

hearing impairment. All children were from the Lisbon area. The adult control group consisted of 20 adults (9 male, 11

female), aged between 23 and 45. All adults had a university background and no specific training or education in the area

they were being tested for.

Results.The results of the elicitation experiment are presented separately for children and adults. We will examine the

case for the children first. As the graph in Fig. 1shows, there was a very significant difference between the two types of

relatives3.

The results show a clear asymmetry between subject and object relative clauses, favoring the former over the latter,

which confirms the tendency found for other languages. A look at individual results, presented in Table 1, reveals that there is

no clear age effect.

There are two important aspects worth emphasizing in the individual results. First, at all age groups, there are a few

children who are better than others in object relatives, which attests to some individual variation. Second, and more

importantly, at all age groups and for all children, subject relatives are better than object relatives. In other words, we did not

find any child who could produce object relatives better than subject relatives.

Reversibility did not play an important role in determining accurate production of subject and object relatives. As shown

inthe graph in Fig. 2, there is no relevant difference between the production of relatives with or without reversible predicates

within each condition.4

The same holds for animacy, which did not play an important role in determining accurate production of subject and

object relatives. As shown in the graph in Fig. 3, there is no relevant difference between the production of relatives with or

without animate DPs within each condition.5

A similar finding emerged for definiteness. This factor did not play an important role in determining accurate production

of subject and object relatives. As shown in the graph in Fig. 4, there is no relevant difference between the production of

relatives with or without definite DPs within each condition6.

[

Fig. 1. Experiment 1: percentage of target relatives elicited overall, subject vs. object condition (children).

3 Recall that target is meant as relative clause of the type being elicited.4 The following stimuli sentences from Appendix A were counted as reversible: Subject condition: 5,6,7,8,9and10; Object condition: 1,4,5,6,7,8,9and10.5 The following stimuli sentences from Appendix A were counted as reversible: Subject condition: 5,6,7,8,9and10; Object condition: 1,4,5,6,7,8,9and10.6

The following stimuli sentences fromAppendix Awere counted as containing a definite DP:Subject condition:6 and 7;Object condition:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7and 10.



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Note that, as mentioned in the description of the methodology, the stimuli sentences include reversible and non-reversible

predicates, definite and indefinite DPs, and animate and inanimate DPs, but are not balanced for these variables. As such, the

data in the previous threegraphs maybe only be taken as preliminary indications that these variables didnot affectthe results,

and that the subjectobject difference is the crucial differentiating factor. Independent tests controlling each of these variables

independently with balanced stimuli may help determining whether these preliminary results are confirmed.

Let us now look at the performance of the adult control group. The graph in Fig. 5presents the results of adults in the

elicitation task.

Table 1

Experiment 1: percentage of target relatives elicited by participant, subject vs. object condition.

Years;months Subject relatives Object relatives

3;9 10% 0%

4;3 80% 40%

4;3 50% 3%

4;4 20% 0%

4;4 90% 0%

4;4 100% 20%4;5 60% 20%

4;5 70% 0%

4;5 80% 0%

4;6 50% 0%

4;6 100% 90%

4;6 100% 50%

4;6 100% 0%

4;6 100% 100%

4;7 100% 70%

4;8 90% 50%

4;10 20% 0%

4;11 90% 50%

4;11 60% 10%

4;11 70% 50%

4;11 100% 0%

4;11 100% 6%4;11 100% 30%

5;0 90% 40%

5;1 90% 10%

5;3 80% 20%

5;3 100% 60%

5;3 100% 90%

5;3 100% 60%

5;3 100% 100%

5;4 30% 0%

5;4 60% 20%

5;4 100% 30%

5;4 100% 80%

5;4 100% 20%

5;4 100% 40%

5;5 90% 0%

5;5 60% 0%5;5 70% 0%

5;5 100% 80%

5;6 100% 30%

5;7 70% 0%

5;7 0% 10%

5;7 100% 10%

5;7 90% 20%

5;7 80% 20%

5;8 30% 10%

5;8 70% 10%

5;8 0% 0%

5;8 100% 90%

5;9 10% 0%

5;9 90% 20%

5;10 100% 90%

5;11 70% 40%

5;11 100% 0%

6;0 100% 70%

6;0 70% 10%

6;0 90% 0%

6;2 100% 100%

6;2 100% 0%



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[

Fig. 2. Experiment 1: percentage of target subject and object relatives elicited depending on reversibility of predicates children.

