Literaturnachweis - Detailanzeige
Autor/inn/en | Nguyen, An D.; Legendre, Geraldine |
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Titel | The Acquisition of "Wh"-Questions: Beyond Structural Economy and Input Frequency |
Quelle | In: Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 29 (2022) 1, S.79-104 (26 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift
PDF als Volltext |
Zusatzinformation | ORCID (Nguyen, An D.) |
Sprache | englisch |
Dokumenttyp | gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz |
ISSN | 1048-9223 |
DOI | 10.1080/10489223.2021.1968867 |
Schlagwörter | Linguistic Input; Language Acquisition; Questioning Techniques; Preschool Children; French; Computational Linguistics; Information Seeking; Parent Child Relationship; Databases; English; Contrastive Linguistics; Task Analysis; Language Processing; Syntax; Linguistic Theory; Structural Analysis (Linguistics); Speech Communication Sprachbildung; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Befragungstechnik; Fragetechnik; Pre-school age; Preschool age; Child; Children; Pre-school education; Preschool education; Vorschulalter; Kind; Kinder; Vorschulkind; Vorschulkinder; Vorschulerziehung; Vorschule; Französisch; Linguistics; Computerlinguistik; Informationserschließung; Parents-child relationship; Parent-child-relation; Parent-child relationship; Eltern-Kind-Beziehung; Datenbank; English language; Englisch; Kontrastive Linguistik; Aufgabenanalyse; Sprachverarbeitung; Linguistische Theorie; Structural analysis; Strukturanalyse |
Abstract | We present in this article corpus analyses, two experiments, and a preliminary English-French comparison on children's acquisition of "wh"-in-situ. Our examination of 10,000 "wh"-questions from CHILDES reveals that the reported empirical picture of "wh"-question acquisition in English is incomplete: A type of "wh"-in-situ, probe questions (PQs), has been left out from most discussions despite its presence in child-directed speech. Unlike "wh"-in-situ echo questions (EQs), PQs are used to request new information, and parents frequently use PQs and fronted information-seeking questions in alternation. The fact that PQs share the pragmatic space with fronted "wh"-questions while involving fewer syntactic operations and exhibiting lower input frequency allows us to test both structure-based and frequency-based theories of syntax acquisition. Our comprehension task with 3;06-5;06-year-olds confirms that children accept and understand PQs as information seeking. On the other hand, results from a production task show a strong avoidance of "wh"-in-situ, which is in line with reported elicited data from French-speaking children. We reason that a structural economy-based approach alone is not sufficient to account for children's disfavor of "wh"-in-situ. Depending on the input frequency and consistency, as well as the number of variants licensed by the grammar of a given language, children may treat part of the input as uninformative and initially only learn from higher-frequent, more regularized input. Their intake is thus selective. (As Provided). |
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Erfasst von | ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC |
Update | 2024/1/01 |