Researchers have long debated the means by which children learn the argument structure of verbs. Making syntactic generalizations often entails learning the semantics of different verbs, complicating and delaying the acquisition process. This study investigates four- to twelve-yearolds' and adults' knowledge of animacy hierarchy restrictions on postverbal word order in Sesotho double object applicatives, constructions where verb semantics is kept constant. Performance on forced-choice elicited production tasks showed that four-year-olds have early knowledge of the animacy hierarchy restrictions, providing evidence of syntactic generalization even on low-frequency constructions. Although there were no verb frequency effects, performance was also better on the highest-frequency animacy constructions. The results suggest that learning restrictions on verb-argument structure is facilitated when verb semantics is not a confound, but that construction frequency also plays a role in mastering the argument structure of verbs.

This study examines how listeners arrive at judgments of speech as irrelevant or off-topic (off-target). Older adults and college students evaluated a set of narratives ascribed to speakers differing in age and gender and presented as conversations or interviews. The results show that young and old adults bring different understandings of age and situation to the evaluation task. Older evaluators judged narratives more on-target than younger evaluators. Differences between evaluator age groups were also observed in the effects of speaker age and speech situation: Younger evaluators judged older speakers more on-target than younger speakers, but older evaluators did not; and younger evaluators judged speech in interviews more off-target than older evaluators did. However, both old and young evaluators judged female speakers more on-target than males. This study contributes to our understanding of the role of age stereotypes in evaluating speech, highlighting the listener's role in constructing an interlocutor's speech as off-target.

this article examines the use of like as a discourse marker and discourse particle in the spontaneous speech of children age 3-10. Data come from recorded interactions between same-sex peers. Discourse like appeared in the speech of children as young as age 4. Young children used like primarily as a discourse particle preceding determiner phrases. Like was observed in a greater number of syntactic positions as speakers' ages increased and began to appear in different syntactic positions in approximately the order in which they developed in the language historically. Boys age 6 and younger were less likely than girls to use like and used it less frequently and in fewer syntactic positions than girls. the results suggest that boys and girls follow similar developmental trajectories but that girls become more sophisticated users of like at an earlier age than boys.

Much recent research has described the ongoing development of vernacular functions of English like as a discourse marker (Like they're trying to be discreet about it) or discourse particle (Maybe it's like a girl thing) and as part BE+like quotative construction (He's like "I don't want to work until later"). For example, D'Arcy (2005) shows that discourse like, originally a clause-initial discourse marker, developed over apparent time into a discourse particle adjoined to determiner phrases (DP) and then generalized to verb phrases (VP) and a variety of other syntactic contexts inside the clause; and Tagliamonte and D'Arcy (2007) describe a reorganization of the quotative system to include BE+like as an introducer of reported thought and inner dialogue. While this research has made it possible to characterize broader patterns of development in the 'community' grammar, comparatively little is known about how speakers acquire this variable. This study examines young children's use of the word like as a discourse marker or discourse particle, and a quotative marker, to work toward a better understanding of how these functions of like are incorporated into maturing grammars.Most existing research has looked at like primarily in the speech of adults and teenagers. However, D'Arcy (2005) included a 10-12-year-old age group and Levey (2006) has looked at 7-8 and 10-11-year-olds; it appears that many children are fairly prolific like users by these ages.In this study I look five child age groups, 3-, 4-, 5-, 6-, and 10-year-olds. The focus is on the four younger age groups, which fill a gap in the existing research, and cover the period during which the use of like presumably develops. The 10-year-olds are included to serve as a comparison with existing research. Data come from recorded interactions between pairs of children of the same age, one pair of boys and one pair of girls at each of the five age groups. Each pair was recorded four times, for 30 minutes per recording sessions. Comparison data from conversations between six pairs of college-aged adults are drawn from a previously existing corpus.All tokens of like that functioned as a discourse marker, discourse particle, or quotative marker were extracted. Tokens of discourse like were further coded for the syntactic constituent they adjoined to. Tokens of like functioning as an approximative adverb, as well as the more standard functions as a verb, preposition, etc., were excluded from the current analysis. This paper focuses primarily on discourse like: when discourse like appears in children's speech, the syntactic positions in which it appears, and how tokens of discourse like are distributed across different syntactic contexts. It also looks at gender differences in children's use of like and briefly considers younger children's use of like in quotative constructions.None of the 3-year-olds was observed to use discourse like, though one girl used a single token of like in a quotative construction. All of the girls age 4 and older used like. It was rare, tho...