[

Fig. 3. Experiment 1: percentage of target subject and object relatives elicited depending on animacy of DPs children.

[

Fig. 4. Experiment 1: percentage of target subject and object relatives elicited depending on definiteness of DPs children.



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Just like we observed for children, in adults too, there is an obvious asymmetry between subject and object relatives. As

shown in the graph inFig. 5,subject relatives are produced 99.5% of the time (199/200), whereas object relatives were only

produced at a rate of 49.5% (99/200). The results are, therefore, very similar to those obtained for children. However, as we

will show later, the results are only superficially similar, since adults finish the sentences by producing grammatical

alternatives to object relatives, like passives (as in (50a), contrasted to the target object relative clause in (5 0b)), whereas

children produce ungrammatical structures, like sentences in which the thematic roles are reversed (as in (6a), which

contrasts to the target object relative clause in (6b)):

(50) a. Grammatical Subject Passive:

Gostava de ser o menino que e penteado pelo avo.

Liked-impf-1sg of be-inf the boy that is combed by-the grandpa

Id rather be the boy that is combed by the grandpa.

b. Target object relative:

Gostava de ser o menino que o avopenteia.

Liked-impf-1sg the boy that the grandpa combs

Id rather be the boy that grandpa combs.

(6) a. Ungrammatical thematic role reversal:

Gostava de ser o menino que acorda o radio.

Liked-impf-1sg of be-inf the boy that wakes the radio

Id rather be the boy that wakes up the radio.

b. Target object relative clause:

Gostava de ser o menino que o radio acorda.

Liked-impf-1sg of be-inf the boy that the radio wakes

Id rather be the boy that the radio wakes up.

We will return to this matter in the discussion section where individual data will be presented (cf. Fig. 9), but the reader can

anticipate that there is a difference between adults and children, in that adults prefer not to produce object relatives,

whereas children are not able to produce them.

If we return to the hypotheses formulated at the beginning of the article, we may say that the results of Experiment 1

confirm Hypothesis 1, since it was found that, like in other languages, object relatives are produced less often than subject

relatives. On the contrary, Hypothesis 2 was not supported, since no difference was found between children and adults.

Actually, the lack of confirmation for Hypothesis 2 compromises the validity of Hypothesis 1, since the validity of the

experiment is maybe challenged by the results of the adult control group. At this moment, three interpretations of this result

are legitimate: (i) the experiment is not valid; (ii) the subjectobject asymmetry in relatives is not a marker of language

development, since it also found in adults; (iii) the similarity in results between children and adults is misleading.

In the remainder of the paper, we will provide evidence for the interpretation iii. Experiment 2, which will be presented in

the next section, will constitute the first piece of evidence in favor of this interpretation of the facts.

[

Fig. 5. Experiment 1: percentage of target relatives elicited overall, subject vs. object condition adults.



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4. Experiment 2: comprehension of subject and object relative clauses in European Portuguese

The second experiment aims at testing whether there are subjectobject asymmetries in the comprehension of relative

clauses, which would match the findings for production.

Methodology. In order to assess the comprehension of subject and object relative clauses, we used Friedmanns (1998)

relative clause comprehension sentence-picture matching task. This task consists of 40 pairs of pictures with two characters

in each of the pictures one of the characters is performing an action on the other, e.g. a boy drying a hippo or a hippo drying

a boy. The experimenter asks the child to point to the relevant picture, using sentences containing relative clauses, such as

Show me the boy that dries the hippo or Show me the boy that the hippo dries. Twenty subject relatives and twenty

object relatives were used in the experiment (cf.Appendix Bfor the list of stimuli used). Given the nature of the task, only

reversible verbs were used. InFig. 6, we provide an example of the type of pictures used, kindly provided by N. Friedmann.

