Tatsumi Tomoko, Ambridge Ben, Pine Julian M
University of Liverpool and ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD).
J Child Lang. 2018 Sep;45(5):1144-1173. doi: 10.1017/S0305000918000107. Epub 2018 May 11.
This study tested the claim of input-based accounts of language acquisition that children's inflectional errors reflect competition between different forms of the same verb in memory. In order to distinguish this claim from the claim that inflectional errors reflect the use of a morphosyntactic default, we focused on the Japanese verb system, which shows substantial by-verb variation in the frequency distribution of past and nonpast forms. 22 children aged 3;2-5;8 (Study 1) and 26 children aged 2;7-4;11 (Study 2) completed elicited production studies designed to elicit past and nonpast forms of 20 verbs (past-biased and nonpast-biased). Children made errors in both directions, using past forms in nonpast contexts, and vice versa, with the likelihood of each determined by the frequency bias of the two forms in the input language, even after controlling for telicity. This bi-directional pattern provides particularly direct evidence for the role of frequency-sensitive competition between stored forms.
本研究检验了基于输入的语言习得理论的观点，即儿童的屈折变化错误反映了记忆中同一动词不同形式之间的竞争。为了将这一观点与屈折变化错误反映形态句法默认用法的观点区分开来，我们聚焦于日语动词系统，该系统在过去式和非过去式形式的频率分布上表现出显著的动词差异。22名年龄在3岁2个月至5岁8个月的儿童（研究1）和26名年龄在2岁7个月至4岁11个月的儿童（研究2）完成了诱发产出研究，旨在诱发20个动词（过去式偏向和非过去式偏向）的过去式和非过去式形式。儿童在两个方向上都会出错，在非过去式语境中使用过去式形式，反之亦然，即使在控制了情状之后，每种情况出现的可能性也由输入语言中两种形式的频率偏向决定。这种双向模式为存储形式之间频率敏感竞争的作用提供了特别直接的证据。
