The retreat from locative overgeneralisation errors: a novel verb grammaticality judgment study.
Whilst some locative verbs alternate between the ground- and figure-locative constructions (e.g. Lisa sprayed the flowers with water/Lisa sprayed water onto the flowers), others are restricted to one construction or the other (e.g. *Lisa filled water into the cup/*Lisa poured the cup with water). The present study investigated two proposals for how learners (aged 5-6, 9-10 and adults) acquire this restriction, using a novel-verb-learning grammaticality-judgment paradigm. In support of the semantic verb class hypothesis, participants in all age groups used the semantic properties of novel verbs to determine the locative constructions (ground/figure/both) in which they could and could not appear. In support of the frequency hypothesis, participants' tolerance of overgeneralisation errors decreased with each increasing level of verb frequency (novel/low/high). These results underline the need to develop an integrated account of the roles of semantics and frequency in the retreat from argument structure overgeneralisation.
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom.
Amy
A
Bidgood
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom.
Ben
B
Ambridge
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom.
Julian M
JM
Pine
Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom.
Caroline F
CF
Rowland
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary; D055815:Young Adult