A connectionist model of the retreat from verb argument structure overgeneralization



Ambridge, Ben ORCID: 0000-0003-2389-8477 and Blything, Ryan P
(2016) A connectionist model of the retreat from verb argument structure overgeneralization. JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE, 43 (6). pp. 1245-1276.

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Abstract

A central question in language acquisition is how children build linguistic representations that allow them to generalize verbs from one construction to another (e.g., The boy gave a present to the girl → The boy gave the girl a present), whilst appropriately constraining those generalizations to avoid non-adultlike errors (e.g., I said no to her → *I said her no). Although a consensus is emerging that learners solve this problem using both statistical and semantics-based learning procedures (e.g., entrenchment, pre-emption, and semantic verb class formation), there currently exist few - if any - proposals for a learning model that combines these mechanisms. The present study used a connectionist model to test an account that argues for competition between constructions based on (a) verb-in construction frequency, (b) relevance of constructions for the speaker's intended message, and (c) fit between the fine-grained semantic properties of individual verbs and individual constructions. The model was able not only (a) to simulate the overall pattern of overgeneralization-then-retreat, but also (b) to use the semantics of novel verbs to predict their argument structure privileges (just as real learners do), and

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Humans, Language Development, Intention, Comprehension, Concept Formation, Linguistics, Semantics, Computer Simulation, Child, Child, Preschool, Female, Male, Generalization, Psychological, Neural Networks, Computer
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 25 Jul 2016 14:41
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 07:33
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000915000586
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3002516