Negative entrenchment: A usage-based approach to negative evidence

Stefanowitsch, Anatol

doi:10.1515/cogl.2008.020

Cited by 130 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…In the introduction, we outlined four possibilities for the relationship between semantics-based and statistics-based accounts: Semantics only (Ambridge et al, 2009;Pinker, 1989), Statistics only (Stefanowitsch, 2008), Semantics with statistics for exceptions (Bowerman, 1988;Boyd & Goldberg, 2011;Braine & Brooks, 1995), and Statistics then semantics (Perfors et al, 2010(Perfors et al, , 2011Tomasello, 2003;Wonnacott, 2011). It is clear that neither semantics-only nor statistics-only accounts can explain the present dataset.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…However, it is extremely difficult to do so with corpus data, since the two predictors are inevitably highly correlated (r00.9 for the present dataset) (though see Goldberg, 2011;Stefanowitsch, 2008Stefanowitsch, , 2011. Thus whilst, in the present study, we attempt to do so as best we can, we acknowledge that dissociating these two mechanisms will likely require direct experimental manipulation.…”

Section: Statistics-based Approachesmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Although, slightly more advanced versions have been proposed (e.g., Stefanowitsch, 2008), the most commonly assumed mechanism requires learners simply to tally in the input language (1) the total number of occurrences of a particular verb (e.g., say) and (2) the number of occurrences of this verb in the target construction (e.g., the DO-dative). Provided that (2) remains essentially zero (i.e., the occasional speech error notwithstanding), each additional count of (1) contributes to a probabilistic inference that the use of the verb in this construction is ungrammatical (e.g., *I said her no).…”

Section: Statistics-based Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Avoiding dative overgeneralisation errors: semantics, statistics or both?

Ambridge

Pine

Rowland

et al. 2012

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

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How do children eventually come to avoid the production of overgeneralisation errors, in particular, those involving the dative (e.g., *I said her ''no'')? The present study addressed this question by obtaining from adults and children (5Á6, 9Á10 years) judgements of well-formed and over-general datives with 301 different verbs (44 for children). A significant effect of pre-emption*whereby the use of a verb in the prepositional-object (PO)-dative construction constitutes evidence that double-object (DO)-dative uses are not permitted*was observed for every age group. A significant effect of entrenchment*whereby the use of a verb in any construction constitutes evidence that unattested dative uses are not permitted*was also observed for every age group, with both predictors also accounting for developmental change between ages 5Á6 and 9Á10 years. Adults demonstrated knowledge of a morphophonological constraint that prohibits Latinate verbs from appearing in the DO-dative construction (e.g., *I suggested her the trip). Verbs' semantic properties (supplied by independent adult raters) explained additional variance for all groups and developmentally, with the relative influence of narrow-vs broad-range semantic properties increasing with age. We conclude by outlining an account of the formation and restriction of argument-structure generalisations designed to accommodate these findings.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Statistics-based Approachesmentioning

confidence: 88%

Section: Statistics-based Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Avoiding dative overgeneralisation errors: semantics, statistics or both?

Ambridge

Pine

Rowland

et al. 2012

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…the measure that lies at the heart of collostruction strength) that helps learners form the right generalisations about which verbs to use in which environments. Following arguments presented in Stefanowitsch (2008), it was here assumed that speakers/learners indeed form word-construction associations on the basis of their experienced deviations from (subconscious) co-occurrence expectations, although the issue is contested and as yet in need of further empirical research (cf. Bybee 2010: 97).…”

Section: Quantificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructional ‘scene encoding’ and acquisition: Mothers’ use of argument structure constructions in English child-directed speech

Zeschel

2013

Yearbook of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association

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Construction-based language models assume that grammar is meaningful and learnable from experience. Focusing on five of the most elementary argument structure constructions of English, a large-scale corpus study of child-directed speech (CDS) investigates exactly which meanings/functions are associated with these patterns in CDS, and whether they are indeed specially indicated to children by their caretakers (as suggested by previous research, cf. Goldberg, Casenhiser and Sethuraman 2004). Collostructional analysis (Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003) is employed to uncover significantly attracted verb-construction combinations, and attracted pairs are classified semantically in order to systematise the attested usage patterns of the target constructions.The results indicate that the structure of the input may aid learners in making the right generalisations about constructional usage patterns, but such scaffolding is not strictly necessary for construction learning: not all argument structure constructions are coherently semanticised to the same extent (in the sense that they designate a single schematic event type of the kind envisioned in Goldberg's [1995] 'scene encoding hypothesis'), and they also differ in the extent to which individual semantic subtypes predominate in learners' input.

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“…Room does not license a discussion on how negative evidence falls out from contingency as well; for a detailed (and diverging) discussion of how corpus data provide evidence in favor of statistical preemption, see Stefanowitsch (2008) and Goldberg (2011), for example.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Input matters

Wulff

2013

LAB

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Negative entrenchment: A usage-based approach to negative evidence

Cited by 130 publications

References 10 publications

Avoiding dative overgeneralisation errors: semantics, statistics or both?

Avoiding dative overgeneralisation errors: semantics, statistics or both?

Constructional ‘scene encoding’ and acquisition: Mothers’ use of argument structure constructions in English child-directed speech

Input matters

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