Academic Paper |
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| Title: | Verb argument structure acquisition in young children: defining a role for discourse |
| Author: | Letitia R. Naigles |
| Institution: | University of Connecticut |
| Author: | Ashley Maltempo |
| Institution: | University of Connecticut |
| Linguistic Field: | Language Acquisition |
| Subject Language: |
English
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| Abstract: | Two-, three- and four-year-old English learners enacted sentences that were missing a direct object (e.g. *The zebra brings.). Previous work has indicated that preschoolers faced with such ungrammatical sentences consistently alter the usual meaning of the verb to fit the syntactic frame (enacting ‘zebra comes’); older children are more likely to repair the syntax to fit the meaning of the verb (enacting ‘zebra brings something’; Naigles, Gleitman & Gleitman, ). We investigated whether young children performed more repairs if an informative context preceded the ungrammatical sentences. Test sentences were preceded by short vignettes that created a relationship between three characters. Children repaired more sentences than had been found previously; however, older preschoolers also repaired significantly more frequently than younger preschoolers. Discourse context thus seems relevant to the acquisition of verb argument structure, but is not the sole source of information. |
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This article appears in Journal of Child Language Vol. 38, Issue 3, which you can read on Cambridge's site or on LINGUIST . |
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