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Results show older children outperform younger on 2- and 3-level R-Poss, while both ages perform similarly on 2-level RRGA, but only 2-level succeeds, not 3-level.",{"@graph":14,"@context":73},[15,34,56],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & Report",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/relative-gradable-adjective-recursion-vs-recursive-possessives-in-children/139479/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/relative-gradable-adjective-recursion-vs-recursive-possessives-in-children/139479.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"Aurora","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-18","2026-08-24",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":55},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",6,{"@type":57,"mainEntity":58},"FAQPage",[59,65,69],{"name":60,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":62},"What comparison does the study make between R-Poss and RRGA?","Question",{"text":63,"@type":64},"It compares how children handle recursive possessives versus recursive relative gradable adjectives, specifically whether either type is acquired more adult-like. The study targets different recursion levels (2-level and 3-level).","Answer",{"name":66,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":67},"How do younger and older children perform on the different recursion levels?",{"text":68,"@type":64},"Older children perform better than younger children on 2- and 3-level R-Poss. For R-RGA, both age groups perform similarly, succeeding on 2-level but not 3-level.",{"name":70,"@type":61,"acceptedAnswer":71},"Why does the paper argue that 3-level R-RGA is more challenging?",{"text":72,"@type":64},"It links the difficulty to R-RGA syntax-semantics, where gradability involves a set-subset relation and gradability relative to comparative scales.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":75,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":77,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":79,"site_id":7},139479,1787541369,{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":83},"success",[84,88,92,96,101,105,110,114,119,122,126],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":85,"show_sort_weight":86,"slug":87},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":89,"show_sort_weight":90,"slug":91},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":93,"show_sort_weight":94,"slug":95},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":97,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":98,"show_sort_weight":99,"slug":100},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":55,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":111,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},8,30,"research-report",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":117,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":121},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":123,"slug":125},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":97,"slug":129},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":82,"data":131},{"doc_id":79,"user_id":132,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":111,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":55,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":80,"read_time":144},4810365810221,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_155a257f0dc6eb9ab79c44ca47cae57d","2022. Proc Ling Soc Amer 7(1) . 5294. [https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5294](https://doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5294) .  \nRelative gradable adjective recursion such as small small big mushrooms is more challenging for children than possessive recursion such as the deer’s friend’s sister’s  \nmushrooms  \nDeborah Foucault, Adina Camelia Bleotu, Usha Lakshmanan,  \nEmma Merritt, Roehl Sybing & Tom Roeper *  \nAbstract. Our experiment investigates whether children handle recursive possessives (R-Poss) in a more adult-like manner than recursive relative gradable adjectives (RRGA) . While the abstract notion of indirect recursion underlies both categories, we ask whether individual syntactic-semantic properties determine different acquisition paths in English for R-Poss and R-RGA at the 2-Level (the deer’s friend’s mushrooms, small big mushrooms) and at the 3-Level (the deer’s friend’s sister’s mushrooms, small small big mushrooms) . The results indicate that older children perform better than younger children on 2-and 3-Level R-Poss. However, this trend is not observed for R-RGA where both age groups perform similarly, successfully handling 2-but not 3-Level R-RGA. Analysis of individual results reveal that children who are successful with comprehension and production at 3-Level R-RGAare also successful with 3-Level R-Poss, but not the other way around. We conclude that 3-Level R-RGA is more challenging than 3-Level R-Poss, arguing that this difficulty arises from R-RGA syntax-semantics which involves a set-subset relation and gradability relative to comparative scales.  \nKeywords. language acquisition; English L1; adjectives; possessives; recursion;  \ngradability; set; subset; syntax-semantics interface  \n1. Introduction. In the current paper, we investigate experimentally how younger (≤ 6) and older (≥ 7) English-speaking children handle recursive structures involving possessives such as those in (1) and structures involving relative gradable adjectives such as those in (2) . Both are examples of 2-Level recursion:  \n(1) Chippie’s dad’s mushrooms (2) small big mushrooms  \nFor consistency, we refer to structures like (1) as recursive possessives (R-Poss) and to structures like (2) as recursive relative gradable adjectives (R-RGA). Importantly, in (1), the possessive Chippie’s is embedded within another possessive Chippie’s dad’s, with the second possessive marker-s attaching itself to Chippie’s dad (see 3) .  \n(3) [[Chippie’s dad]’s] mushrooms  \nIn (2), the adjective big modifies the noun mushrooms, thus identifying the set of big mushrooms, while the adjective small further narrows this set, picking out the subset of small mushrooms within the set of big mushrooms (see 4).  \n* We would like to thank the UMass Language Acquisition Lab for supporting the study (IRB\\#689 20214-2359), the Recursion Research Group and LSA 2022 for valuable feedback, the families who participated, and Children Helping Science for additional outreach. Authors: Deborah Foucault, University of Massachusetts Amherst  \n([dfoucaulteth@umass.edu](dfoucaulteth@umass.edu)), Adina Camelia Bleotu, ZAS Berlin ([bleotu@leibniz-zas.de](bleotu@leibniz-zas.de)), University of Bucharest  \n([cameliableotu@gmail.com](cameliableotu@gmail.com)), Usha Lakshmanan, Southern Illinois University Carbondale ([usha@siu.edu](usha@siu.edu)), Emma  \nMerritt, University of Frankfurt ([merritt@em.uni-frankfurt.de](merritt@em.uni-frankfurt.de)), Roehl Sybing, Doshisha University  \n([roehl.sybing@gmail.com](roehl.sybing@gmail.com)), and Tom Roeper, University of Massachusetts Amherst ([roeper@linguist.umass.edu](roeper@linguist.umass.edu)).  \n© 2022 Author(s) . Published by the LSA with permission of the author(s) under a CC BY license.  \n(4) [small [big mushrooms]]  \nBoth structures in (1) and (2) involve multiple embeddings, thus differing from coordinated possessives and adjectives structures such as (5) and (6):  \n(5) Chippie’s and dad’s mushrooms (6) small and big mushrooms  \nTesting","cbCaignfhD20oc6z","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaignfhD20oc6z","pdf",1172527,15,"English","# Introduction\n## Recursive structures and research motivation\n# Recursive possessives and recursive adjectives in language acquisition\n## Universal Grammar and recursion (Merge)","[{\"question\":\"What comparison does the study make between R-Poss and RRGA?\",\"answer\":\"It compares how children handle recursive possessives versus recursive relative gradable adjectives, specifically whether either type is acquired more adult-like. The study targets different recursion levels (2-level and 3-level).\"},{\"question\":\"How do younger and older children perform on the different recursion levels?\",\"answer\":\"Older children perform better than younger children on 2- and 3-level R-Poss. For R-RGA, both age groups perform similarly, succeeding on 2-level but not 3-level.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the paper argue that 3-level R-RGA is more challenging?\",\"answer\":\"It links the difficulty to R-RGA syntax-semantics, where gradability involves a set-subset relation and gradability relative to comparative scales.\"}]","Relative gradable adjective recursion vs recursive possessives in children | PDF",38]