Pub Date : 2021-11-02DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1986399
Sara Ferman, Sapir Amira Shmuel, Y. Zaltz
ABSTRACT The acquisition of a new morphological rule can be influenced by numerous factors, including the type of feedback provided during learning. The present study aimed to test the effect of different feedback types on children’s ability to learn and generalize an artificial morphological rule (AMR). Two groups of eight-year-olds learned to judge and produce repeated and new (generalization) items representing the AMR during ten training sessions. One group (n = 7) received only corrective feedback, that is, heard “the correct answer is … ” after each incorrect answer, whereas the other group (n = 8) received corrective feedback following verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect, the correct answer is … .” Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction times was compared to that of an additional eight-year-old group (n = 8) from a previous study who received only verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect” following each incorrect answer. The data analysis that was conducted for all three groups (N = 23 total), with ten observations for each child revealed that corrective feedback improved implicit learning of the AMR and in some cases also allowed generalization to new items. The combination of verification and corrective feedback, however, yielded the best performance in generalizing the AMR, possibly by stimulating both implicit and explicit processes. These preliminary findings suggest that corrective feedback, and even more so combined corrective+verification feedback, can enhance procedural and declarative learning processes of young school-age children. Future studies may be necessary to test this inference in a larger group of school-age children, and across ages.
{"title":"The Type of Feedback Provided Can Affect Morphological Rule Learning of Young Children","authors":"Sara Ferman, Sapir Amira Shmuel, Y. Zaltz","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1986399","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1986399","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The acquisition of a new morphological rule can be influenced by numerous factors, including the type of feedback provided during learning. The present study aimed to test the effect of different feedback types on children’s ability to learn and generalize an artificial morphological rule (AMR). Two groups of eight-year-olds learned to judge and produce repeated and new (generalization) items representing the AMR during ten training sessions. One group (n = 7) received only corrective feedback, that is, heard “the correct answer is … ” after each incorrect answer, whereas the other group (n = 8) received corrective feedback following verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect, the correct answer is … .” Performance in terms of accuracy and reaction times was compared to that of an additional eight-year-old group (n = 8) from a previous study who received only verification feedback, that is, heard “incorrect” following each incorrect answer. The data analysis that was conducted for all three groups (N = 23 total), with ten observations for each child revealed that corrective feedback improved implicit learning of the AMR and in some cases also allowed generalization to new items. The combination of verification and corrective feedback, however, yielded the best performance in generalizing the AMR, possibly by stimulating both implicit and explicit processes. These preliminary findings suggest that corrective feedback, and even more so combined corrective+verification feedback, can enhance procedural and declarative learning processes of young school-age children. Future studies may be necessary to test this inference in a larger group of school-age children, and across ages.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"25 1","pages":"455 - 474"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80196008","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-12DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1922280
Dorothy Ahn, J. Snedeker
ABSTRACT Korean is a classifier language in which bare nouns are not obligatorily number-marked. Children learning other classifier languages like Japanese and Mandarin are late in learning the plural morpheme. In this paper, we present two datasets that suggest that Korean plural marker -tul is acquired much earlier, in contrast to what has been previously claimed. In a comprehension study, we find that Korean children begin acquiring this morpheme by age 3, showing adult-like performance by age 4. We suggest that the higher frequency of plural marking on both types and tokens of nouns and the consistent marking of plural in the domain of definite nouns may facilitate Korean plural acquisition.
{"title":"Early Acquisition of Plural Morphology in a Classifier Language: Data from Korean 2-4 Year Olds","authors":"Dorothy Ahn, J. Snedeker","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1922280","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1922280","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Korean is a classifier language in which bare nouns are not obligatorily number-marked. Children learning other classifier languages like Japanese and Mandarin are late in learning the plural morpheme. In this paper, we present two datasets that suggest that Korean plural marker -tul is acquired much earlier, in contrast to what has been previously claimed. In a comprehension study, we find that Korean children begin acquiring this morpheme by age 3, showing adult-like performance by age 4. We suggest that the higher frequency of plural marking on both types and tokens of nouns and the consistent marking of plural in the domain of definite nouns may facilitate Korean plural acquisition.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"35 1","pages":"1 - 15"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72931580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-04DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1981908
Tears, Lisa Pearl
ABSTRACT Poverty of the stimulus has been at the heart of ferocious and tear-filled debates at the nexus of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy for decades. This review is intended as a guide for readers without a formal linguistics or philosophy background, focusing on what poverty of the stimulus is and how it’s been interpreted, which is traditionally where the tears have come in. I discuss poverty of the stimulus from the perspective of language development, highlighting how poverty of the stimulus relates to expectations about learning and the data available to learn from. I describe common interpretations of what poverty of the stimulus means when it occurs, and approaches for determining when poverty of the stimulus is in fact occurring. I close with illustrative examples of poverty of the stimulus in the domains of syntax, lexical semantics, and phonology, and discuss the value of identifying instances of poverty of the stimulus when it comes to understanding language development.
