Asymmetries in the acquisition of subject-verb agreement in Dutch: Evidence from comprehension and production

Across languages, children do not comprehend 3SG/3PL subject–verb agreement
before age five, despite early mastery in spontaneous speech. This study investigates
subject–verb agreement in a language hitherto not studied in this respect, namely Dutch.
The authors examine if (1) Dutch two- and three-year-olds comprehend subject–verb
agreement and (2) a comprehension–production asymmetry still exists if task materials
are kept constant across domains. Dutch-speaking two- and three-year-olds completed
a comprehension (picture selection) and production (sentence completion) task
testing 3SG and 3PL. In comprehension, both groups performed above chance on 3PL
but not on 3SG. In production, accuracy on 3PL and 3SG was slightly higher than in
comprehension. Comprehension and production were moderately correlated. These
results show that comprehension is earlier in Dutch than in previously investigated
languages, but only for 3PL, suggesting that phonological salience and cue reliability are
important. They also show an asymmetry between comprehension and production,
albeit much smaller than assumed in previous studies.