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Showing 1 to 15 of 39 results Save | Export
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Ailís Cournane; Mina Hirzel; Valentine Hacquard – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2024
Modals (e.g., "can," "must") vary along two dimensions of meaning: "force" (i.e., possibility or necessity), and "flavor" (i.e., possibilities relative to knowledge [epistemic], goals [teleological], or rules [deontic] …). Comprehension studies show that children struggle with both force and flavor…
Descriptors: Verbs, Language Acquisition, Child Language, Definitions
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Sarah Berger; Laura J. Batterink – Developmental Science, 2024
Children achieve better long-term language outcomes than adults. However, it remains unclear whether children actually learn language "more quickly" than adults during real-time exposure to input--indicative of true superior language learning abilities--or whether this advantage stems from other factors. To examine this issue, we…
Descriptors: Child Language, Language Acquisition, Learning Processes, Language Skills
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Emma Libersky; Caitlyn Slawny; Margarita Kaushanskaya – Infant and Child Development, 2025
Codeswitching is a common feature of bilingual language practices, yet its impact on word learning is poorly understood. Critically, processing costs associated with codeswitching may extend to learning. Moreover, verbs tend to be more difficult to learn than nouns, and the challenges of learning verbs could compound with processing costs…
Descriptors: Nouns, Verbs, Language Acquisition, Vocabulary Development
Akari Ohba – ProQuest LLC, 2024
One of the fundamental questions in the field of language acquisition is a learnability problem, which considers how learners acquire certain aspects of language which are not directly provided in the input or whose referents are not readily observable. This dissertation investigates Japanese children's acquisition of various linguistic phenomena,…
Descriptors: Empathy, Verbs, Japanese, Self Concept
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Hartshorne, Joshua K. – First Language, 2020
Ambridge argues that the existence of exemplar models for individual phenomena (words, inflection rules, etc.) suggests the feasibility of a unified, exemplars-everywhere model that eschews abstraction. The argument would be strengthened by a description of such a model. However, none is provided. I show that any attempt to do so would immediately…
Descriptors: Models, Language Acquisition, Language Processing, Bayesian Statistics
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White, Michelle Jennifer; Southwood, Frenette; Huddlestone, Kate – First Language, 2023
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language that originated in South Africa as a descendent of Dutch. It displays discontinuous sentential negation (SN), where negation is expressed by two phonologically identical negative particles that appear in two different positions in the sentence. The negation system is argued to be an innovation that came about…
Descriptors: Morphemes, Language Acquisition, Indo European Languages, Standard Spoken Usage
Thom, Emily Ellen – ProQuest LLC, 2011
This dissertation tests a new account of rapid word learning and vocabulary growth that these processes develop as the result of attentional biases to the features of a category that are relevant to labeling/categorization, built as the result of word-learning experience within each category. Study 1 demonstrated that children's vocabulary size…
Descriptors: Language Acquisition, Vocabulary Development, Prediction, Children
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Shimpi, Priya M.; Fedewa, Alicia; Hans, Sydney – Applied Psycholinguistics, 2012
The relation of social and linguistic input measures to early vocabulary development was examined in 30 low-income African American mother-infant pairs. Observations were conducted when the child was 0 years, 1 month (0;1), 0;4, 0;8, 1;0, 1;6, and 2;0. Maternal input was coded for word types and tokens, contingent responsiveness, and…
Descriptors: Outcome Measures, Correlation, Longitudinal Studies, Child Language
Smith, Carlota S.; van Kleeck, Anne – 1984
An experimental study investigating the interaction of linguistic complexity and performance in child language acquisition tests the hypothesis that children learning a first language acquire relatively complex sentences somewhat later than less complex sentences. In one of three tests, the subjects, 44 children aged 3.6 to 6 years, were presented…
Descriptors: Child Language, Difficulty Level, Language Acquisition, Language Processing
Saleemi, Anjum P. – 1988
Children's ability to learn aspects of their language in the absence of supportive evidence is discussed. Specifically, the learnability of null subjects in languages in which they appear is examined when indirect negative evidence is present. It is concluded that parameters such as the null subject parameter may not generate languages, strictly…
Descriptors: Child Language, Difficulty Level, Grammar, Language Acquisition
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Dickinson, David K. – Applied Psycholinguistics, 1984
Reports on two studies that examined the natural process of word learning in children 4-11 years old. The children hear the new words in a conversation, a story, and paired with a definition. Results indicate that children at all ages could acquire a partial semantic representation from a single exposure. (SED)
Descriptors: Age Differences, Child Language, Children, Language Acquisition
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Plunkett, Kim; Marchman, Virginia A. – Cognition, 1996
Presents the goals of the Plunkett and Marchman (PM) connectionist model of the acquisition of verb morphology, and responds to related criticisms. Claims that small vocabulary size allows young children to correctly produce both regular and irregular past tense forms, and that non-linearities in vocabulary growth are a contributing factor to the…
Descriptors: Child Language, English, Language Acquisition, Language Processing
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Sabbagh, Mark A.; Wdowiak, Sylwia D.; Ottaway, Jennifer M. – Journal of Child Language, 2003
Thirty-six three- to four-year-old children were tested to assess whether hearing a word-referent link from an ignorant speaker affected children's abilities to subsequently link the same word with an alternative referent offered by another speaker. In the principal experimental conditions, children first heard either an ignorant or a…
Descriptors: Young Children, Language Acquisition, Child Language, Language Processing
Au, Terry Kit-Fong – Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, 1985
Two studies were performed to determine the process used by young children to figure out the meaning of a new word. It was hypothesized that the children would use one of two strategies: (1) ignore the word and wait for more information, or learn only what is unambiguous about it, or (2) make a reasonable but uncertain guess, quickly setting up…
Descriptors: Child Language, Comprehension, Concept Formation, Language Acquisition
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Christiansen, Morten H.; Allen, Joseph; Seidenberg, Mark S. – Language and Cognitive Processes, 1998
Describes a connectionist model, using a simple recurrent network trained on a phoneme prediction task, that accounts for the child's ability to identify word boundaries. The model shows that aspects of linguistic structure that are not overtly marked in the input can be derived by efficiently combining multiple probabilistic cues. (Author/MSE)
Descriptors: Child Language, Language Acquisition, Language Processing, Language Research
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