The influence of language-specific and universal factors on acquisition of motion verbs

This study explores children’s encoding of novel verbs referring to motion events, and finds influence of both language-specific and universal constraints on meaning. Motion verbs fall into two categories—manner verbs encode how a movement happens (run, swim), and path verbs encode the starting and ending point of a motion (enter, fall). Some languages express path more frequently in the verb (Spanish, Hebrew), and others manner more frequently (English, German). Our study expands on this previous work demonstrating sensitivity to these language-specific distributions, as well as expanding to test environmental factors representing a predictable universal distribution. We find that children are sensitive to both the language-specific factors as well as the universal factors in motion verb acquisition.

Finite complements trigger reality responses in attitude verb acquisition… but so do non-finite complements

The syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis was developed to explain how children learn verbs whose meanings are opaque, e.g. attitude verbs, which refer to the mental state of the subject of the sentence. Belief verbs (like think) take finite complements, while desire verbs (like want) take non-finite complements. Children differentiate these subclasses by three: they are lured by reality when there is a mismatch between the subject’s belief and reality when interpreting think, but not with want. Previous work also shows that when interpreting a less common attitude verb, hope, children are influenced by syntactic frame, supporting view that syntax guides children’s acquisition of attitude verbs. The current study investigates when syntax becomes useful to the learner. Children are presented with sentences including a novel verb with either a finite or a non-finite complement. Children are not influenced by syntax when interpreting a novel attitude verb, suggesting that syntactic complements only become useful for hypothesizing meaning once the learner has some experience with a specific attitude verb.

Input–output relations in Hebrew verb acquisition at the morpho-lexical interface

This study examined early Hebrew verb acquisition, highlighting CDS–CS relations across inflectional and derivational verb learning. It was carried out on a corpus of longitudinal dense dyadic interactions of two Hebrew-speaking toddlers aged 1;8–2;2 and their parents. Findings revealed correlated patterns within and between CDS and CS corpora in terms of verbs, structural root categories, and their components (roots, binyan conjugations, and derivational verb families), and clear relations between lexical-derivational development and inflectional growth in input–output relations, measured by MSP. It also showed that both corpora had few, yet highly semantically coherent, derivational families. Lexical learning in Hebrew was shown to be morphologically oriented, with both inflectional and derivational learning supporting and being supported by the development of the verb lexicon. These findings support findings in the general literature regarding the close relationship between parental input and child speech, and the affinity between lexical and grammatical growth.

On the inefficiency of negative feedback in Russian morphology L1 acquisition

This study investigates negative feedback effects on inflectional morphology acquisition in Russian. In order to examine the effects of adult feedback on child error elimination and assess the lasting effect of feedback, a series of elicited tasks was conducted with 65 Russian children aged from 3 to 4 years. Twelve verbs which undergo overregularization in the non-past tense resulting from applying the yod /j/-pattern were used as stimuli. The experiment was repeated over four sessions with bi-weekly intervals between sessions 1, 2, 3 and a four-week interval between sessions 3 and 4. Four groups of participants were formed with three types of feedback (Correction, Clarification Question and Repetition), and a control group without feedback. No significant differences were observed between groups with different feedback types, or even without feedback. This finding supports the general hypothesis that negative feedback is not a strong driver of recovery from overregularization errors in verb acquisition.

The development of verbal morphology and word order in an Indonesian-German bilingual child: A case study

The contexts and circumstances of the occurrence of cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children’s language development are still a matter of debate. The present study argues that in the early development of a bilingual child exposed to two typologically distinct languages (Indonesian and German), the child developed two separate linguistic systems. The child, raised in Indonesia, was exposed to Indonesian by her Indonesian mother and to German by her German father. The study focuses on the early stages of verbal morphology and word order, from ages 1;3 to 2;2. The corpus took the form of conversational text or speech based on spontaneous interactions in natural settings. The data was collected using diary records, supplemented by weekly video recordings. In analysing the data, two software systems were used: ELAN and Toolbox. The speech was segmented based on utterances. All verbal morphology and word order was coded. The results show that verbal morphology in Indonesian and German was acquired by the child at different times, with the development of German verbs occurring later than Indonesian verb acquisition. In addition, there is evidence of interaction between the two developing systems. Cross-linguistic interference was identified when the child used the Indonesian vocatives-predicate combination in German utterances while, at the same time, the child also applied the German verb-final clause structure in Indonesian utterances when she should have produced German utterances. Thus, the results from this case study suggest that both language external and internal factors account for the occurrence of cross-linguistic influence.

Determining Children’s Level of Acquisition through Grammatical Profiles: Evidence from a Bilingual Russian-English Child Acquiring Verbs

In this paper, I present my research on verb acquisition of a bilingual Russian- English child. I apply grammatical profiles to determine the level of acquisition of the child, noticing that grammatical profiles are different for spoken and written language. I show that the bilingual child I examined has acquired the Russian verb system completely, but still makes some mistakes in verb formation.