The Retreat from Locative Overgeneralisation Errors: A Novel Verb Grammaticality Judgment Study



Bidgood, Amy ORCID: 0000-0002-9719-4256, Ambridge, Ben ORCID: 0000-0003-2389-8477, Pine, Julian M ORCID: 0000-0002-7077-9713 and Rowland, Caroline F
(2014) The Retreat from Locative Overgeneralisation Errors: A Novel Verb Grammaticality Judgment Study. PLOS ONE, 9 (5). e97634-.

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Abstract

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.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: ## TULIP Type: Articles/Papers (Journal) ##
Uncontrolled Keywords: Humans, Language, Language Development, Verbal Learning, Judgment, Psycholinguistics, Semantics, Vocabulary, Adult, Child, Child, Preschool, Female, Male, Young Adult, Generalization, Psychological
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 11 Apr 2016 08:25
Last Modified: 15 Dec 2022 23:48
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0097634
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3000419