{"title":"Poverty of the Stimulus Without Tears","authors":"Tears, Lisa Pearl","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1981908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1981908","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Poverty of the stimulus has been at the heart of ferocious and tear-filled debates at the nexus of psychology, linguistics, and philosophy for decades. This review is intended as a guide for readers without a formal linguistics or philosophy background, focusing on what poverty of the stimulus is and how it’s been interpreted, which is traditionally where the tears have come in. I discuss poverty of the stimulus from the perspective of language development, highlighting how poverty of the stimulus relates to expectations about learning and the data available to learn from. I describe common interpretations of what poverty of the stimulus means when it occurs, and approaches for determining when poverty of the stimulus is in fact occurring. I close with illustrative examples of poverty of the stimulus in the domains of syntax, lexical semantics, and phonology, and discuss the value of identifying instances of poverty of the stimulus when it comes to understanding language development.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"94 1","pages":"415 - 454"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85594280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-24DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1977643
A. Helo, Ernesto Guerra, C. J. Coloma, María Antonia Reyes, P. Rämä
ABSTRACT Visually situated spoken words activate phonological, visual, and semantic representations guiding overt attention during visual exploration. We compared the activation of these representations in children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) across four eye-tracking experiments, with a particular focus on visual (shape) representations. Two types of trials were presented in each experiment. In Experiment 1, participants heard a word while seeing (1) an object visually associated with the spoken word (i.e., shape competitor) together with a phonologically related object (i.e., cohort competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 2 and 3, participants heard a word while seeing (1) a shape competitor with an object semantically related to the spoken word (i.e., semantic competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 4, children heard a word while seeing a semantic competitor with (1) the visual referent of the spoken or (2) with an unrelated object. The visual context was previewed for three seconds before the spoken word, except for Experiment 2, where it appeared at the onset of the spoken word (i.e., no preview). The results showed that when a preview was provided both groups were equally attracted by cohort and semantic competitors and preferred the shape competitors over the unrelated objects. However, shape preference disappeared in the DLD group when no preview was provided and when the shape competitor was presented with a semantic competitor. Our results indicate that children with DLD have a less efficient retrieval of shape representation during word recognition compared to typically developing children.
{"title":"Objects Shape Activation during Spoken Word Recognition in Preschoolers with Typical and Atypical Language Development: An Eye-tracking Study","authors":"A. Helo, Ernesto Guerra, C. J. Coloma, María Antonia Reyes, P. Rämä","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1977643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1977643","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Visually situated spoken words activate phonological, visual, and semantic representations guiding overt attention during visual exploration. We compared the activation of these representations in children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD) across four eye-tracking experiments, with a particular focus on visual (shape) representations. Two types of trials were presented in each experiment. In Experiment 1, participants heard a word while seeing (1) an object visually associated with the spoken word (i.e., shape competitor) together with a phonologically related object (i.e., cohort competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 2 and 3, participants heard a word while seeing (1) a shape competitor with an object semantically related to the spoken word (i.e., semantic competitor), or (2) a shape competitor with an unrelated object. In Experiment 4, children heard a word while seeing a semantic competitor with (1) the visual referent of the spoken or (2) with an unrelated object. The visual context was previewed for three seconds before the spoken word, except for Experiment 2, where it appeared at the onset of the spoken word (i.e., no preview). The results showed that when a preview was provided both groups were equally attracted by cohort and semantic competitors and preferred the shape competitors over the unrelated objects. However, shape preference disappeared in the DLD group when no preview was provided and when the shape competitor was presented with a semantic competitor. Our results indicate that children with DLD have a less efficient retrieval of shape representation during word recognition compared to typically developing children.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"23 1","pages":"324 - 351"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88223829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-23DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1977644
G. Georgiou
ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of auditory perceptual phonetic training on the identification and production of English vowels by Cypriot Greek children and adults. Another two groups of Cypriot Greek child and adult speakers served as controls. The trained groups participated in the pretest, training, and posttest phase, while the controls completed only the pretest and posttest phase. The results showed that perceptual training improved identification accuracy, with children showing greater gains than adults. Although the performance of adults was poorer than the performance of children, their phonological system did undergo substantial alteration through perceptual phonetic training as they significantly improved their identifications in the posttest. Also, the results support a common mental space for the speech perception and production domains since the perceptually-oriented training affected the learners’ productions. However, transfer of improvements in production was observed only to some extent in children and not in adults, suggesting that training has an impact mostly on the trained modality and that some production improvement after perceptual training might be more evident in younger learners.
