Engelmann, F, Granlund, S, Kolak, J 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2689-7103, Szreder, M, Ambridge, B, Pine, J, Theakston, A and Lieven, E
2019,
'How the input shapes the acquisition of verb morphology: Elicited production and computational modelling in two highly inflected languages'
, Cognitive Psychology, 110
, pp. 30-69.
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Abstract
Abstract The aim of the present work was to develop a computational model of how children acquire inflectional morphology for marking person and number; one of the central challenges in language development. First, in order to establish which putative learning phenomena are sufficiently robust to constitute a target for modelling, we ran large-scale elicited production studies with native learners of Finnish (N = 77; 35–63 months) and Polish (N = 81; 35–59 months), using a novel method that, unlike previous studies, allows for elicitation of all six person/number forms in the paradigm (first, second and third person; singular and plural). We then proceeded to build and test a connectionist model of the acquisition of person/number marking which not only acquires near adult-like mastery of the system (including generalisation to unseen items), but also yields all of the key phenomena observed in the elicited-production studies; specifically, effects of token frequency and phonological neighbourhood density of the target form, and a pattern whereby errors generally reflect the replacement of low frequency targets by higher-frequency forms of the same verb, or forms with the same person/number as the target, but with a suffix from an inappropriate conjugation class. The findings demonstrate that acquisition of even highly complex systems of inflectional morphology can be accounted for by a theoretical model that assumes rote storage and phonological analogy, as opposed to formal symbolic rules.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Schools: | Schools > School of Health and Society |
| Journal or Publication Title: | Cognitive Psychology |
| Publisher: | Elsevier |
| ISSN: | 0010-0285 |
| Depositing User: | J Kolak |
| Date Deposited: | 28 Jun 2022 11:51 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Aug 2022 09:00 |
| URI: | https://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/63980 |
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