Can Frequency Account for the Grammatical Choices of Children and Adults in Nominal Modification Contexts? Evidence from Elicited Production and Child-Directed Speech

There is consensus that languages possess several grammatical variants satisfying the same conversational function. Nevertheless, it a matter of debate which principles guide adult speaker’s choice and child’s acquisition order these variants. Various proposals have suggested frequency shapes language use acquisition. Taking domain nominal modification as its testing ground, this paper explores in two studies role structures plays for adults’ children’s structural choices German. In Study 1, 133 three- to six-year-old children 21 adults were tested with an elicited production task prompting participants identify agent or patient referent among set alternatives. 2 analyzed corpus child-directed speech examine passive relative clauses, children, similar adults, produced very often 1. Importantly, relatives found be infrequent child input. These results show high rate rare structures, such relatives, difficult account frequency. We claim relation between natural given variant specific context indirect: speakers may opt less grammatically complex computation rather than most frequently used spontaneous speech.