All participants were tested individually in a quiet room. No time limit was imposed, and no stimulus or correction was

given depending on the type of response, besides general encouragement to pursue the task and a final reward after

completion of the task (for the children only). The responses were registered by an experimenter during the session.

Participants.The participants of Experiment 2 were exactly the same as in experiment 1, both in the childrens group and

in the adult group. The two experiments were planned together, so that we could assess potential differences between

[

Fig. 6. Example of test item from Friedmanns (1998)comprehension test.



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production and comprehension in the two groups of participants. It is important to emphasize, though, that Experiment 2

was run after Experiment 1, on separate days (with at least one week of interval). We wanted to make sure, this way, that the

production task was by no means influenced by the type of structures uttered by the experimenters in the comprehension

task, since the latter includes the subject and object relatives to be elicited in the production experiment.

Results.Let us first look at the results of children in the comprehension task. As shown, in Fig. 7, a clear subjectobject

asymmetry was found:

Subject relatives were comprehended almost perfectly, with a rate of success of 96%, whereas in object relatives children

only reached 68% of correct interpretations. The percentage of comprehension of object relatives is higher than the

production of object relatives, which is a normal effect of comprehension tasks. Although the performance on object relatives

is above chance, the difference between the two conditions is statistically significant (x2 = 58.48,p < .0001). As shown in

Table 2, just like in the case of production, there is some individual variation, but almost no case in which there is better

comprehension of subject relatives than object relatives (only one case, which is signaled).

Adults performed at ceiling on both conditions, reaching 100% in subject and in object relatives).

Unlikewhat wasfound in Experiment 1 forproduction, adults and childrendo not perform alikein the comprehension task.

In isolation, the results of Experiment 2 confirm the two Hypotheses being tested in this article: on the one hand, the results of

thecomprehensiontask confirm thecrosslinguistic robustness of thesubjectobjectasymmetryin relativeclauses, on theother

hand, it appears that there is a developmental effect, given the difference in results between children and adults (Fig. 8).

Combining the results of the two experiments, we are left with a new issue to address concerning the behavior of the

adult control group. Why is there an asymmetry in performance between the two experiments? In other words, how can we

understand the fact that adults behave like children in the production of object relative clauses, if they can comprehend them

with no difficulty, as shown by the results of Experiment 2?

Note that, by now, we can rule out the possibility suggested at the end of the previous section that object relatives are also

difficult for adults (and therefore not an adequate marker of language development), since the comprehension data provide

evidence that they pose no problem for the adult control group. We are thus left with two other possibilities: either the

production task is not a valid assessment tool or the production results are to be interpreted differently.

[

Fig. 7. Experiment 2: percentage of target comprehension of relatives overall, subject vs. object condition children.

[

Fig. 8. Experiment 2: percentage of target comprehension of relatives overall, subject vs. object condition adults.



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Table 2

Experiment 2: percentage of target comprehension of relatives by participant, subject vs. object condition.

