How Do Children Develop Syntactic Representations from What They Hear?

nstructional schemas, both specific and abstract. Children are thought to start out with concrete pieces of language and to gradually develop more schematic constructions. All constructions are mappings between the form of the construction and a meaning, though this may not be either the full meaning or the full construction of the adult grammar. For instance a child may say Whats that? for months, perhaps as a request for the name of an object or perhaps as a way of getting attention without connecting the clitic -s to any representation of the verb, to BE. As their language develops children (1) learn more constructions (2) develop slots in constructions as they notice variation ract a more schematic meaning for each slot, making the constructions tract (4) add more slots to constructions making them more complex and (5) relate constructions to each other through distributional and analogical processes. Many previous studies of language development have argued that children could not...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: EELC
• Authors: Elena Lieven
• Keywords: Constructions, EELC 2006, Language Development, Languages, Schematic Constructions