Imitations and repetitions: what do children say following recasts?

Strapp, Chehalis M.; Federico, Amy

doi:10.1177/014272370002006003

Cited by 26 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Negative evidence is potentially more informative, because child error and correct adult alternative contrast with one another in the discourse. There is evidence that such contrastive modeling not only occurs in the input to young children, but also is associated with improvements in the grammaticality of child speech (e.g., Farrar, 1992;Saxton, 1997Saxton, , 2000Saxton et al, 1998;Strapp, 1999;Strapp & Federico, 2000). The issue of whether negative evidence (error-contingent modeling) is a necessary component of language acquisition remains a moot point (for discussion, see Saxton, 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of studies provide empirical evidence in support of the direct contrast hypothesis (e.g., Farrar, 1992;Saxton, 1997Saxton, , 2000Saxton, Backley, & Gallaway, in press;Saxton, Kulcsar, Rupra, & Marshall, 1998;Strapp, 1999;Strapp & Federico, 2000;Otomo, 2001;Chouinard & Clark, 2003). In particular, four key findings have emerged.…”

Section: Correct → Erroneous (C → E)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The prompt hypothesis: Clarification requests as corrective input for grammatical errors

Saxton

Houston‐Price

Dawson

2005

Applied Psycholinguistics

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The potential of clarification questions (CQs) to act as a form of corrective input for young children's grammatical errors was examined. Corrective responses were operationalized as those occasions when child speech shifted from erroneous to correct (E → C) contingent on a clarification question. It was predicted that E → C sequences would prevail over shifts in the opposite direction (C → E), as can occur in the case of nonerror-contingent CQs. This prediction was tested via a standard intervention paradigm, whereby every 60 s a sequence of two clarification requests (either specific or general) was introduced into conversation with a total of 45 2-and 4-year-old children. For 10 categories of grammatical structure, E → C sequences predominated over their C → E counterparts, with levels of E → C shifts increasing after two clarification questions. Children were also more reluctant to repeat erroneous forms than their correct counterparts, following the intervention of CQs. The findings provide support for Saxton's prompt hypothesis, which predicts that error-contingent CQs bear the potential to cue recall of previously acquired grammatical forms.In the course of conversation, the linguistic traffic between speaker and listener does not always flow smoothly. Breakdowns are not infrequent, typically occurring when the listener encounters difficulty with the speaker's utterance. On such occasions, listeners are liable to request clarification as in Example 1.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Correct → Erroneous (C → E)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The prompt hypothesis: Clarification requests as corrective input for grammatical errors

Saxton

Houston‐Price

Dawson

2005

Applied Psycholinguistics

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“…The following example 60 is typical (note that the child shows some evidence of accepting the recast). Although many studies [60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] have shown that children selectively modify their utterances in response to recasts in this way, it would seem unlikely that they are sufficient to explain the retreat from error. The evidence summarized below indicates that children reject as ungrammatical certain uses of very low frequency and even novel verbs (in the latter case, based on their semantics), for which they cannot have received recasts during childhood.…”

Section: Adult Recastsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The retreat from overgeneralization in child language acquisition: word learning, morphology, and verb argument structure

Ambridge

Pine

Rowland

et al. 2012

WIRES Cognitive Science

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This review investigates empirical evidence for different theoretical proposals regarding the retreat from overgeneralization errors in three domains: word learning (e.g., *doggie to refer to all animals), morphology [e.g., *spyer, *cooker (one who spies/cooks), *unhate, *unsqueeze, *sitted; *drawed], and verb argument structure [e.g., *Don't giggle me (c.f. Don't make me giggle); *Don't say me that (c.f. Don't say that to me)]. The evidence reviewed provides support for three proposals. First, in support of the pre-emption hypothesis, the acquisition of competing forms that express the desired meaning (e.g., spy for *spyer, sat for *sitted, and Don't make me giggle for *Don't giggle me) appears to block errors. Second, in support of the entrenchment hypothesis, repeated occurrence of particular items in particular constructions (e.g., giggle in the intransitive construction) appears to contribute to an ever strengthening probabilistic inference that non-attested uses (e.g., *Don't giggle me) are ungrammatical for adult speakers. That is, both the rated acceptability and production probability of particular errors decline with increasing frequency of pre-empting and entrenching forms in the input. Third, learners appear to acquire semantic and morphophonological constraints on particular constructions, conceptualized as properties of slots in constructions [e.g., the (VERB) slot in the morphological un-(VERB) construction or the transitivecausative (SUBJECT) (VERB) (OBJECT) argument-structure construction]. Errors occur as children acquire the fine-grained semantic and morphophonological properties of particular items and construction slots, and so become increasingly reluctant to use items in slots with which they are incompatible. Findings also suggest some role for adult feedback and conventionality; the principle that, for many given meanings, there is a conventional form that is used by all members of the speech community. sophisticated. However, human languages are unique in that they afford speakers the productivity to express new meanings. In some cases, this productivity involves extending an existing word to take on a new meaning (e.g., spam, Google). In others, a prefix or suffix is productively applied to new items (e.g., un+subscribe; Bush+ism; Obama+ed). Perhaps, the most impressive examples of productivity are seen 47 Advanced Reviewwires.wiley.com/cogsci when speakers combine words to produce entirely novel sentences, such as this one (or Chomsky's famous example Colorless green ideas sleep furiously). But this productivity comes at a cost. At all three levels, the mechanisms that yield this capacity suggest generalizations that would be considered unacceptable by native adult speakers (i.e., overgeneralizations). For example,• at the lexical level, children overgeneralize words to referents for which they would not be appropriate for adults (e.g., *doggie to a bear, a horse, and Cookie Monster). 1• at the morphological level, children overgeneralize derivational suffixes [e.g., *spyer, *cooker...

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“…With respect to the former, Moerk (2000) noted that ''probably close to one hundred such studies exist supporting the existence of corrections'' (p. 117). Evidence for its effectiveness has continued to accumulate (e.g., Chouinard & Clark, 2003;Strapp, Bleakney, Helmick, & Tonkovich, 2008;Strapp & Federico, 2000).…”

Section: Mythmentioning

confidence: 99%

Three Myths from the Language Acquisition Literature

Schoneberger

2010

Analysis Verbal Behav

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Three popular assertions have hindered the promotion of an empiricist approach to language acquisition: (a) that Brown and Hanlon (1970) claimed to offer data that parents do not reinforce their children's grammaticality; (b) that Brown and Hanlon also claimed to offer data that parents do not provide negative evidence (i.e., corrective feedback) for ungrammaticality; and (c) that Gold (1967) claimed to offer a formal proof showing that, without negative evidence, a child cannot acquire a language solely from environmental input. In this paper I offer introductory comments on the nature-nurture distinction (including interactionism, and the nativists' claim to have found a gene for language). Next I debunk the three aforementioned assertions by arguing that the authors (Brown & Hanlon; Gold) never made the claims attributed to them; review evidence on the role of reinforcement and corrective feedback in language acquisition; and offer some concluding comments.

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Imitations and repetitions: what do children say following recasts?

Cited by 26 publications

References 36 publications

The prompt hypothesis: Clarification requests as corrective input for grammatical errors

The prompt hypothesis: Clarification requests as corrective input for grammatical errors

The retreat from overgeneralization in child language acquisition: word learning, morphology, and verb argument structure

Three Myths from the Language Acquisition Literature

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