Age Subject relatives Object relatives

3;11 90% 90%

4;3 80% 50%

4;5 100% 60%

4;5 95% 55%

4;5 90% 65%

4;6 100% 90%4;6 100% 20%

4;6 90% 60%

4;6 95% 45%

4;7 100% 90%

4;7 95% 85%

4;7 100% 90%

4;7 60% 65%

4;7 95% 90%

4;8 100% 40%

4;8 95% 75%

4;8 100% 50%

4;10 100% 70%

4;11 100% 80%

4;11 95% 95%

4;11 100% 55%

5;0 100% 90%5;0 100% 60%

5;0 90% 80%

5;1 100% 80%

5;1 100% 70%

5;2 100% 50%

5;2 100% 60%

5;2 85% 55%

5;4 100% 85%

5;4 90% 90%

5;5 100% 50%

5;5 100% 70%

5;5 100% 80%

5;5 90% 80%

5;5 100% 90%

5;5 100% 80%

5;5 100% 55%5;6 100% 70%

5;6 100% 75%

5;6 100% 60%

5;6 100% 90%

5;6 100% 90%

5;7 90% 20%

5;7 100% 70%

5;7 100% 100%

5;8 100% 20%

5;9 100% 50%

5;9 100% 60%

5;9 100% 20%

5;9 100% 70%

5;9 100% 60%

5;9 100% 50%

5;10 100% 20%

5;10 90% 70%

5;10 80% 70%

5;10 100% 55%

5;11 100% 70%

5;11 95% 90%

5;11 100% 70%

6;1 90% 60%

6;1 100% 70%

6;2 100% 70%

6;2 100% 80%

6;2 80% 55%

6;2 100% 25%

6;4 90% 30%

6;4 100% 80%

6;4 95% 90%



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5. Discussion reconciling the results of the two experiments.

The results of the two experiments only led to a partial confirmation of the two hypotheses being tested in this paper. On

the one hand, it was found that, as was found for other languages, children produce more subject relative clauses than object

relative clauses, making it legitimate to suppose that there is a subjectobject asymmetry in the acquisition of relative

clauses. On the other hand, the same asymmetry was found in adults, which makes one doubt that there is a developmental

problem and an acquisitional asymmetry. However, the results of Experiment 2 the comprehension test revealed that

there is an asymmetry between subject and object relatives for children only, since only children, and not adults, have

difficulties in the comprehension of object relatives.

Based on these results, we have to ask the following questions:

(a) Why do adults behave like children in the production task only?

(b) Given the lack of evidence for a developmental effect, can it be considered that the production of relative clauses is a

marker of linguistic development?

(c) Is the production task used for assessing knowledge of relative clauses a valid one?

As mentioned above, we contend that the lack of knowledge on object relatives that adults exhibit in the results of

Experiment 1 is just apparent, in the sense that it does not really reflect lack of competence on the production of object

relatives. In fact, a qualitative analysis of the data provides a key to reconciling the results of the two experiments. The first

question to be addressed is the following: what were adults doing when they were not producing object relative clauses? In

the graphic inFig. 9, we provide individual data for adults.

The first interesting aspect to be noted is that there is variation in the object relative condition (but not in the subject

relative condition): some participants consistently produced object relative clauses, others avoided them altogether, and a

few only produced them sometimes. Interestingly, whenever an object relative clause was not produced, one of two

alternative structures was produced: a subject relative with a passive, as in (7a), or a reduced passive (without any relative

operator), as in (7b):

(7) Passive subject relative clause:

a. Gostava de ser o menino que e penteado pela mae.

Id like to be the boy that is combed by the mother

Reduced passive:

b. Gostava de ser o menino penteado pela mae.

Id like to be the boy combed by the mother

In the following figure, we show the distribution of the two types of productions by individual adult participants:

As shown in the graph inFig. 10, some participants consistently opted for the production of passives (reduced or full

subject relatives). Crucially, all responses were fully grammatical and legitimate alternatives in the grammar.

This is different from what can be observed in childrens results. Let us first consider the rate of grammatical and

ungrammatical responses children gave in each condition (Figs. 11 and 12).

The qualitative analysis reveals that, unlike adults, children produce ungrammatical structures in the object relative

condition. An analysis of the type of target-deviant structures uttered by children revealed that the following categories of

productions emerged (an example is given for each error type for a given target response):

[

Fig. 9. Experiment 1: target production of relative clauses elicited by participant, subject vs. object condition adults.



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(8) Target: Gostava de ser o menino que o avovisita.

Id like to be the child that the grandpa visits

a. Omission of the relative pronoun:

Gostava de ser o menino o avovisita.

Id like to be the boy 1 the grandpa visits

b. Thematic role reversal:

Gostava de ser o menino que visita o avo.

Id like to be the child that visits grandpa

c. Repetition of the antecedent:

Gostava de ser o menino que o avo visita o menino.

Id like to be the child that grandpa visits the child

[

Fig. 12. Experiment 1: percentage of responses per grammaticality in object condition: children.

