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Casenhiser and Goldberg (2005)

This study explores how children learn novel constructional and morphological meanings by pairing known nouns with non-English verb orders. Results show significant improvement with high-frequency verb patterns. Fast mapping and cognitive anchoring play key roles in children's language acquisition. Skewed frequency and implicit learning techniques impact comprehension and generalization abilities. The study aims to understand how children process and extend novel utterances in different linguistic contexts.

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Casenhiser and Goldberg (2005)

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  1. Casenhiser and Goldberg (2005) • Ability to learn to pair novel constructional meaning with novel form • Known nouns and nonsense verb arranged in non- English word order • Presented present tense and then past tense • NP1, NP2, nonsense V • The spot the king moopos; The spot the king moopoed • Video showing a spot appearing on the king’s nose

  2. 51 kids, 5-7 years old • Training: presented 5 novel verbs and 16 examples (3 minutes) • BF: 5 verbs w/ low frequency (44422) • HF: 5 verbs w/ high frequency (82222) • Control: watched film with no sound

  3. Forced choice comprehension • Two video clips shown simultaneously; subjects point to the one described by the sentence • Six with novel pattern and verb, six with transitive pattern and verb

  4. C and G Results • Figure 4.1 • Control: no better than chance • Balanced: significant improvement over control • Skewed (HF): significant improvement over balanced • Children can get novel abstract meaning from a novel pattern with novel verbs; they can extend that to new utterances with new novel verbs

  5. Implicit learning • “…high token frequency of a single general exemplar does indeed facilitate the acquisition of constructional meaning” (p. 82)

  6. Other Studies • Goldberg, Casenhiser, and Sethuraman (2004) had found similar results with adults • Kidd, Lieven, and Tomasello (2005) • 4-year olds with complement-taking verbs • I say her give the present to her mom. • Children changed the main verb 25% of the time • 70% of substitutions involved think • Evidence that kids’ generalizations about construction involve verbs that are frequent in those constructions

  7. Fast Mapping and UG • Could this fast mapping be evidence that they’re innate?

  8. Morphology and Word Order • Could subjects have been paying attention to the -o suffix on the novel verbs? • Use non -o verbs • Do children recognize the novel word order? • Two scenes: appearance (SVO) and transitive (SOV) • Results • Children learned the novel construction without the morphological cue (Fig. 4.3) • Children matched word orders with appropriate scenes (Fig. 4.4)

  9. Skewed Frequency in Non-Linguistic Categorization • Strong correlation between frequency of token and the likelihood it will be considered a prototype • Facilitates category learning • Less variability / distortion = faster category learning

  10. Elio and Anderson (1984) • “Centered” condition – frequent, prototypical instances • “Representative” condition – fully representative samples • “The superiority of the centered condition over the representative condition suggests that an initial, low-variance sample of the most frequently occurring members may allow the learner to get a ‘fix’ on what will account for most of the category members.”

  11. Gentner, Loewenstein, and Hung (2002) • Martians and blicks 1 2 • Those who get high similarity tasks first do better with low similarity tasks later on

  12. Goldberg and Casenhiser (forthcoming) • High frequency and dot patterns • 24 college undergraduates tested to see if they could determine new variations in dot patterns over the frequently occurring pattern • Skewed frequency group performed better than the balanced frequency group • Figure 4.5

  13. What’s the point? • Frequency and early use of one verb pattern should facilitate the learning of the semantics of that pattern 1) She put a finger on that. 2) He done boots on. (28 months) X causes Y to move Zloc is associated with Subj V Obj Oblpath/loc • Other constructions center around nouns, adjectives, complementizers, etc. • Double is construction with thing

  14. Cognitive Anchoring • High-frequency type of example acts as an anchor (a standard for comparison) • Number anchoring in cognitive psychology • Anchoring effects are stronger when the anchor is perceived to be relevant to the task

  15. High Frequency Tokens • Are they necessary? NO! Subjects in the balanced condition performed better than those in the control condition (also – natural language learning) • Do high frequency morphological tokens lead to generalizations? Bybee (1995) says no – they become routines that are not analyzed and can’t be extended (went, am) • VP idioms (kick the bucket) are analyzed

  16. Conservative Learning / Fast Mapping • Children stick with the forms they’ve heard with particular verbs (Ch. 3) • Age-related? • Children vs. adults – experience with language • Learners may be simply making tentative generalizations – after all, they’re just recognizing differences – there’s no actual production involved in the experiments

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