Acquisition of cumulative conditioning effects on words: Spanish-speaking children’s [subject pronoun + verb] usage

First Language · 2022 · 9 citations

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Linguistics

Child language acquisition research has provided ample evidence of lexical frequency effects. This corpus-based analysis introduces a novel frequency measure shown to significantly constrain adult language variation, but heretofore unexplored in child language acquisition research. Among adults, frequent occurrence of a form in a particular discourse context that conditions usage accumulates in memory over time and shapes the lexical representation of that form. This study contributes to the body of research on frequency effects in child language acquisition by testing whether such cumulative conditioning effects are also found among children, and, if so, at what age such effects appear. Specifically, the study investigates the influence of a distributional frequency measure (each verb form’s likelihood of use in a switch vs same-reference discourse context) on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression ( N = 2227) in Spanish (e.g. yo voy ~ voy, both meaning ‘I go’) in the speech of 65 monolingual children in two age cohorts. Results reveal sensitivity to the contextual conditioning of discourse continuity (switch reference) among both the younger (6- and 7-year-olds) and older (8- and 9-year-olds) children in support of previous research. In addition, each verb’s likelihood of use in a switch-reference context significantly predicted the SPP use among the older children, but not the younger ones, suggesting that the cumulative effect of a probabilistic pattern takes time to emerge during childhood. The lexically specific accumulation in memory of contextual conditioning effects supports exemplar models of child language acquisition: each instance of use in discourse contributes to the lexical representation of that form and, over time, plays a role in the creation of morphosyntactic patterns during language development.

Lexically specific accumulation in memory of word and segment speech rates

Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory · 2021 · 12 citations

• Computer Science
• Natural Language Processing
• Computer Science

Abstract Variability abounds in speech. According to usage-based accounts, lexical representations reflect phonetic variants of words resulting from contextual conditioning. Because faster speech contexts promote durational shortening of words and segments, words that occur more often in fast speech may be more reduced than words commonly used in slow speech, independent of the target’s contextual speech rate. To test this, linear mixed-effects models including a word form’s ratio of conditioning by fast speech contexts (FRC RATE ) are used to predict the duration of Spanish /s/ and words containing /s/ in a corpus of spoken Spanish. Results show that words’ cumulative exposure to relatively fast speech affects phonetic realizations independent of factors operative in the production contexts. Thus, word and segment rates reflect cumulative (lexicalized) effects of words’ experience in fast speech contexts. The results suggest that lexically specific cumulative measures should be incorporated into models of linguistic variation and change.

O infinitivo flexionado en galego: unha análise variacionista baseada na lingua oral

Estudos de Lingüística Galega · 2021 · 1 citations

• Humanities
• Humanities
• Philosophy

O presente traballo ofrece os resultados da primeira análise variacionista do infinitivo flexionado en galego no contexto das cláusulas adverbiais co obxectivo de identificar a gramática probabilística da dita construción, en contraposición ao infinitivo invariable e ao subxuntivo. Os resultados suxiren que os patróns de uso do infinitivo flexionado están condicionados principalmente polo grao de accesibilidade do referente do suxeito da cláusula adverbial. Canto máis baixa é a accesibilidade do dito suxeito, maior é a posibilidade de que apareza a forma flexionada. Ademais, a análise variacionista amosa que, a medida que aumenta a complexidade sintáctica da cláusula, aumenta tamén a probabilidade de que apareza o subxuntivo. Polo tanto, o uso do infinitivo flexionado está restrinxido a cláusulas cunha complexidade sintáctica reducida. Os resultados están baseados nos datos do CORILGA, un extenso corpus de galego oral dun millón catrocentas mil palabras. Compárase tamén o infinitivo flexionado en galego e portugués en canto á frecuencia e contextos de uso así como á súa aparición cun suxeito nominativo co obxectivo último de proporcionarmos datos novos dunha lingua (galego) pouco estudada para contribuír ao coñecemento do infinitivo flexionado, un fenómeno gramatical excepcional nas linguas do mundo.