====== Do typological differences in the expression of causality influence preschool children’s causal event construal? ======
  * **ID:** 20231012155253505-1237
  * **Researcher:** Ebru Ger, Aylin C. Küntay, Tilbe Göksun, Sabine Stoll, Moritz M. Daum
  * **WP:** Other
  * **PI:** Sabine Stoll
  * **Abstract:** Abstract                            This study investigated whether cross-linguistic differences in causal expressions influence the mapping of causal language on causal events in three- to four-year-old Swiss-German learners and Turkish learners. In Swiss-German, causality is mainly expressed syntactically with lexical causatives (e.g.,               ässe               ‘to eat’ vs.               füettere               ‘to feed’). In Turkish, causality is expressed both syntactically and morphologically – with a verbal suffix (e.g.,               yemek               ‘to eat’ vs.               yeDIRmek               ‘to feed’). Moreover, unlike Swiss-German, Turkish allows argument ellipsis (e.g., ‘The mother feeds [∅]’). Here, we used pseudo-verbs to test whether and how well Swiss-German-learning children inferred a causal meaning from lexical causatives compared to Turkish-learning children tested in three conditions: lexical causatives, morphological causatives, and morphological causatives with object ellipsis. Swiss-German-learning children and Turkish-learning children in all three conditions reliably inferred causal meanings, and did so to a similar extent. The findings suggest that, as young as age 3, children learning two different languages similarly make use of language-specific causality cues (syntactic and morphological alike) to infer causal meanings.
  * **Publication DOI:** [[https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2021.26|https://doi.org/10.1017/langcog.2021.26]]
  * **Publication Link:** [[https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1866980821000260/type/journal_article|https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1866980821000260/type/journal_article]]
  * **Data Type:** null
  * **Data Format:** null
  * **Data Link:** [[https://osf.io/aytnx/|https://osf.io/aytnx/]]
  * **Git:** [[None|None]]