Research article summary (published 30 Jan 2003):

Lexically specific constructions in the acquisition of inflection in English.

Full Abstract

Children learning English often omit grammatical words and morphemes, but there is still much debate over exactly why and in what contexts they do so. This study investigates the acquisition of three elements which instantiate the grammatical category of 'inflection'--copula be, auxiliary be and 3sg present agreement-in longitudinal transcripts from five children, whose ages range from 1;6 to 3;5 in the corpora examined. The aim is to determine whether inflection emerges as a unitary category, as predicted by some recent generative accounts, or whether it develops in a more piecemeal fashion, consistent with constructivist accounts. It is found that for each child the relative pace of development of the three morphemes studied varies significantly, suggesting that these morphemes do not depend on a unitary underlying category. Furthermore, early on, be is often used primarily with particular closed-class subjects, suggesting that forms such as he's and that's are learned as lexically specific constructions. These findings are argued to support the idea that children learn 'inflection' (and by hypothesis, other functional categories) not by filling in pre-specified slots in an innate structure, but by learning some specific constructions involving particular lexical items, before going on to gradually abstract more general construction types.

Author information

Author/s: Wilson, Stephen (S);

Affiliation: University of California, 1320 Gonda Center, 695 Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1761, USA. stephenw(-atsign-)ucla.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Journal of child language (J Child Lang), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2003-Feb; vol 30 (issue 1) : pp 75-115

Dates: Created 2003/04/29; Completed 2003/05/14; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12718294, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Child Child Language Child, Preschool Female Humans

Infant Language Male Verbal Learning Vocabulary

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