{"title":"The Impact of Auditory Perceptual Training on the Perception and Production of English Vowels by Cypriot Greek Children and Adults","authors":"G. Georgiou","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1977644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1977644","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of auditory perceptual phonetic training on the identification and production of English vowels by Cypriot Greek children and adults. Another two groups of Cypriot Greek child and adult speakers served as controls. The trained groups participated in the pretest, training, and posttest phase, while the controls completed only the pretest and posttest phase. The results showed that perceptual training improved identification accuracy, with children showing greater gains than adults. Although the performance of adults was poorer than the performance of children, their phonological system did undergo substantial alteration through perceptual phonetic training as they significantly improved their identifications in the posttest. Also, the results support a common mental space for the speech perception and production domains since the perceptually-oriented training affected the learners’ productions. However, transfer of improvements in production was observed only to some extent in children and not in adults, suggesting that training has an impact mostly on the trained modality and that some production improvement after perceptual training might be more evident in younger learners.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"60 1","pages":"379 - 392"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85857834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-22DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1979401
Thomas St. Pierre, Angela Cooper, Elizabeth K. Johnson
ABSTRACT Over time, people who spend a lot of time together (e.g., roommates) begin sounding alike. Even over the course of short conversations, interlocutors often become more acoustically similar to one another. This phenomenon – known as phonetic alignment – has been well studied in adult interactions, but much less is known about alignment patterns in intergenerational, adult-child dyads. In the current study, we investigated alignment between mothers and their children in a picture-naming task, as assessed using a perceptual similarity task and acoustic measures. Experiments 1 and 2 examined alignment in 2.5- and 4-year-old children and their mothers, both when mothers shadowed their children (Experiment 1), and when children shadowed their mothers (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 investigated long-term similarity between mothers and children when they were recorded separately. Results show that children and mothers aligned to one another in the shadowing task, regardless of who shadowed whom, and while there was no evidence for long-term alignment in younger children, there was some evidence of long-term alignment with 8-year-old children and their moms, but only for male children.
{"title":"Cross-generational Phonetic Alignment between Mothers and Their Children","authors":"Thomas St. Pierre, Angela Cooper, Elizabeth K. Johnson","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1979401","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1979401","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Over time, people who spend a lot of time together (e.g., roommates) begin sounding alike. Even over the course of short conversations, interlocutors often become more acoustically similar to one another. This phenomenon – known as phonetic alignment – has been well studied in adult interactions, but much less is known about alignment patterns in intergenerational, adult-child dyads. In the current study, we investigated alignment between mothers and their children in a picture-naming task, as assessed using a perceptual similarity task and acoustic measures. Experiments 1 and 2 examined alignment in 2.5- and 4-year-old children and their mothers, both when mothers shadowed their children (Experiment 1), and when children shadowed their mothers (Experiment 2). Experiments 3 and 4 investigated long-term similarity between mothers and children when they were recorded separately. Results show that children and mothers aligned to one another in the shadowing task, regardless of who shadowed whom, and while there was no evidence for long-term alignment in younger children, there was some evidence of long-term alignment with 8-year-old children and their moms, but only for male children.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"15 1","pages":"393 - 414"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77480378","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-21DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1941966
E. Pagliarini, Oana Lungu, A. van Hout, Lilla Pintér, Balázs Surányi, S. Crain, M. Guasti
ABSTRACT In English, a sentence like “The cat didn’t eat the carrot or the pepper” typically receives a “neither” interpretation; in Japanese it receives a “not this or not that” interpretation. These two interpretations are in a subset/superset relation, such that the “neither” interpretation (strong reading) asymmetrically entails the “not this or not that” interpretation (weak reading). This asymmetrical entailment raises a learnability problem. According to the Semantic Subset Principle, all language learners, regardless of the language they are exposed to, start by assigning the strong reading, since this interpretation makes such sentences true in the narrowest range of circumstances.). If the “neither” interpretation is children’s initial hypothesis, then children acquiring a superset language will be able to revise their initial hypothesis on the basis of positive evidence. The aim of the present study is to test an additional account proposed by Pagliarini, Crain, Guasti (2018) as a possible explanation for the earlier convergence to the adult grammar by Italian children. The hypothesis tested here is that the presence of a lexical form such as recursive né that unambiguously conveys a “neither” meaning, would lead children to converge earlier to the adult grammar due to a blocking effect of the recursive né form in the inventory of negated disjunction forms in a language. We compared data from Italian (taken from Pagliarini, Crain, Guasti, 2018), French, Hungarian and Dutch. Dutch was tested as baseline language. French and Hungarian have – similarly to Italian – a lexical form that unambiguously expresses the “neither” interpretation (ni ni and sem sem, respectively). Our results did not support this hypothesis however, and are discussed in the light of language-specific particularities of the syntax and semantics of negation.
