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Related Experiment Videos

Explaining errors in children's questions.

Caroline F Rowland1

  • 1School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Bedford Street South, Liverpool, L69 7ZA, UK. crowland@liverpool.ac.uk

Cognition
|July 15, 2006
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Children

Area of Science:

  • Child language acquisition
  • Developmental linguistics
  • Psycholinguistics

Background:

  • Understanding errors in children's speech is crucial for language acquisition theories.
  • Generativist and constructivist theories offer different explanations for these errors.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To test generativist and constructivist predictions regarding errors in English-learning children's question formation.
  • To analyze error patterns in yes/no and wh-questions produced by children aged 2-5.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of spontaneous questions produced by ten English-learning children.
  • Comparison of error rates for questions with auxiliary DO versus modal auxiliaries.
  • Examination of wh-questions involving modals and DO.

Related Experiment Videos

Main Results:

  • Questions with auxiliary DO showed higher error rates than those with modal auxiliaries, supporting some generativist predictions.
  • Wh-questions with modals and DO had similar high error rates, not explained by negation or 'why' formation.
  • Findings suggest errors may stem from reliance on other operations when established constructions are not used.

Conclusions:

  • Children's speech errors in question formation may be better explained by constructivist accounts.
  • Entrenched, item-based constructions might be error-resistant.
  • Further development of constructivist theory is needed to predict the nature of error-producing operations.