@article{jbp:/content/journals/10.1075/avt.31.10str, author = "Strangmann, Iris and Slomp, Anneke and van Hout, Angeliek", title = "Development of Dutch children’s comprehension of subject and object wh-questions: The role of topicality", journal= "Linguistics in the Netherlands", year = "2014", volume = "31", number = "1", pages = "129-144", doi = "https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.31.10str", url = "https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/avt.31.10str", publisher = "John Benjamins", issn = "0929-7332", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "First language acquisition", keywords = "subject-first bias", keywords = "wh-questions", keywords = "object questions", keywords = "Dutch", keywords = "topicality", abstract = "While Dutch welke ‘which’-questions are structurally ambiguous, number agreement cues can disambiguate them. Despite such agreement cues, children misinterpret object questions as subject questions (Metz et al. 2010, 2012; Schouwenaars et al. 2014). We investigated if adding another cue, specifically, topicality in a discourse context, helps the interpretation of which-questions in two groups of Dutch children (5;5, n = 15 and 8;5, n = 21). Using a referent-selection task, we manipulated number on the verb and postverbal NP to create unambiguous wh-questions. Moreover, the questions were preceded by a discourse which established a topic, relating either to the wh-referent or the postverbal NP referent. Nevertheless, both 5- and 8-year-olds misinterpreted object questions as subject questions, ignoring the number and topicality cues to resolve the (local) ambiguity of which-questions. Our results confirm the effect of a subject-first bias in children’s interpretation of wh-questions. We conclude that topicality, in combination with number agreement, is not strong enough to overrule this subject-first bias.", }