Early Understanding of Subject and Object Wh-Questions
Amanda Seidl, George Hollich, and Peter W. Jusczyk
Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University

In this study, we used the splitscreen preferential looking paradigm to test 13-, 15-, and 20-month-olds’ developing understanding of simple matrix what-questions of the forms “What hit the X?” (subject-question) and “What did the X hit?” (object-question). Infants responded appropriately to subject-questions by 15 months of age, and to both subject- and object-questions by 20 months. At no age did infants look longer toward the object overtly mentioned in the question, as might be expected based on a surface account of early language acquisition. This suggests that infants may have some understanding of these complex structures long before they are produced.

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