Learning embedded verb placement in Norwegian: Evidence for early overgeneralization

Abstract

This article investigates how children acquire word order generalizations from ambiguous and infrequent input. We focus on verb placement in Norwegian relative and complement clauses. In two elicitation experiments we explore where children (age 3-7) place verbs in three embedded clauses types: one requiring a purely syntactic generalization and two requiring a semantic-pragmatic generalization. We find that children overgeneralize the main clause word order to embedded clauses. However, this happens with different probabilities across all three clause types. We take this to mean that children overgeneralize and that they entertain both coarse and fine-grained hypotheses simultaneously. We also suggest that children make use of frequency information, both in making initial hypotheses and when retracting from overgeneralization.

What Characterizes the Productive Morphosyntax of Norwegian Children with Developmental Language Disorder?

“…It should be noted that the word order in Norwegian subordinate clauses is superficially identical to main clause word order when the subordinate clause does not contain adverbials. Thus, it has been suggested that children in their initial stages of language acquisition assume that the verb placement in main clauses may be extended to subordinate clauses (Ribu et al, 2019;Ringstad & Kush, 2021;Westergaard & Bentzen 2007, p. 282).…”

“…In Norwegian, relative clauses emerge early in the production of TD children (Ribu, Simonsen, Løver, Strand & Kristoffersen, 2019). However, their internal word order causes problems, because the sentence adverbial in subordinate clauses is placed in front of the verb rather than after the verb as in main clauses (Ringstad & Kush, 2021;Westergaard & Bentzen, 2007). As we will discuss in more detail below, Norwegianspeaking children tend to overgeneralize the main clause word order when they start using relative clauses.…”

“…Only data from children with DLD and TD were used in the current study. We focused on children of primary school age (7;5-13 years), as the study examined a broad range of morphological and syntactic structures, some of which have been shown to emerge late in development even for TD children (Ribu et al, 2019;Ringstad & Kush, 2021;Westergaard & Bentzen, 2007, p. 282).…”