[

Fig. 10. Experiment 1: types of responses in object relative condition adults.

[

Fig. 11. Experiment 1: percentage of responses per grammaticality in subject condition: children.



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d. Insertion of resumptive clitic:

Gostava de ser o menino que o avo o visita.

Id like to be the child that grandpa him-cl visits

e. Relative clause with null argument:

Gostava de ser o menino que visita.

Id like to be the child that visits.f. Ungrammatical non-relative subordinate clause:

Gostava de ser o menino o avo a visitar.

Id like to be the child the grandpa at visit-infinitive

g. Head change:

Gostava de ser o avoque visita o menino.

Id like to be the grandpa that visits the child

Out of these patterns of response, two were found more frequently: reversal of thematic roles (as in 8b) and repetition of the

argument (with a noun phrase (as in 8c) or a clitic pronoun (as in 8d)). Reversal of thematic roles was found in 10% of the

responses.7 Repetition of the antecedent was found 15% of the time (which is the sum of cases in which the antecedent is

repeated as a DP coded as repetition of the antecedent inTable 3, as a pronoun coded as resumptive pronoun inTable

3, or as a DP in sentences with null subject coded as null subject + repetition of the antecedent in Table 3). The otherresponse patterns or combinations of these types of deviances never reached rates above 4%, as shown inTable 3(leaving

aside the category other ungrammatical strategies, which corresponds to a category in which we counted all cases with no

more than three occurrences. The value of 14% emerging there is, therefore, just the sum of many different responses found).

The two most frequent error patterns have an aspect in common: in both cases, the relative operator is not interpreted as

an object in thecase of reversal, because it is turnedinto a subject, in the case of resumption, because the argument position

is filled in with a noun phrase or with a pronoun. This gives support to the idea that the problems with object relatives are

due to the assignment of thematic roles to the arguments involved, and not to any type of structural deficit ( Friedmann and

Novogrodsky, 2004; Friedmann et al., 2009). The crossing dependency created by the movement of the object across the

subject makes it difficult to determine the interpretation of the object, and children resort to strategies by which the

interpretation of the object is satisfied in some alternative way (by insertion of an additional argument in the object position

or by eliminating the intervention configuration).

A further important piece of information comes from a comparison between children and adults in the strategies for

avoiding the use of object relative clauses. As we have shown above, some adults produced passive subject relatives orreduced passives instead of object relatives. These are legitimate alternatives, since they are grammatical structures, and

adequate in the elicitation context. As shown in Fig. 13, the two strategies that adults used when they avoided object

relatives were not very significant in childrens productions (in this figure, we present only a subset of the grammatical types

of answers given in order to allow for a comparison with the graph presented in Fig. 10for adults).

What is important to observe is that, unlike in the adult group, passives are not a strategy widely used by children.

Actually, the 8% production in the graph in Fig. 13 represents a raw total of 46 passives out of the 600 elicitations.

Interestingly, 35 of these 46 passives were produced by 4 children only, who consistently produced passives. The other 56

children avoided passives. Again, this differs from what was found for adults. Recall that all adults who did not produce

object relatives opted for a passive structure. This shows that passive is a valid option for adults, but not for the vast majority

Table 3

Experiment 1: percentage of error types in object relative condition children.

Error type

Omission of the relative pronoun 1% (5/600)

Thematic role reversal 10% (62/600)

Repetition of the antecedent 9% (56/600)

Resumptive pronoun 3% (19/600)

Relative clause with null argument 4% (24/600)

Ungrammatical non-relative subordinate clause 3% (19/600)Head change 0.3% (2/600)

Null subject + repetition of antecedent 3% (20/600)

Chopping relative 0.2% (1/600)

Other ungrammatical strategies 14% (84/600)

7 As argued in Belletti (2008), theta-role reversal may be easily confused with a grammatical object relative with subjectverb inversion. A

disambiguation test reported in Costa et al. (2009) reveals that children acquiring European Portuguese do not produce inversion in relative clauses,confirming the interpretation of these results. This confirms similar findings for Italian reported inBelletti and Contemori (2010).



