Developmental production of utterances from a series of lexemes

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Abstract
51 children from 4; 11 to 8; 2 were given three words (a triplet made up of two nouns and one verb) and asked to produce an utterance with them. Words in the triplet were presented in every possible order. At all ages, the dominant responses to non-reversible triplets were utterances in which the animate noun served as the subject of the verb and the inanimate noun as its object, whatever the order of words within the triplet. Production of utterances in response to reversible triplets showed a clear differentiation with age (with the exception of responses to symmetrical triplets NVN for which the SVO structure is dominant at all ages). With non-symmetrical triplets (NNV or VNN), the strategy that assigns the function of subject to the first noun becomes progressively established. In the youngest children, a significant number of responses that preserve the order of stimulus elements is observed. This strategy results in attributing an identical grammatical function to the two nouns. As anticipated, isomorphism between stimulus structure and response structure diminishes with age.

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