Verb argument structure overgeneralisations for the English intransitive and transitive constructions : grammaticality judgments and production priming

Bidgood, A ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9719-4256, Pine, J, Rowland, C, Sala, G, Freudenthal, D and Ambridge, B 2021, 'Verb argument structure overgeneralisations for the English intransitive and transitive constructions : grammaticality judgments and production priming' , Language and Cognition, 13 (3) , pp. 397-437.

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Abstract

We used a multi-method approach to investigate how children avoid (or retreat from) argument structure overgeneralisation errors (e.g., *You giggled me). Experiment 1 investigated how semantic and statistical constraints (preemption and entrenchment) influence children’s and adults’ judgments of the grammatical acceptability of 120 verbs in transitive and intransitive sentences. Experiment 2 used syntactic priming to elicit overgeneralisation errors from children (aged 5–6) to investigate whether the same constraints operate in production. For judgments, the data showed effects of preemption, entrenchment, and semantics for all ages. For production, only an effect of preemption was observed, and only for transitivisation errors with intransitive-only verbs (e.g., *The man laughed the girl). We conclude that preemption, entrenchment, and semantic effects are real, but are obscured by particular features of the present production task.

Item Type:	Article
Schools:	Schools > School of Arts & Media Schools > School of Health and Society
Journal or Publication Title:	Language and Cognition
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISSN:	1866-9808
Related URLs:	Publication
Funders:	Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Leverhulme Trust
Depositing User:	A Bidgood
Date Deposited:	02 Jun 2021 14:50
Last Modified:	16 Feb 2022 07:04
URI:	http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/60101

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