A distributional learning account of the acquisition of the locative alternation: Corpus analysis and modeling

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Early in acquisition children overgeneralize verbs to ungrammatical structures. The retreat from overgeneralization is linked to the acquisition of verb classes, the semantics of which constrain the structures in which a verb can appear (e.g., Pinker 1989; Ambridge, Pine & Rowland, 2012). How children learn these classes remains unclear. Some argue that distributional regularities in linguistic input provide sufficient evidence for verb classes to emerge and become linked to particular structures. A corpus analysis of the English locative construction (e.g., the woman sprayed water onto the wall/the wall with water) demonstrated that children have similar verb classes to adults. A correspondence analysis revealed that distributional regularities in the input could support these verb classes. Finally, a connectionist simulation was able to model early overgeneralization and retreat through distributional learning of verb classes. These results support a distributional learning account of verb semantics.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCooperative Minds
Subtitle of host publicationSocial Interaction and Group Dynamics - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2013
EditorsMarkus Knauff, Natalie Sebanz, Michael Pauen, Ipke Wachsmuth
PublisherThe Cognitive Science Society
Pages1498-1503
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9780976831891
Publication statusPublished - 2013
Event35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics, CogSci 2013 - Berlin, Germany
Duration: 31 Jul 20133 Aug 2013

Publication series

NameCooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics - Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, CogSci 2013

Conference

Conference35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society - Cooperative Minds: Social Interaction and Group Dynamics, CogSci 2013
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityBerlin
Period31/07/133/08/13

Keywords

  • Child language acquisition
  • distributional learning
  • Dual-Path model
  • locative construction
  • naturalistic speech

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