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ERIC Number: EJ1485921
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Oct
Pages: 22
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0305-0009
EISSN: EISSN-1469-7602
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Exploring Early Syntactic Generalisation: Evidence from a Growth Curve Analysis of Spanish "se" Constructions
Journal of Child Language, v52 n1 p158-179 2025
Children's early grammatical constructions, e.g., SVO, exhibit a learning curve with cumulative verb types (CVT) increasing exponentially. According to Ninio (2006), the fact that learning curves, though nonlinear, can be modelled by a continuous regression suggests instant generalisation. Moreover, differences in initial verbs across children indicate minimal involvement of semantics. This study tested these claims on the Spanish "se" constructions (SSCs) in two children, Juan and Lucía (Aguado-Orea & Pine, 2015). Ninio's findings were replicated. Nonetheless, exploratory analyses indicated that curves are driven by the temporal distribution of tokens (instances of the SSC irrespective of verb type) and therefore may reflect non-productivity-related mechanisms, e.g., retrieval-based learning. Furthermore, hapax verbs were relatively late to emerge in the children's data, suggesting emergent generalisation. Analyses of raw lexical frequencies indicated relative semantic homogeneity across the two children's verb types, suggesting a semantic prototype. Nonetheless, ecological factors may also explain these lexical similarities.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Education, Communication and Language Services, Newcastle University, UK