Children’s acquisition of sociolinguistic variation
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Karen Miller
Abstract
This paper provides a review of past research on children’s acquisition of sociolinguistic variation and the impact that variable input has on the acquisition of grammatical morphology. I describe findings from both corpus studies and experimental studies, focusing primarily on the acquisition of variably produced plural morphology and subject-verb agreement. I make two predictions: (i) variable input impacts the time course of acquisition, such that variably produced morphology takes longer to acquire than non-variably produced morphology. And, (ii) variable input does not impact patterns of acquisition. Regardless of input-type, children pass through the same developmental linguistic stages.
Abstract
This paper provides a review of past research on children’s acquisition of sociolinguistic variation and the impact that variable input has on the acquisition of grammatical morphology. I describe findings from both corpus studies and experimental studies, focusing primarily on the acquisition of variably produced plural morphology and subject-verb agreement. I make two predictions: (i) variable input impacts the time course of acquisition, such that variably produced morphology takes longer to acquire than non-variably produced morphology. And, (ii) variable input does not impact patterns of acquisition. Regardless of input-type, children pass through the same developmental linguistic stages.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Three streams of generative language acquisition research 1
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Part I. Variation in input
- The comprehension of 3rd person singular -s by NYC English-speaking preschoolers 7
- Children’s acquisition of sociolinguistic variation 35
- Variability within varieties of English 59
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Part II. First language acquisition
- Parsing, pragmatics, and representation 85
- The interpretation of disjunction in VP ellipsis in Mandarin Chinese 107
- When OR is conjunctive in child Mandarin 125
- The acquisition of V-V compounds in Japanese 143
- Differentiating universal quantification from completive aspect in child Cantonese 159
- On the learnability of implicit arguments 185
- Red train, big train, broken train 203
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Part III. Second language acquisition
- The acquisition of Mandarin reflexives by heritage speakers and second language learners 225
- Interpretation of count and mass NPs by L2-learners from generalized classifier L1s 253
- Acquisition of word order in L2 Spanish 271
- Argument omission in SignL2 acquisition by deaf learners 297
- The Bottleneck Hypothesis updated 319
- Author index 347
- Subject index 355
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Three streams of generative language acquisition research 1
-
Part I. Variation in input
- The comprehension of 3rd person singular -s by NYC English-speaking preschoolers 7
- Children’s acquisition of sociolinguistic variation 35
- Variability within varieties of English 59
-
Part II. First language acquisition
- Parsing, pragmatics, and representation 85
- The interpretation of disjunction in VP ellipsis in Mandarin Chinese 107
- When OR is conjunctive in child Mandarin 125
- The acquisition of V-V compounds in Japanese 143
- Differentiating universal quantification from completive aspect in child Cantonese 159
- On the learnability of implicit arguments 185
- Red train, big train, broken train 203
-
Part III. Second language acquisition
- The acquisition of Mandarin reflexives by heritage speakers and second language learners 225
- Interpretation of count and mass NPs by L2-learners from generalized classifier L1s 253
- Acquisition of word order in L2 Spanish 271
- Argument omission in SignL2 acquisition by deaf learners 297
- The Bottleneck Hypothesis updated 319
- Author index 347
- Subject index 355
