Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a Construction-General Solution to the Problem of the Retreat from Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization.

Participants aged 5;2-6;8, 9;2-10;6 and 18;1-22;2 (72 at each age) rated verb argument structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., *Daddy giggled the baby) using a five-point scale. The study was designed to investigate the feasibility of two proposed construction-general solutions to the question of...

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Main Authors: Ben Ambridge, Amy Bidgood, Katherine E Twomey, Julian M Pine, Caroline F Rowland, Daniel Freudenthal
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4412412?pdf=render
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spelling doaj-7b079cc428394ec1841f14e63d8a84bd2020-11-24T21:11:03ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032014-01-01104e012372310.1371/journal.pone.0123723Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a Construction-General Solution to the Problem of the Retreat from Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization.Ben AmbridgeAmy BidgoodKatherine E TwomeyJulian M PineCaroline F RowlandDaniel FreudenthalParticipants aged 5;2-6;8, 9;2-10;6 and 18;1-22;2 (72 at each age) rated verb argument structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., *Daddy giggled the baby) using a five-point scale. The study was designed to investigate the feasibility of two proposed construction-general solutions to the question of how children retreat from, or avoid, such errors. No support was found for the prediction of the preemption hypothesis that the greater the frequency of the verb in the single most nearly synonymous construction (for this example, the periphrastic causative; e.g., Daddy made the baby giggle), the lower the acceptability of the error. Support was found, however, for the prediction of the entrenchment hypothesis that the greater the overall frequency of the verb, regardless of construction, the lower the acceptability of the error, at least for the two older groups. Thus while entrenchment appears to be a robust solution to the problem of the retreat from error, and one that generalizes across different error types, we did not find evidence that this is the case for preemption. The implication is that the solution to the retreat from error lies not with specialized mechanisms, but rather in a probabilistic process of construction competition.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4412412?pdf=render
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Ben Ambridge
Amy Bidgood
Katherine E Twomey
Julian M Pine
Caroline F Rowland
Daniel Freudenthal
spellingShingle Ben Ambridge
Amy Bidgood
Katherine E Twomey
Julian M Pine
Caroline F Rowland
Daniel Freudenthal
Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a Construction-General Solution to the Problem of the Retreat from Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization.
PLoS ONE
author_facet Ben Ambridge
Amy Bidgood
Katherine E Twomey
Julian M Pine
Caroline F Rowland
Daniel Freudenthal
author_sort Ben Ambridge
title Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a Construction-General Solution to the Problem of the Retreat from Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization.
title_short Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a Construction-General Solution to the Problem of the Retreat from Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization.
title_full Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a Construction-General Solution to the Problem of the Retreat from Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization.
title_fullStr Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a Construction-General Solution to the Problem of the Retreat from Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization.
title_full_unstemmed Preemption versus Entrenchment: Towards a Construction-General Solution to the Problem of the Retreat from Verb Argument Structure Overgeneralization.
title_sort preemption versus entrenchment: towards a construction-general solution to the problem of the retreat from verb argument structure overgeneralization.
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
series PLoS ONE
issn 1932-6203
publishDate 2014-01-01
description Participants aged 5;2-6;8, 9;2-10;6 and 18;1-22;2 (72 at each age) rated verb argument structure overgeneralization errors (e.g., *Daddy giggled the baby) using a five-point scale. The study was designed to investigate the feasibility of two proposed construction-general solutions to the question of how children retreat from, or avoid, such errors. No support was found for the prediction of the preemption hypothesis that the greater the frequency of the verb in the single most nearly synonymous construction (for this example, the periphrastic causative; e.g., Daddy made the baby giggle), the lower the acceptability of the error. Support was found, however, for the prediction of the entrenchment hypothesis that the greater the overall frequency of the verb, regardless of construction, the lower the acceptability of the error, at least for the two older groups. Thus while entrenchment appears to be a robust solution to the problem of the retreat from error, and one that generalizes across different error types, we did not find evidence that this is the case for preemption. The implication is that the solution to the retreat from error lies not with specialized mechanisms, but rather in a probabilistic process of construction competition.
url http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4412412?pdf=render
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