TY - JOUR
T1 - Input effects on the acquisition of a novel phrasal construction in 5year olds
AU - Wonnacott, Elizabeth
AU - Boyd, Jeremy K.
AU - Thomson, Jennifer
AU - Goldberg, Adele E.
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and an ESRC grant (Award Reference: RES-062-23-0983) awarded to the first author, an NICHD training fellowship (2-T32-HD055272A) and a Kavli Innovative Research Grant (2011-009) awarded to the second author, and an NSF grant (# 0613227) and an Einstein fellowship from Berlin awarded to the final author. Thank you to Jacinth Greywoode for her help with data coding. Finally, we are very grateful to all the teachers, parents and children who made the research possible.
PY - 2012/4
Y1 - 2012/4
N2 - The present experiments demonstrate that children as young as five years old (M=5:2) generalize beyond their input on the basis of minimal exposure to a novel argument structure construction. The novel construction that was used involved a non-English phrasal pattern: VN 1N 2, paired with a novel abstract meaning: N 2 approaches N 1. At the same time, we find that children are keenly sensitive to the input: they show knowledge of the construction after a single day of exposure but this grows stronger after 3days; also, children generalize more readily to new verbs when the input contains more than one verb.
AB - The present experiments demonstrate that children as young as five years old (M=5:2) generalize beyond their input on the basis of minimal exposure to a novel argument structure construction. The novel construction that was used involved a non-English phrasal pattern: VN 1N 2, paired with a novel abstract meaning: N 2 approaches N 1. At the same time, we find that children are keenly sensitive to the input: they show knowledge of the construction after a single day of exposure but this grows stronger after 3days; also, children generalize more readily to new verbs when the input contains more than one verb.
KW - Artificial language learning
KW - Novel construction learning
KW - Statistical learning
KW - Verb argument structures
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jml.2011.11.004
DO - 10.1016/j.jml.2011.11.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84857688906
SN - 0749-596X
VL - 66
SP - 458
EP - 478
JO - Journal of Memory and Language
JF - Journal of Memory and Language
IS - 3
ER -