TY - JOUR
T1 - Verb argument structure overgeneralisations for the English intransitive and transitive constructions
T2 - Grammaticality judgments and production priming
AU - Bidgood, Amy
AU - Pine, Julian
AU - Rowland, Caroline
AU - Sala, Giovanni
AU - Freudenthal, Daniel
AU - Ambridge, B. E.N.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - We used a multi-method approach to investigate how children avoid (or retreat from) argument structure overgeneralisation errors (e.g., ∗You giggled me). Experiment 1 investigated how semantic and statistical constraints (preemption and entrenchment) influence children's and adults' judgments of the grammatical acceptability of 120 verbs in transitive and intransitive sentences. Experiment 2 used syntactic priming to elicit overgeneralisation errors from children (aged 5-6) to investigate whether the same constraints operate in production. For judgments, the data showed effects of preemption, entrenchment, and semantics for all ages. For production, only an effect of preemption was observed, and only for transitivisation errors with intransitive-only verbs (e.g., ∗The man laughed the girl). We conclude that preemption, entrenchment, and semantic effects are real, but are obscured by particular features of the present production task.
AB - We used a multi-method approach to investigate how children avoid (or retreat from) argument structure overgeneralisation errors (e.g., ∗You giggled me). Experiment 1 investigated how semantic and statistical constraints (preemption and entrenchment) influence children's and adults' judgments of the grammatical acceptability of 120 verbs in transitive and intransitive sentences. Experiment 2 used syntactic priming to elicit overgeneralisation errors from children (aged 5-6) to investigate whether the same constraints operate in production. For judgments, the data showed effects of preemption, entrenchment, and semantics for all ages. For production, only an effect of preemption was observed, and only for transitivisation errors with intransitive-only verbs (e.g., ∗The man laughed the girl). We conclude that preemption, entrenchment, and semantic effects are real, but are obscured by particular features of the present production task.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85106472923&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85106472923&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/langcog.2021.8
DO - 10.1017/langcog.2021.8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85106472923
JO - Language and Cognition
JF - Language and Cognition
SN - 1866-9808
ER -