Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T19:27:40.743Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2019

Erin CONWELL
Erin CONWELL*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: North Dakota State University, NDSU Dept. 2765, P.O. Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050. Tel: 1-701-231-6123. E-mail: Erin.Conwell@ndsu.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The English dative alternation has received much attention in the literature on argument structure acquisition in children. However, the data on the acquisition of this alternation have consistently revealed a counter-intuitive pattern: children look more proficient with the lower frequency prepositional form of the dative than with the higher frequency double object form (Conwell & Demuth, 2007; Rowland & Noble, 2010). This may be because the DO dative typically occurs with pronominal argument types in first post-verbal position, which may result in an over-reliance on stereotyped forms (e.g., give + me) for early comprehension and production (Conwell, O'Donnell, & Snedeker, 2011). This paper presents three studies of the effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension by three-year-olds. Children's comprehension of the DO dative improved significantly when the first post-verbal argument was pronominal; no other effects of pronoun use were significant. Children's experience affects their ability to use lexically general representations of syntactic structures.

Keywords

language acquisitionargument structurepronounscomprehension
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 6 , November 2019 , pp. 1127 - 1141
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ambridge, B., Kidd, E., Rowland, C. F., & Theakston, A. L. (2015). The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 42, 239–73.Google Scholar
Arunachalam, S. (2017). Preschoolers’ acquisition of novel verbs in the double object dative. Cognitive Science, 41, 831–54.Google Scholar
Baker, C. L. (1979). Syntactic theory and the projection problem. Linguistic Inquiry, 10, 533–81.Google Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, S., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 255–78.Google Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, M., Bolker, B. M., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. ArXiv e-print. Retrieved from <http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.5823>..>Google Scholar
Bock, K., Loebell, H., & Morey, R. (1992). From conceptual roles to structural relations: bridging the syntactic cleft. Psychological Review, 99, 150–71.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., Cueni, A., Nikitina, T., & Baayan, R. H. (2007). Predicting the dative alternation. In Boume, G., Kramer, I., & Zwarts, J. (Eds.), Cognitive foundations of interpretation. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., & Nikitina, T. (2009). The gradience of the dative alternation. In Uyechi, L. & Wee, L. H. (Eds.), Reality, exploration and discovery: pattern interaction in language and life. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Campbell, A., & Tomasello, M. (2001). The acquisition of English dative constructions. Applied Linguistics, 22, 253–67.Google Scholar
Chang, F., Dell, G. S., & Bock, K. (2006). Becoming syntactic. Psychological Review, 113, 234–72.Google Scholar
Conwell, E., & Demuth, K. (2007). Early syntactic productivity: evidence from dative shift. Cognition, 103, 163–79.Google Scholar
Conwell, E., O'Donnell, T. J., & Snedeker, J. (2011). Frozen chunks and generalized representations: the case of the English dative alternation. In Danis, N., Mesh, K., & Sung, H. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 132–44). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
de Marneffe, M.-C., Grimm, S., Arnon, I., Kirby, S., & Bresnan, J. (2012). A statistical model of the grammatical choices in child production of dative sentences. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27, 25–61.Google Scholar
Gropen, J., Pinker, S., Hollander, M., Goldberg, R., & Wilson, R. (1989). The learnability and acquisition of the dative alternation in English. Language, 65, 203–57.Google Scholar
Huttenlocher, J., Vasilyeva, M., & Shimpi, P. (2004). Syntactic priming in young children. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 182–95.Google Scholar
Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations: a preliminary investigation. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Naigles, L. R., & Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1998). Why are some verbs learned before other verbs? Effects of input frequency and structure on children's early verb use. Journal of Child Language, 25, 95–120.Google Scholar
Osgood, C., & Zehler, A. (1981). Acquisition of bi-transitive sentences: pre-linguistic determinants of language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 8, 367–83.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
R Core Team (2015). R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved from <http://www.R-project.org/>..>Google Scholar
Rowland, C. F., Chang, F., Ambridge, B., Pine, J. M., & Lieven, E. V. M. (2012). The development of abstract syntax: evidence from structural priming and the lexical boost. Cognition, 125, 49–63.Google Scholar
Rowland, C. F., & Noble, C. H. (2010). The role of syntactic structure in children's sentence comprehension: evidence from the dative. Language Learning and Development, 7, 55–75.Google Scholar
Stephens, N. (2015). Dative constructions and givenness in the speech of four-year-olds. Linguistics, 53, 405–42.Google Scholar
Synder, W., & Stromswold, K. (1997). The structure and acquisition of the English dative constructions. Linguistic Inquiry, 28, 281–317.Google Scholar
Theakston, A. L., Lieven, E. V. M., Pine, J. M., & Rowland, C. F. (2004). Semantic generality, input frequency, and the acquisition of syntax. Journal of Child Language, 31, 61–99.Google Scholar
Thothathiri, M., & Snedeker, J. (2008). Syntactic priming during language comprehension in three- and four-year-old children. Journal of Memory and Language, 58, 188–213.Google Scholar
Viau, J. (2007). Possession and spatial motion in the acquisition of ditransitives. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Northwestern University.Google Scholar
Waryas, C., & Stremel, K. (1974). On the preferred form of the double object construction. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 3, 271–80.Google Scholar
Wasow, T. (2002). Postverbal behavior. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Yang, C. (2004). Universal Grammar, statistics, or both? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 451–6.Google Scholar