Adult reformulations of child errors as negative evidence

Abstract

Parents frequently check up on what their children mean. They often do this by reformulating with a side sequence or an embedded correction what they think their children said. These reformulations effectively provide children with the conventional form for that meaning. Since the child's utterance and the adult reformulation differ while the intended meanings are the same, children infer that adults are offering a correction. In this way, reformulations identify the locus of any error, and hence the error itself. Analyses of longitudinal data from five children between 2;0 and 4;0 (three acquiring English and two acquiring French) show that (a) adults reformulate their children's erroneous utterances and do so significantly more often than they replay or repeat error-free utterances; (b) their rates of reformulation are similar across error-types (phonological, morphological, lexical, and syntactic) in both languages; (c) they reformulate significantly more often to younger children, who make more errors. Evidence that children attend to reformulations comes from four measures: (a) their explicit repeats of corrected elements in their next turn; (b) their acknowledgements (yeah or uh-huh) as a preface to their next turn; (c) repeats of any new information included in the reformulation; and (d) their explicit rejections of reformulations where the adult has misunderstood. Adult reformulations, then, offer children an important source of information about how to correct errors in the course of acquisition.

Language learning, recasts, and interaction involving AAC: background and potential for intervention

“…It is in the context of such conversations that adults use recasts as a type of correction to alert the child to the error and propose an alternative form. Children might learn to interpret adult recasts as corrective feedback, because parents recast ungrammatical utterances more often than grammatical ones (e.g., Chouinard & Clark, 2003). Saxton (2005) added a Direct Contrast Hypothesis, which predicts that the facilitative power of recasts rests on the immediate juxtaposition of an adult correct model to a child's erroneous, or immature utterance.…”

“…Limited repair by children has been attributed to the fact that they treat the majority of recasts as having a pragmatic function other than a corrective one, such as topic continuation or the seeking of clarification (Chouinard & Clark, 2003). For example, in the previous "run-super-fast" example, it would seem perfectly relevant for the child to respond to the adult's recast with a simple affirmation as in:…”

The Effect of Negative and Positive Evidence on Acquisition of Quantifiers by Iranian EFL

“…Negative evidence provides opportunities for learners to notice different points when their message is misunderstood, which could lead to reconsiderations (Chouinard & Clark, 2003). According to Gass (1988Gass ( , 1990Gass ( , 1991 negative evidence functions as an attention getting device.…”

The Place of Universal Grammar in the Study of Language and Mind: A Response to Dabrowska (2015)

“…She also cites studies showing that corrections from adults can actually improve children's grammars (e.g. Chouinard & Clark, 2003;Demetras et al, 1986;Saxton, 2000;Saxton et al 1998). …”