Maitreyee Ramya, Saxena Gaurav, Narasimhan Bhuvana, Misra Sharma Dipti, Mishra Pruthwik, Bhaya Nair Rukmini, Samanta Soumitra, Ambridge Ben
School of Health and Social Care,, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, CO4 3SQ, UK.
School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TU, UK.
Open Res Eur. 2023 Sep 13;3:49. doi: 10.12688/openreseurope.15611.1. eCollection 2023.
A question that lies at the very heart of language acquisition research is how children learn semi-regular systems with exceptions (e.g., the English plural rule that yields , etc, with exceptions and ). We investigated this question for Hindi ergative marking; another semi-regular but exception-filled system. Generally, in the past tense, the subject of two-participant transitive verbs (e.g., ) is marked with , but there are exceptions. How, then, do children learn when marking is required, when it is optional, and when it is ungrammatical? We conducted two studies using (a) acceptability judgment and (b) elicited production methods with children (aged 4-5, 5-6 and 9-10 years) and adults. All age groups showed effects of : the greater the frequency with which a particular verb appears with versus without marking on the subject - relative to other verbs - the greater the extent to which participants (a) accepted and (b) produced over zero-marked subjects. Both children and adults also showed effects of clause-level semantics, showing greater acceptance of over zero-marked subjects for intentional than unintentional actions. Some evidence of semantic effects at the level of the verb was observed in the elicited production task for children and the judgment task for adults. participants mainly learn ergative marking on an input-based verb-by-verb basis (i.e., via statistical preemption; verb-level semantics), but are also sensitive to clause-level semantic considerations (i.e., the intentionality of the action). These findings add to a growing body of work which suggests that children learn semi-regular, exception-filled systems using both statistics and semantics.
语言习得研究的核心问题之一是儿童如何学习带有例外情况的半规则系统（例如，英语复数规则会产生……等，但存在例外情况……和……）。我们针对印地语作格标记研究了这个问题；这是另一个半规则但充满例外情况的系统。一般来说，在过去时态中，双参与者及物动词（例如……）的主语用……标记，但存在例外情况。那么，儿童是如何学会何时需要使用……标记、何时是可选择的以及何时是不符合语法的呢？我们进行了两项研究，分别使用（a）可接受性判断和（b）对儿童（4至5岁、5至6岁和9至10岁）及成年人的诱发性产出方法。所有年龄组都表现出……的影响：相对于其他动词，某个特定动词在主语上带有……标记与不带有……标记出现的频率越高，参与者（a）接受以及（b）产出……标记而非零标记主语的程度就越高。儿童和成年人也都表现出从句层面语义的影响，与无意行为相比，对于有意行为，他们对……标记而非零标记主语的接受度更高。在儿童的诱发性产出任务和成年人的判断任务中，观察到了一些动词层面语义影响的证据。参与者主要在基于输入的逐个动词基础上（即通过统计抢先；动词层面语义）学习作格标记，但也对从句层面的语义因素（即行为的意向性）敏感。这些发现进一步丰富了越来越多的研究成果，表明儿童使用统计和语义来学习半规则、充满例外情况的系统。