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of children. Another consequence of this result is that the issue of individual variation in what concerns the choice of passive

alternatives only arises for adults, not for children, who seem not to be able to resort to passives as a valid option. Regarding

the validity of this method, this result also shows that the elicitation procedure is robust for children. As for adults, it is less

valid, since it does not make sure that a relative clause is going to emerge is the only potential output.

Bearing this description in mind, we can nowconcludethat the similarity in results between the children and theadults in

Experiment 1 was only a coincidence, not reflecting similar competence on the production of object relative clauses. A

qualitative analysis of the results revealed that there is no similarity between the two groups of participants. In fact, the

following differences emerged:

(a) Children utter ungrammatical structures in the context of relative clauses, unlike adults.

(b) Adults opt for passive structures as an alternative to object relative clauses, unlike children.

(c) Childrens productions reveal problems with the interpretation of the displaced object, unlike the productions of adults.

Based on these considerations, we can now return to the questions raised at the beginning of this section:

(a) Why do adults behave like children in the production task only?

(b) Given the lack of evidence for a developmental effect, can it be considered that the production of relative clauses is a

marker of linguistic development?

(c) Is the production task used for assessing knowledge of relative clauses a valid one?

We now have the means to provide simple answers to these three questions. As mentioned above, the similarity between

adults and children in the production task was just apparent. A qualitative analysis of the productions revealed that their

performances were quite different, and that children, unlike adults, did have problems with object relative clauses, replacing

them by ungrammatical structures. This makes the asymmetry between production and comprehension vanish, as it

becomes evident that adults do not have a problem with object relative clauses in production (since they never replace them

by ungrammatical structures in production) nor in comprehension.

As for question (b), we can now see that, in spite of prima facie evidence, there is indeed a developmental effect, and

children diverge from adults in production as well as in comprehension. As such, the production of relative clauses is a good

marker of linguistic development. An alternative explanation might consider that adults are better to children due to the

effects of schooling and because they have been exposed to object relatives in formal contexts. The research ofFontes (2008)

andValente (2008)reveals that schooling has a positive effect on the development of relatives with a PP, but not on the

development of object relatives. In fact both authors show that object relatives are not problematic for children who are

around 13 years old. InFriedmann and Costa (2010), it is shown that the poor performance on object relatives correlates

strongly with a poor performance on coordinated sentences involving a dependency (as in John saw Bill and sang). This

provides independent evidence for a problem with dependencies notcontingent on exposure to a particular type of structure

that might be acquired through formal education. Further evidence comes from the crosslinguistic similarities found in

Friedmann et al. (in press) in the response to this production task in 16 languages. It was found that, in all languages, children

produce similar types of responses, which provides good evidence to say that there is a general developmental problem and

not variation due to late exposure to these structures.

Finally, our results confirm the validity of the preference task as an assessment tool for knowledge of relative clauses, but

it also reveals that a quantitative analysis of the data is not sufficient. Our data suggest that a qualitative analysis is needed,

[

Fig. 13. Experiment 1: percentage of grammatical responses in object relative condition per type of response (subset) children.



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and that problems with relative clauses can be found whenever they are replaced by ungrammatical or target-deviant

structures. An adult-like performance is found in the production of object relative clauses or in their replacement by passive

subject relative clauses. Also, we saw that the production and comprehension tasks complement each other in the sense that

the results of the comprehension task confirm the poor performance on the production task.

Summarizing our results, we conclude that, in the production task, adults did not produce object relatives all the time

because they had grammatical alternatives available to them, which were legitimate surrogates. Children, on the other hand,

failed to produce object relatives, because they lacked some of the knowledge required to produce these structures, namely

the knowledge needed to ensure the right interpretation of the object moved across an intervening subject. Further, they had

no valid alternative to replace object relatives, unlike adults did.

