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Steady as a rock: does the steady state represent cognitive fossilization?
1Universidad de Puerto Rico, San Juan 00931.
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
|January 1, 1993
Summary
Children demonstrate superior command of Spanish verb conjugation compared to adults. This suggests linguistic knowledge relies more on analogical reasoning than rule-following, impacting language acquisition theories.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Psycholinguistics
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- The acquisition and mastery of inflectional morphology in verbal systems are crucial aspects of language development.
- Understanding the cognitive processes underlying linguistic knowledge, such as rule-based learning versus analogical reasoning, is a key area of research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the control of Spanish verbal system's inflexional morphology in both adults and children.
- To compare the linguistic knowledge and error patterns between adult and child language learners.
Main Methods:
- Data collection from adult and child participants on their control of Spanish verbal inflexional morphology.
- Analysis of participant errors to infer underlying linguistic knowledge mechanisms.
Main Results:
- Adults exhibited less proficient knowledge of the Spanish verbal paradigm compared to children.
- Analysis of errors indicated a stronger reliance on analogical reasoning rather than adherence to unconscious grammatical rules.
Conclusions:
- Linguistic knowledge, particularly in complex inflectional systems like Spanish verbs, may be better characterized as an ability for correct analogical inference.
- Findings have implications for theoretical linguistics, specifically Government and Binding (GB) theory, and for models of first and second language acquisition.