Do as I say, not as I do: A lexical distributional account of English locative verb class acquisition

Twomey, Katherine Elizabeth; Chang, Franklin; Ambridge, Ben

doi:10.1016/j.cogpsych.2014.05.001

Cited by 35 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 85 publications

(120 reference statements)

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“…This can explain why target verb bias effects are smaller in young children than adults; within any one group of children at any one point in time, there will be substantial individual variation in the strength of the target verb bias, which leads to a smaller group effect. This account is consistent with the gradual development of verb-structure links in the Dual-Path model for the locative alternation (Twomey et al, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

“…Since the model generates predictions and alters syntactic representations on the basis of individual words in sentences, these weight changes enable the model to learn lexical (verb)-structure links at the same time as syntactic structure (see Twomey, Chang, & Ambridge, 2014, for a version of the model that gradually learned verb biases over development). Thus, verb-structure links are learnt in parallel with knowledge of abstract syntactic structure.…”

Section: Error-based Learning Mechanisms and Structural Primingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When and how do children develop knowledge of verb argument structure? Evidence from verb bias effects in a structural priming task

Peter

Chang

Pine

et al. 2015

Journal of Memory and Language

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195

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a b s t r a c tIn this study, we investigated when children develop adult-like verb-structure links, and examined two mechanisms, associative and error-based learning, that might explain how these verb-structure links are learned. Using structural priming, we tested children's and adults' ability to use verb-structure links in production in three ways; by manipulating: (1) verb overlap between prime and target, (2) target verb bias, and (3) prime verb bias. Children (aged 3-4 and 5-6 years old) and adults heard and produced double object dative (DOD) and prepositional object dative (PD) primes with DOD-and PD-biased verbs. Although all age groups showed significant evidence of structural priming, only adults showed increased priming when there was verb overlap between prime and target sentences (the lexical boost). The effect of target verb bias also grew with development. Critically, however, the effect of prime verb bias on the size of the priming effect (prime surprisal) was larger in children than in adults, suggesting that verb-structure links are present at the earliest age tested. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that children begin to acquire knowledge about verb-argument structure preferences early in acquisition, but that the ability to use adult-like verb bias in production gradually improves over development. We also argue that this pattern of results is best explained by a learning model that uses an error-based learning mechanism.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 69%

Section: Error-based Learning Mechanisms and Structural Primingmentioning

confidence: 99%

When and how do children develop knowledge of verb argument structure? Evidence from verb bias effects in a structural priming task

Peter

Chang

Pine

et al. 2015

Journal of Memory and Language

Self Cite

195

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“…Other accounts, such as Bayesian inference (Alishahi & Stevenson, ), lexical distributional cues (Twomey et al., ), and a combination of entrenchment, preemption, and verb semantics (Ambridge & Blything, ), have been proposed to explain children's rejection or avoidance of overgeneralization errors. Considering that the first two of these proposals are not directly relevant to this study, only Ambridge and Blything's () entrenchment + preemption + verb semantics model was targeted here.…”

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confidence: 99%

Second Language Users’ Restriction of Linguistic Generalization Errors: The Case of English Un– Prefixation Development

Zhang

2017

Language Learning

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This study adopted Ambridge's research paradigm to examine the effects of entrenchment, preemption, and verb semantics in second language (L2) acquisition of English un– prefixation. Three groups of Chinese learners of English (second‐ and fourth‐year English majors and teachers of English) rated the acceptability of 48 un– prefixed verbs and their bare forms. Frequency of bare forms (e.g., close) was a factor associated with the preference of the fourth‐year learners and the teachers to reject ungrammatical un– verbs (e.g., unclose). However, competing forms (e.g., open) did not appear to be linked to participants’ judgments of the acceptability of ungrammatical un– verbs, lending support to the entrenchment rather than the preemption hypothesis. Ratings of the extent to which verbs incorporate the semantics of un– verbs emerged as significant predictors for the fourth‐year learners’ and the teachers’ judgements of the acceptability of grammatical un– verbs, supporting the semantic verb class hypothesis. Open Practices This article has been awarded an Open Materials badge. All materials are publicly accessible in the IRIS digital repository at http://www.iris-database.org. Learn more about the Open Practices badges from the Center for Open Science: https://osf.io/tvyxz/wiki.

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“…An alternative account (Twomey et al 2014) has been implemented as a computational model, and so does not suffer from this drawback. Interestingly, although the model yields semantic type effects, it does so using a purely distributional learning procedure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Statistics and semantics in the acquisition of Spanish word order: Testing two accounts of the retreat from locative overgeneralization errors

Aguado-Orea

Otero

Ambridge

2016

Linguistics Vanguard

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Statistics and semantics in the acquisition of Spanish word order: Testing two accounts of the retreat from locative overgeneralization errors DOI 10.1515/lingvan-2015-0021 Received September 1, 2015 accepted April 29, 2016 Abstract: Native speakers of Spanish (children aged 6-7, 10-11 and adults) rated grammatical and ungrammatical ground-and figure-locative sentences with high frequency, low frequency and novel verbs (e. g., Lisa llenó/forró/nupó la caja con papel; *Lisa llenó/forró/nupó papel en la caja, 'Lisa filled/ lined/nupped the box with paper'; 'Lisa filled/lined/nupped paper into the box') using a 5-point scale.Echoing the findings of a previous English study (a language with some important syntactic differences relevant to the locative), participants rated errors as least acceptable with high frequency verbs, more acceptable with low frequency verbs, and most acceptable with novel verbs, suggesting that learners retreat from error using statistically-based learning mechanisms regardless of the target language. In support of the semantic verb class hypothesis, adults showed evidence of using the meanings assigned to novel verbs to determine the locative constructions in which they can and cannot appear. However, unlike in the previous English study, the child groups did not. We conclude that the more flexible word order exhibited by Spanish, as compared to English, may make these types of regularities more difficult to discern.Keywords: child language acquisition, Spanish, locatives, argument structure overgeneralization errors, verb semantics, statistical learning, entrenchment, pre-emption Children face a paradox when they learn their target language/s (Braine 1971;Baker 1979;Bowerman 1988;Pinker 1989). On the one hand, they must form generalizations that allow them to use verbs in argument structure constructions in which they have not been encountered in the input. Constructions involving figure and ground locatives are an interesting example. For instance, in a language like Spanish, on the basis of hearing figure-locatives (1) and ground-locatives (2) with the same verb, children could set up a productive generalization that allows them to use in the latter construction verbs that have been attested solely in the former construction, and vice versa (3). Indeed, without this ability, language would consist of nothing more than an inventory of rote-learned utterances; a position that has not been taken seriously since Chomsky's (1959) review of Skinner's (1957) Verbal Behavior.On the other hand, in order to avoid producing utterances that adult speakers would regard as ungrammatical, children must somehow learn to restrict these generalizations. For example, over-

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Do as I say, not as I do: A lexical distributional account of English locative verb class acquisition

Cited by 35 publications

References 85 publications

When and how do children develop knowledge of verb argument structure? Evidence from verb bias effects in a structural priming task

When and how do children develop knowledge of verb argument structure? Evidence from verb bias effects in a structural priming task

Second Language Users’ Restriction of Linguistic Generalization Errors: The Case of English Un– Prefixation Development

Statistics and semantics in the acquisition of Spanish word order: Testing two accounts of the retreat from locative overgeneralization errors

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