The retreat from overgeneralization in child language acquisition: word learning, morphology, and verb argument structure

Abstract

This review investigates empirical evidence for different theoretical proposals regarding the retreat from overgeneralization errors in three domains: word learning (e.g., *doggie to refer to all animals), morphology [e.g., *spyer, *cooker (one who spies/cooks), *unhate, *unsqueeze, *sitted; *drawed], and verb argument structure [e.g., *Don't giggle me (c.f. Don't make me giggle); *Don't say me that (c.f. Don't say that to me)]. The evidence reviewed provides support for three proposals. First, in support of the pre-emption hypothesis, the acquisition of competing forms that express the desired meaning (e.g., spy for *spyer, sat for *sitted, and Don't make me giggle for *Don't giggle me) appears to block errors. Second, in support of the entrenchment hypothesis, repeated occurrence of particular items in particular constructions (e.g., giggle in the intransitive construction) appears to contribute to an ever strengthening probabilistic inference that non-attested uses (e.g., *Don't giggle me) are ungrammatical for adult speakers. That is, both the rated acceptability and production probability of particular errors decline with increasing frequency of pre-empting and entrenching forms in the input. Third, learners appear to acquire semantic and morphophonological constraints on particular constructions, conceptualized as properties of slots in constructions [e.g., the (VERB) slot in the morphological un-(VERB) construction or the transitivecausative (SUBJECT) (VERB) (OBJECT) argument-structure construction]. Errors occur as children acquire the fine-grained semantic and morphophonological properties of particular items and construction slots, and so become increasingly reluctant to use items in slots with which they are incompatible. Findings also suggest some role for adult feedback and conventionality; the principle that, for many given meanings, there is a conventional form that is used by all members of the speech community. sophisticated. However, human languages are unique in that they afford speakers the productivity to express new meanings. In some cases, this productivity involves extending an existing word to take on a new meaning (e.g., spam, Google). In others, a prefix or suffix is productively applied to new items (e.g., un+subscribe; Bush+ism; Obama+ed). Perhaps, the most impressive examples of productivity are seen 47 Advanced Reviewwires.wiley.com/cogsci when speakers combine words to produce entirely novel sentences, such as this one (or Chomsky's famous example Colorless green ideas sleep furiously). But this productivity comes at a cost. At all three levels, the mechanisms that yield this capacity suggest generalizations that would be considered unacceptable by native adult speakers (i.e., overgeneralizations). For example,• at the lexical level, children overgeneralize words to referents for which they would not be appropriate for adults (e.g., *doggie to a bear, a horse, and Cookie Monster). 1• at the morphological level, children overgeneralize derivational suffixes [e.g., *spyer, *cooker...

A Constructivist Account of Child Language Acquisition

“…We should end this section by acknowledging that we have presented only a brief outline of the retreat from overgeneralization here; at least in part because this is a topic that we have covered particularly extensively elsewhere: Ambridge and Lieven, 2011: 242-265;Ambridge, Pine, Rowland, Chang, and Bidgood, 2013).…”

The Scope of Usage-Based Theory

“…The three main suggestions that would help children rule out some overgeneralizations are, in one way or another, all based on patterns of use (see Ambridge et al, 2013 for more detailed supporting evidence for each).…”

Loveis hard to understand: the relationship between transitivity and caused events in the acquisition of emotion verbs

“…For this reason and because the caused event–transitive syntax relationship has been the most thoroughly investigated, we focus both our experiments and our literature review on it. (For discussion of other possible privileged links, see especially Ambridge, Pine, Rowland, Chang & Bidgood, 2013; Ambridge & Lieven, 2011; Gleitman, 1990; Pinker, 1989. )…”