On the basis of these conclusions, it is now possible to return to the original hypotheses presented at the beginning of this

article, which we repeat here for convenience:

(9) H1: If the difficulties with object relative clauses depend on an abstract dependency in which there is intervening

material between the gap and the displaced element, and noton the specific relative pronoun or complementizer

used in each language, children acquiring European Portuguese are expected to exhibit problems in the

production and comprehension of object relative clauses, as was found for other languages.

(10) H2: If the problems in comprehending and producing crossing dependencies are subject to development,

children and adults are expected to diverge in the production and comprehension of object relative clauses.

Both hypotheses were confirmed. The evidence found for European Portuguese confirms the crosslinguistic robustness of

object relative clauses as a marker of linguistic development, supporting Hypothesis 1. The differences between children andadults, found through a qualitative analysis of the productions of the two groups, provide the confirmation to Hypothesis 2.

6. Conclusion

In this article, we replicated previous tests on the production and comprehension of subject and object relative clauses,

and argued in favor of the following claims.

Object relative clauses are a good marker of linguistic development, since there are developmental effects and qualitative

differences between the results of children and those of adults.

The data collected for European Portuguese strengthen the claim that the difficulties with object relative clauses relate to

the type of abstract dependency created, and not to any type of surface property of this construction. Given the abstract

source of the problem, it is expected that difficulties are found crosslinguistically, and that they are not dependent on specific

properties of surface material.

The misleading similarities between the results of children and adults in the production task revealed that a qualitativeanalysis of the production of both groups is necessary in order to uncover the existence of difficulties with object relative

clauses. A mere quantitative analysis may hide a good performance on alternative legitimate structures, as also argued in

Belletti and Contemori (2010).

The types of errors produced by children in the production task lends support to the idea that childrens difficulties with

object relative clauses have to do with the interpretation of the displaced argument across the intervening subject.

The comprehension task is a good complement to the production task, since it revealed that there was indeed a

developmental effect, in spite of the appearances created by the quantitative data of the production experiment.

Appendix A. Production test

The elicitation test is the one described in Friedmann et al. (in preparation). The test consists of a preference task with the

following structure.

There are two children. One child does X, the other child does Y. Which child would you rather be? Start with: Id rather be

the child. . .

Below, we list the items used for the two conditions:

SUBJECT RELATIVES:

1. Um menino bebe coca-cola e o outro menino bebe agua.

One child drinks coke, and the other child drinks water

2. Um menino come gelado e outro menino come chocolate.

One child eats ice-cream, and the other child eats chocolate

3. Um menino recebe uma prenda e outro menino da uma prenda.

One child receives a gift, and the other child offers a gift



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4. Um menino encontra uma bola e outro menino compra uma bola.

One child finds a ball, and the other child buys a ball

5. Um menino assusta um amigo e outro menino desenha um amigo.

One child scares a friend, and the other child draws a friend

6. Um menino abraca a mae e outro menino empurra a mae.

One child hugs the mother, and the other child pushes the mother

7. Um menino visita o tio e outro menino convida o tio.One child visits the uncle, and the other child invites the oncle

8. Um menino desenha um polcia e outro menino desenha um cantor.

One child draws a policeman, and the other child draws a singer

9. Um menino encontra o professor e outro menino encontra um amigo.

One child finds the teacher, and the other child finds a friend

10. Um menino filma um cantor e outro menino filma um dancarino.

One child films a singer, and the other child films a dancer

OBJECT RELATIVES:

1. O medico trata um menino, a enfermeira trata outro menino.

The doctor treats one child, the nurse treats the other child

2. O radio acorda um menino, o despertador acorda o outro menino

The radio wakes up one child, the alarm clock wakes up the other child

3. O banho aquece um menino, o banho refresca o outro menino.

The bath warms a child, the bath cools the other child

4. O elefante molha um menino, o elefante levanta o outro menino.

The elephant wets one child, the elephant lifts the other child

5. O avoprocura um menino, o avoencontra o outro menino.

The grandpa seeks one child, the grandpa finds the other child

6. A tia fotografa um menino, a tia fotografa o outro menino.The aunt photographs one child, the aunt photographs the other child

