Academic Paper |
|
|
|
|
| Title: | Abstract categories or limited-scope formulae? The case of children's determiners |
| Author: | Virginia v Valian |
| Institution: | Hunter College |
| Author: | Stephanie Solt |
| Email: | click here to access email |
| Institution: | Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft |
| Author: | John Stewart |
| Institution: | CUNY Graduate Center |
| Linguistic Field: | Applied Linguistics; Psycholinguistics |
| Abstract: | Six tests of the spontaneous speech of twenty-one English-speaking children (1 ; 10 to 2 ; 8; MLUs 1·53 to 4·38) demonstrate the presence of the syntactic category determiner from the start of combinatorial speech, supporting nativist accounts. Children use multiple determiners before a noun to the same extent as their mothers (1) when only 'a' and 'the' or (2) all determiners are analyzed, or (3) when children and mothers are matched on determiner and noun types and determiner+noun tokens. (4) Overlap increases as opportunity for overlap increases: children use multiple determiners with more than 50% of nouns used at least twice with a determiner and with 80% of nouns used at least six times with a determiner. (5) Formulae play a limited role in low-MLU children's determiner usage, with MLU. (6) Less than 1% of determiner uses are errors. Prior results showing no overlap are likely a sampling artifact. |
|
|
|
|
This article appears in Journal of Child Language Vol. 36, Issue 4, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
|
|
|
|
Back
Add a new paper Return to Academic Papers main page Return to Directory of Linguists main page |
|
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |
|