{"title":"How Adults and Children Interpret Disjunction under Negation in Dutch, French, Hungarian and Italian: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison","authors":"E. Pagliarini, Oana Lungu, A. van Hout, Lilla Pintér, Balázs Surányi, S. Crain, M. Guasti","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1941966","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1941966","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In English, a sentence like “The cat didn’t eat the carrot or the pepper” typically receives a “neither” interpretation; in Japanese it receives a “not this or not that” interpretation. These two interpretations are in a subset/superset relation, such that the “neither” interpretation (strong reading) asymmetrically entails the “not this or not that” interpretation (weak reading). This asymmetrical entailment raises a learnability problem. According to the Semantic Subset Principle, all language learners, regardless of the language they are exposed to, start by assigning the strong reading, since this interpretation makes such sentences true in the narrowest range of circumstances.). If the “neither” interpretation is children’s initial hypothesis, then children acquiring a superset language will be able to revise their initial hypothesis on the basis of positive evidence. The aim of the present study is to test an additional account proposed by Pagliarini, Crain, Guasti (2018) as a possible explanation for the earlier convergence to the adult grammar by Italian children. The hypothesis tested here is that the presence of a lexical form such as recursive né that unambiguously conveys a “neither” meaning, would lead children to converge earlier to the adult grammar due to a blocking effect of the recursive né form in the inventory of negated disjunction forms in a language. We compared data from Italian (taken from Pagliarini, Crain, Guasti, 2018), French, Hungarian and Dutch. Dutch was tested as baseline language. French and Hungarian have – similarly to Italian – a lexical form that unambiguously expresses the “neither” interpretation (ni ni and sem sem, respectively). Our results did not support this hypothesis however, and are discussed in the light of language-specific particularities of the syntax and semantics of negation.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"122 1","pages":"97 - 122"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76692901","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-21DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1977133
M. Callen, Karen Miller
ABSTRACT Research in language development has only recently begun to focus on the inherent variability of language. Previous studies have explored at what age children begin to produce variable linguistic forms and how these forms progress through development. While children produce adult-like variation early on, some variable forms take longer to acquire than others do. The current study builds on this previous research using naturalistic corpus data to compare variable differential object marking in the speech of Spanish-speaking children and their caregivers. While previous studies of adult speech have highlighted the variable use of the accusative object marker a, the variable distribution of the a-marker has been largely overlooked in studies of child Spanish. Our results show that preschool-age children use the same linguistic constraints as their caregivers when producing direct objects. We also found that younger children show different patterns of a-marking compared to older children and caregivers. These patterns suggest that the developmental trajectory of individual linguistic constraints depends on the distribution of variable contexts in the child’s input. Our findings highlight the importance of examining caregivers’ use of variable forms alongside children’s productions in language acquisition research.
