Subject-auxiliary inversion errors and wh-question acquisition: 'what children do know'?
1Institute of Behavioural Sciences, University of Derby, UK. c.rowland@derby.ac.uk
Journal of Child Language
|March 31, 2000
Summary
Children learn wh-questions by memorizing specific word combinations, not by applying abstract grammar rules. This finding supports constructivist theories of early language acquisition and distributional learning.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psycholinguistics
- Child Language Acquisition
- Linguistic Theory
Background:
- Early wh-question development in children is complex, involving both correct production and subject-auxiliary inversion errors.
- Existing movement rule accounts struggle to fully explain the observed patterns in early wh-question formation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze correct wh-question production and subject-auxiliary inversion errors in a child's early data.
- To evaluate the explanatory power of movement rule accounts versus lexically-specific formulaic learning.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of longitudinal wh-question data from a single child (ages 2;3.4 to 4;10.23).
- Comparison of observed inversion patterns with predictions from lexically-specific input frequencies and constructivist models.
Main Results:
- Movement rule accounts failed to explain the child's wh-question patterning.
- The child's data aligns with learning lexically-specific wh-word + auxiliary combinations based on maternal input frequency.
- Correctly inverted wh-questions can emerge without an explicit subject-auxiliary inversion rule.
Conclusions:
- Early wh-question development is better explained by distributional learning of specific lexical formulae than by abstract movement rules.
- Findings support constructivist theories emphasizing input-driven learning mechanisms in early multi-word speech.
- The study has implications for understanding grammatical development theories, contrasting rule-based and constructivist perspectives.
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