7. O pai abraca um menino, o pai beija o outro menino.

The father hugs one child, the father kisses the other child

8. Um amigo abraca um menino, a mae abraca o outro menino.

A friend hugs one child, the mother hugs the other child

9. Um vizinho penteia um menino, o pai penteia outro menino.

A neighbor combs one child, the father combs the other child

10. O professor fotografa um menino, o avo fotografa o outro menino.

The teacher photographs one child, the grandpa photographs the other child

Appendix B. Comprehension test

The comprehension test was a translation ofFriedmanns (1998) relative clause comprehension task. Each picture is used

twice, one time for testing subject relatives, another time for testing object relatives. The test contains 20 pictures, which are

used for assessing the comprehension of 20 subject relatives and 20 object relatives. For a picture like the one in Fig. 4, the

following two sentences are used:

Subject relative: Mostra-me o menino que seca o hipopotamo.

Show me the boy that dries the hippo

Object relative: Mostra-me o menino que o hipopotamo seca.

Show me the boy that the hippo dries



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The following stimuli were used for other pictures:

Subject relatives

Mostra-me:

Object relatives

Mostra-me:

1 O menino que esta a molhar o pai. O menino que o pai estaa molhar.

The child that is wetting the father The child that the father is wetting

2 A girafa que esta a lamber a vaca. A girafa que a vaca estaa lamber.

The giraffe that is licking the cow The giraffe that the cow is licking3 O menino que estaa puxar o avo. O menino que o avoestaa puxar.

The boy that is pulling grandpa The boy that grandpa is pulling.

4 O menino que seca o hipopotamo. O menino que o hipopotamo seca.

The boy that dries the hippo The boy that the hippo dries

5 O medico que esta a pintar o soldado. O medico que o soldado estaa pintar.

The doctor that is painting the soldier The doctor that the soldier is painting.

6 O coelho que esta a empurrar o pinguim. O coelho que o pinguim estaa empurrar.

The rabbit that is pushing the penguin The rabbit that the penguin is pushing

7 O anao que estaa fotografar o prncipe. O anao que o prncipe estaa fotografar.

The dwarf that is photographing the prince. The dwarf that the prince is photographing.

8 A menina que estaa secar a mae. A menina que a mae esta a secar.

The girl that is drying the mother The girl that the mother is drying

9 O anao que estaa tapar o prncipe. O anao que o prncipe esta a tapar.

The dwarf that is covering the prince. The dwarf that the prince is covering

10 O menino que estaa beijar o avo. O menino que o avoestaa beijar.

The boy that is kissing grandpa The boy that grandpa is kissing11 A menina que esta a fotografar a enfermeira. A menina que a enfermeira estaa fotografar.

The girl that is photographing the nurse. The girl that the nurse is photographing.

12 O menino que esta a abracar o macaco. O menino que o macaco esta a abracar.

The boy that is hugging the monkey The boy that the monkey is hugging

13 A girafa que esta a lavar a menina. A girafa que a menina estaa lavar.

The giraffe that is washing the girl The giraffe that the girl is washing

14 O gato que estaa morder o cao. O gato que o cao estaa morder.

The cat that is biting the dog. The cat that the dog is biting.

15 A menina que estaa pintar a mae. A menina que a mae estaa pintar.

The girl that is painting the mother The girl that the mother is painting

16 A menina que estaa tapar a avo. A menina que a avo estaa tapar.

The girl that is covering grandma The girl that grandma is covering

17 O menino que esta a pentear o rei. O menino que o rei estaa pentear.

The boy that is combing the king The boy that the king is combing

18 O menino que esta a lavar o pinguim. O menino que o pinguim esta a lavar.

The boy that is washing the penguin. The boy that the penguin is washing.19 O anao que estaa filmar o prncipe. O anao que o prncipe estaa filmar.

The dwarf that is filming the prince. The dwarf that the prince is filming

20 O cao que esta a empurrar o menino. O cao que o menino estaa empurrar.

The dog that is pushing the boy. The dog that the boy is pushing.

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