Abstract
When do children acquire abstract grammatical categories? Studies of 2- to 3-year-olds' productions of complete morphosyntactic paradigms (e.g., all legal determiners with all nouns) suggest relatively later category acquisition, while studies of infant discrimination of grammatical vs. ungrammatical sequences suggest earlier acquisition. However, few of the latter studies have probed category generalization by examining how learners treat gaps in their input, and none have found evidence that learners before the age of 2 years fill gaps in VERB paradigms. Therefore, the three experiments presented here asked whether 16-month-olds tacitly expect to hear forms like breaked by presenting them with overregularized verbs vs. (1) nonce verbs + –ed, (2) real English nouns + –ed, and (3) the correct irregular counterparts. The pattern of listening preferences suggests that toddlers anticipate overregularized forms, suggesting that they have a general proto-category VERB, to which they expect the complete set of verb inflections to apply.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 103977 |
| Journal | Cognition |
| Volume | 191 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Oct 1 2019 |
Fingerprint
Keywords
- Distributional analysis
- English past tense
- Grammatical categories
- Language acquisition
- Overregularization
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Language and Linguistics
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Linguistics and Language
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Cite this
Experience with morphosyntactic paradigms allows toddlers to tacitly anticipate overregularized verb forms months before they produce them. / Figueroa, Megan; Gerken, Louann.
In: Cognition, Vol. 191, 103977, 01.10.2019.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Experience with morphosyntactic paradigms allows toddlers to tacitly anticipate overregularized verb forms months before they produce them
AU - Figueroa, Megan
AU - Gerken, Louann
PY - 2019/10/1
Y1 - 2019/10/1
N2 - When do children acquire abstract grammatical categories? Studies of 2- to 3-year-olds' productions of complete morphosyntactic paradigms (e.g., all legal determiners with all nouns) suggest relatively later category acquisition, while studies of infant discrimination of grammatical vs. ungrammatical sequences suggest earlier acquisition. However, few of the latter studies have probed category generalization by examining how learners treat gaps in their input, and none have found evidence that learners before the age of 2 years fill gaps in VERB paradigms. Therefore, the three experiments presented here asked whether 16-month-olds tacitly expect to hear forms like breaked by presenting them with overregularized verbs vs. (1) nonce verbs + –ed, (2) real English nouns + –ed, and (3) the correct irregular counterparts. The pattern of listening preferences suggests that toddlers anticipate overregularized forms, suggesting that they have a general proto-category VERB, to which they expect the complete set of verb inflections to apply.
AB - When do children acquire abstract grammatical categories? Studies of 2- to 3-year-olds' productions of complete morphosyntactic paradigms (e.g., all legal determiners with all nouns) suggest relatively later category acquisition, while studies of infant discrimination of grammatical vs. ungrammatical sequences suggest earlier acquisition. However, few of the latter studies have probed category generalization by examining how learners treat gaps in their input, and none have found evidence that learners before the age of 2 years fill gaps in VERB paradigms. Therefore, the three experiments presented here asked whether 16-month-olds tacitly expect to hear forms like breaked by presenting them with overregularized verbs vs. (1) nonce verbs + –ed, (2) real English nouns + –ed, and (3) the correct irregular counterparts. The pattern of listening preferences suggests that toddlers anticipate overregularized forms, suggesting that they have a general proto-category VERB, to which they expect the complete set of verb inflections to apply.
KW - Distributional analysis
KW - English past tense
KW - Grammatical categories
KW - Language acquisition
KW - Overregularization
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85067882611&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85067882611&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.05.014
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.05.014
M3 - Article
C2 - 31254748
AN - SCOPUS:85067882611
VL - 191
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
SN - 0010-0277
M1 - 103977
ER -