Statistics and semantics in the acquisition of Spanish word order: Testing two accounts of the retreat from locative overgeneralization errors

Javier Aguado-Orea,Nuria Otero,Ben Ambridge

doi:10.1515/lingvan-2015-0021

Abstract

AbstractNative speakers of Spanish (children aged 6–7, 10–11 and adults) rated grammatical and ungrammatical ground- and figure-locative sentences with high frequency, low frequency and novel verbs (e. g.,Lisallenó/forró/nupóla caja con papel; *Lisallenó/forró/nupópapel en la caja, ‘Lisa filled/lined/nupped the box with paper’; ‘Lisa filled/lined/nupped paper into the box’) using a 5-point scale. Echoing the findings of a previous English study (a language with some important syntactic differences relevant to the locative), participants rated errors as least acceptable with high frequency verbs, more acceptable with low frequency verbs, and most acceptable with novel verbs, suggesting that learners retreat from error using statistically-based learning mechanisms regardless of the target language. In support of the semantic verb class hypothesis, adults showed evidence of using the meanings assigned to novel verbs to determine the locative constructions in which they can and cannot appear. However, unlike in the previous English study, the child groups did not. We conclude that the more flexible word order exhibited by Spanish, as compared to English, may make these types of regularities more difficult to discern.

Highlights

Native speakers of Spanish rated grammatical and ungrammatical ground- and figure-locative sentences with high frequency, low frequency and novel verbs (e. g., Lisa llenó/forró/nupó la caja con papel; *Lisa llenó/forró/nupó papel en la caja, ‘Lisa filled/ lined/nupped the box with paper’; ‘Lisa filled/lined/nupped paper into the box’) using a 5-point scale
In a language like Spanish, on the basis of hearing figure-locatives (1) and ground-locatives (2) with the same verb, children could set up a productive generalization that allows them to use in the latter construction verbs that have been attested solely in the former construction, and vice versa (3)
Given that this is the first study of its type in Spanish, it was first necessary to conduct a preliminary analysis on the familiar verbs only, in order to check that we were successful in our aim of selecting verbs that are viewed as figure-only, ground-only and alternating respectively by adult native speakers

Summary

Introduction

Native speakers of Spanish (children aged 6–7, 10–11 and adults) rated grammatical and ungrammatical ground- and figure-locative sentences with high frequency, low frequency and novel verbs (e. g., Lisa llenó/forró/nupó la caja con papel; *Lisa llenó/forró/nupó papel en la caja, ‘Lisa filled/ lined/nupped the box with paper’; ‘Lisa filled/lined/nupped paper into the box’) using a 5-point scale. Native speakers of Spanish (children aged 6–7, 10–11 and adults) rated grammatical and ungrammatical ground- and figure-locative sentences with high frequency, low frequency and novel verbs In a language like Spanish, on the basis of hearing figure-locatives (1) and ground-locatives (2) with the same verb, children could set up a productive generalization that allows them to use in the latter construction verbs that have been attested solely in the former construction, and vice versa (3). Lisa regó agua en las rosas [ = Lisa sprayed water onto the roses] ← → Lisa regó las rosas con agua [ = Lisa sprayed the roses with water] Without this ability, language would consist of nothing more than an inventory of rote-learned utterances; a position that has not been taken seriously since Chomsky’s (1959) review of Skinner’s (1957) Verbal Behavior.

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