The acquisition of verb morphology in Polish and Finnish: Model and experiment
نویسندگان
چکیده
Usage-based approaches suggest that language acquisition is a function of the statistical properties of the input. We compare predictions from neural network models with results of two elicited-production experiments on verb inflection with children in the morphologically complex languages Polish and Finnish. Three-layer neural networks were trained to produce person/number-inflected present-tense verb forms in Polish and Finnish from phoneme representations of verb stems using frequency information from child-directed speech corpora. Simulated acquisition in both languages was affected by token frequency and phonological neighbourhood density (PND) as well as an interaction such that low-frequency forms benefited more from PND than high-frequency forms. Suffix errors showed overgeneralisation and substitutions of low-frequency forms with higher-frequency forms. The model predictions are consistent with our empirical findings, except for the frequency X PND interaction. We discuss the experimental and simulated data and their implications.
منابع مشابه
Unaccusative and Unergative Verb Acquisition: Effects of Implicit, Explicit, and Mixed Oral Corrective Feedback
متن کامل
Task-Specific Artifacts of Parametric Properties in English as a Second Language Acquired by Persian-Speaking Learners
This experimental study investigated the learners’ integrative acquisition of obligatory overt subjects and subject-verb clause agreement in English as an L2. In L1 acquisition research, correlations between superficially unrelated linguistic phenomena are analyzed in terms of integrative effects. For instance, in English L1 acquisition, there is evidence for an integrative appearance of subjec...
متن کاملWord Order Acquisition in Persian Speaking Children
Objectives: Persian is a pro-drop language with canonical Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order. This study investigates the acquisition of word order in Persian-speaking children. Methods: In the present study, participants were 60 Persian-speaking children (30 girls and 30 boys) with typically developing language skills, and aged between 30-47 months. The 30-minute language samples were audio...
متن کاملAcquisition of Tense by Persian and English Speaking Children Between 2 to 4 Years Aged
This research is case study which was designed to investigate the acquisition of tense by Persian and English speaking children between 2to4 years aged. Four girls were precisely analyzed in order to figure how the tense of verbs is effective in their speaking that learners need to succeed in their daily lives. The subjects were randomly selected to study and the matter of gender was not consid...
متن کاملThe role of Persian causative markers in the acquisition of English causative verbs
This project investigates the relationship between lexical semantics and causative morphology in the acquisition of causative/inchoative-related verbs in English as a foreign language by Iranian speakers. Results of translation and picture judgment task show although L2 learners have largely acquired the correct lexico-syntactic classification of verbs in English, they were constrained by ...
متن کامل