Variations in word order are often used for communicative purposes such as to relate events to each other in terms of their timing or causality (e.g. After you’ve had your dinner, finish your drawing, or You need a coat on because it’s raining). In complex adverbial sentences, it is often possible to reverse the order of different parts of the sentence, but the order of events in the real world may remain the same, posing a challenge for the language learner (e.g. After you’ve had your dinner, finish your drawing; Finish your drawing after you’ve had your dinner).

In the first phase of LuCiD, we investigated the factors that influence typically developing children’s comprehension and production of complex adverbial sentences containing the forms before, after, if, and because (e.g. She painted the fence after she ate her lunch; Don’t jump up and down because you’ll break the bed). We tested a range of theoretical models concerning their predicted ease of comprehension and likely frequency of usage in children’s speech. This included a focus on factors such as the order of mention of events in the sentence, the particular pragmatic meaning associated with an utterance, the extent to which particular event elements have been previously established in the discourse, and the frequency of use of different forms in the input to children. In addition, we considered the child-level variables that could impact on performance such as general language ability, inhibitory control and working memory.

In this project, we built on our earlier work to establish the broader applicability of our findings.

In Studies 1-3, we tested theoretical models relating to adverbial clause production in young typically developing children and adult controls.

• In Study 1, we tested four-year-olds, five-year-olds, eight-year-olds and adults on four different adverbial clauses (before, after, because, if) to evaluate different theoretical accounts (semantic, syntactic/processing, frequency-based) of sentence production. Participants took part in a sentence completion task, providing accuracy and response time data. We found that children’s production was strongly influenced by semantic factors – the iconicity of the event-to-language mappings – and that their response times were influenced by the type of relation expressed by the connective (temporal vs. causal).
• In Study 2, we looked at the additional impact of contextual information on children’s ability to repeat sentences containing these four adverbials to evaluate three information structural hypotheses alongside a syntactic/processing account. We tested children and adults on sentences manipulated for clause order and for whether information in the main or subordinate clause was new or already established in the context (given). Our results showed that 4- to 5-year-old children better repeat sentences where the given information comes first in the sentence, while older children may expect initial subordinate clauses to contain given but not new information. These results point to development in children’s awareness of, and ability to integrate, syntactic and information structural properties of adverbial clauses.
• In Study 3, we re-coded and analysed data collected as part of earlier PhD work examining the impact of clause order, information structure, and clause length on three- and five-year-old children’s and adults’ repetition of when-clauses. We found that adults preferred when–main clause orders and given–new ordering of information, whereas 3-year-olds preferred main–when and new–given orders, and tended to produce short clauses before long ones. In general, 5-year-olds were more adultlike in their repetitions. We concluded that, early in development, children were more sensitive to processing factors than discourse pragmatic factors.

In Studies 4 & 5, we extended our line of investigation to determine whether the factors underpinning English speakers’ comprehension of adverbial sentences might also apply in bilingual adults. We tested Mandarin-English bilinguals and English monolinguals on their comprehension of English adverbial sentences containing before and after in two clause orders using a forced choice picture selection task, collecting accuracy, response time and pupillometry data. Although monolingual English speakers are influenced by iconicity (order of mention), Mandarin has a strong preference for subordinate-main clause orders with temporal adverbials. We hypothesised that transfer of knowledge from Mandarin to English might privilege subordinate-main word orders over iconic orders. Our results suggest that iconicity is not a universal strategy affecting sentence comprehension but instead is influenced by language-specific usage patterns. These studies are being written up for publication.

Studies 6 & 7 focussed on complex syntax in children with Developmental Language Disorder. Study 6 comprised a systematic review to establish the extent to which children with DLD have specific difficulties with complex syntax in English. Study 7 tested their comprehension of adverbial sentences containing before and after using a forced choice picture selection task and comparing this to age- and language-matched controls. These studies are still in progress.

Project Team

Anna Theakston (Lead), Silke Brandt, Shijie Zhang, and Emily Warren (Study 3 only: Bianca Junge, Elena Lieven)

Duration

3 years, starting May 2021

Project Number

2.3

Key Publications

Zhang, S., Brandt, S., & Theakston, A. (2025). The role of iconicity in children’s production of adverbial clauses Cognition. 259,106119

Zhang, S., Junge, B., Lieven, E., Brandt, S., & Theakston, A. (2023). The Competition Between Processing and Discourse-Pragmatic Factors in Children’s and Adults’ Production of Adverbial When-Clauses Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 66(12), 5048-5060.

Selected Outputs

Study 1
Zhang, S., Brandt, S., & Theakston, A. (2025). The role of iconicity in children’s production of adverbial clauses. Cognition, 259, Article 106119. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2025.106119
OSF: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/SKPM2

Study 2
Zhang, S., Brandt, S. & Theakston, A. (2024). The influence of information structure on children’s production of adverbial clauses. Poster presented at the 49th Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD), 7-10 Nov 2024, Boston, USA. https://www.bu.edu/bucld/files/2024/11/bucld_49_abstracts.pdf

Study 3
Zhang, S., Junge, B., Lieven, E., Brandt, S., & Theakston, A. (2023). The Competition Between Processing and Discourse-Pragmatic Factors in Children’s and Adults’ Production of Adverbial When-Clauses. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 66(12), 5048-5060.
OSF: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DK9GR

Study 7
Zhang, S., Warren, E., Brandt, S. & Theakston, A. (2025). The comprehension of temporal adverbial clauses in children with and without developmental language disorder. Poster presented at the Child Language Symposium, 8-10 Sept, 2025, Reading, UK.
https://research.reading.ac.uk/cls2025/conference-information/conference-programme/

Data
Theakston, A., Brandt, S., Zhang, S. (2025). Role of Iconicity in Children’s Production of Adverbial Clauses: Experimental Data, 2022-2023. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 858090, DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-858090

Theakston, A. (2025). The Competition Between Processing and Discourse-Pragmatic Factors in Children’s and Adults’ Production of Adverbial When-Clauses: Experimental Data, 2011-2012. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 858091, DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-858091 (data available at)

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