PLoS ONE (Jan 2014)

The retreat from locative overgeneralisation errors: a novel verb grammaticality judgment study.

  • Amy Bidgood,
  • Ben Ambridge,
  • Julian M Pine,
  • Caroline F Rowland

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0097634
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 5
p. e97634

Abstract

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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.