The role of prosodic and visual information in disambiguating wh-indeterminates: The case of Korean three-year-olds.
In Korean language, questions containing ambiguous wh-words may be interpreted as either wh-questions or yes-no questions. This study investigated 43 Korean three-year-olds' ability to disambiguate eight indeterminate questions using prosodic and visual cues. The intonation of each question provided a cue as to whether it should be interpreted as a wh-question or a yes-no question. The questions were presented alongside picture stimuli, which acted as either a matched (presentation of corresponding auditory-visual stimuli) or a mismatched contextual cue (presentation conflicting auditory-visual stimuli). Like adults, the children preferred to comprehend questions involving ambiguous wh-words as wh-questions, rather than yes-no questions. In addition, children were as effective as adults in disambiguating indeterminate questions using prosodic cues regardless of the visual cue. However, when confronted with conflicting auditory-visual stimuli (mismatched), the quality of children's responses was less accurate than adults' responses.
['Cho|Hye-Jung|HJ|https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8790-3987', 'Kiaer|Jieun|J|https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0195-8213', 'Choi|Naya|N|https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9189-9370', 'Song|Jieun|J|https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3223-2124']
disambiguation Korean contextual cue prosodic cue wh-phrases young children