{"title":"Linguistic Variation in the Acquisition of Morphosyntax: Variable Object Marking in the Speech of Mexican Children and Their Caregivers","authors":"M. Callen, Karen Miller","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1977133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1977133","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Research in language development has only recently begun to focus on the inherent variability of language. Previous studies have explored at what age children begin to produce variable linguistic forms and how these forms progress through development. While children produce adult-like variation early on, some variable forms take longer to acquire than others do. The current study builds on this previous research using naturalistic corpus data to compare variable differential object marking in the speech of Spanish-speaking children and their caregivers. While previous studies of adult speech have highlighted the variable use of the accusative object marker a, the variable distribution of the a-marker has been largely overlooked in studies of child Spanish. Our results show that preschool-age children use the same linguistic constraints as their caregivers when producing direct objects. We also found that younger children show different patterns of a-marking compared to older children and caregivers. These patterns suggest that the developmental trajectory of individual linguistic constraints depends on the distribution of variable contexts in the child’s input. Our findings highlight the importance of examining caregivers’ use of variable forms alongside children’s productions in language acquisition research.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"18 1","pages":"310 - 323"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82572842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-30DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1941967
Hannah Forsythe, Daniel Greeson, C. Schmitt
ABSTRACT In many so-called canonical null subject languages, null and overt subject pronouns have contrasting referential preferences: null subjects tend to maintain reference to the preceding subject while overt pronominal subjects do not. We propose that children acquire this contrast by initially restricting their attention to 1st and 2nd person pronouns, whose reference is simpler to infer compared to 3rd person pronouns. We provide supporting evidence from spontaneous production and comprehension in Mexico City Spanish, showing that (i) the null/overt contrast is in principle acquirable from exclusively observing the referential preferences of 1st and 2nd person subject pronouns in caretaker speech; (ii) children themselves condition subject pronoun expression on pronoun reference in the 1st and 2nd persons before doing so in the 3rd person; and (iii) children use the null/overt contrast in comprehension at a similar age when they begin making this distinction in production.
{"title":"After the Null Subject Parameter: Acquisition of the Null-Overt Contrast in Spanish","authors":"Hannah Forsythe, Daniel Greeson, C. Schmitt","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1941967","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1941967","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In many so-called canonical null subject languages, null and overt subject pronouns have contrasting referential preferences: null subjects tend to maintain reference to the preceding subject while overt pronominal subjects do not. We propose that children acquire this contrast by initially restricting their attention to 1st and 2nd person pronouns, whose reference is simpler to infer compared to 3rd person pronouns. We provide supporting evidence from spontaneous production and comprehension in Mexico City Spanish, showing that (i) the null/overt contrast is in principle acquirable from exclusively observing the referential preferences of 1st and 2nd person subject pronouns in caretaker speech; (ii) children themselves condition subject pronoun expression on pronoun reference in the 1st and 2nd persons before doing so in the 3rd person; and (iii) children use the null/overt contrast in comprehension at a similar age when they begin making this distinction in production.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"94 1","pages":"171 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90433228","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-26DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2021.1941031
Naomi L. Shin, Karen Miller
ABSTRACT This article presents a developmental pathway for the acquisition of morphosyntactic variation. Although there is abundant evidence that morphosyntactic variation is pervasive among adults, much less is known about how children acquire such variation. The literature thus far indicates that the pathway of development involves first producing only one of the variable forms (Step 1), producing both forms but in mutually-exclusive contexts (Step 2), then producing both forms in some overlapping linguistic contexts (Step 3), and finally producing both forms in more contexts (Step 4). The research reviewed indicates that input patterns are influential each step of the way, playing an important role in determining children’s use of forms as well as the contexts in which the forms are produced. In addition to considering input effects, we also draw on various tendencies that children evince in the face of variable input to explain the pathway of development, including regularization and assigning different meanings to different forms. The article also includes suggestions for testing the hypotheses generated by the proposed pathway of development, which we illustrate by drawing on the acquisition of variable Spanish subject pronoun expression.
{"title":"Children’s Acquisition of Morphosyntactic Variation","authors":"Naomi L. Shin, Karen Miller","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2021.1941031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2021.1941031","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article presents a developmental pathway for the acquisition of morphosyntactic variation. Although there is abundant evidence that morphosyntactic variation is pervasive among adults, much less is known about how children acquire such variation. The literature thus far indicates that the pathway of development involves first producing only one of the variable forms (Step 1), producing both forms but in mutually-exclusive contexts (Step 2), then producing both forms in some overlapping linguistic contexts (Step 3), and finally producing both forms in more contexts (Step 4). The research reviewed indicates that input patterns are influential each step of the way, playing an important role in determining children’s use of forms as well as the contexts in which the forms are produced. In addition to considering input effects, we also draw on various tendencies that children evince in the face of variable input to explain the pathway of development, including regularization and assigning different meanings to different forms. The article also includes suggestions for testing the hypotheses generated by the proposed pathway of development, which we illustrate by drawing on the acquisition of variable Spanish subject pronoun expression.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"136 1","pages":"125 - 150"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2021-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77455993","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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