Rowland Caroline F, Pine Julian M, Lieven Elena V, Theakston Anna L
Department of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Bedford Street South, Liverpool L69 7ZA, UK.
J Child Lang. 2003 Aug;30(3):609-35.
Accounts that specify semantic and/or syntactic complexity as the primary determinant of the order in which children acquire particular words or grammatical constructions have been highly influential in the literature on question acquisition. One explanation of wh-question acquisition in particular suggests that the order in which English speaking children acquire wh-questions is determined by two interlocking linguistic factors; the syntactic function of the wh-word that heads the question and the semantic generality (or 'lightness') of the main verb (Bloom, Merkin & Wootten, 1982; Bloom, 1991). Another more recent view, however, is that acquisition is influenced by the relative frequency with which children hear particular wh-words and verbs in their input (e.g. Rowland & Pine, 2000). In the present study over 300 hours of naturalistic data from twelve two- to three-year-old children and their mothers were analysed in order to assess the relative contribution of complexity and input frequency to wh-question acquisition. The analyses revealed, first, that the acquisition order of wh-questions could be predicted successfully from the frequency with which particular wh-words and verbs occurred in the children's input and, second, that syntactic and semantic complexity did not reliably predict acquisition once input frequency was taken into account. These results suggest that the relationship between acquisition and complexity may be a by-product of the high correlation between complexity and the frequency with which mothers use particular wh-words and verbs. We interpret the results in terms of a constructivist view of language acquisition.
将语义和/或句法复杂性指定为儿童习得特定单词或语法结构顺序的主要决定因素的观点，在有关疑问句习得的文献中具有很大影响力。特别是对特殊疑问句习得的一种解释表明，说英语的儿童习得特殊疑问句的顺序由两个相互关联的语言因素决定；引导疑问句的疑问词的句法功能以及主要动词的语义普遍性（或“轻”）（布鲁姆、默金和伍滕，1982年；布鲁姆，1991年）。然而，另一种更新的观点认为，习得受到儿童在输入中听到特定疑问词和动词的相对频率的影响（例如罗兰和派恩，2000年）。在本研究中，分析了来自12名两到三岁儿童及其母亲的300多个小时的自然主义数据，以评估复杂性和输入频率对特殊疑问句习得的相对贡献。分析首先表明，特殊疑问句的习得顺序可以根据特定疑问词和动词在儿童输入中出现的频率成功预测，其次，一旦考虑到输入频率，句法和语义复杂性并不能可靠地预测习得情况。这些结果表明，习得与复杂性之间的关系可能是复杂性与母亲使用特定疑问词和动词的频率之间高度相关性的副产品。我们根据建构主义的语言习得观点来解释这些结果。
