Accelerated learning without semantic similarity: indirect objects
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Anat Ninio
Abstract
The hypothesis was tested that transfer and facilitation of learning in early syntactic development does not rely on semantic analogy among the items. The study focused on the verb-indirect object (VI) construction. Longitudinal naturalistic speech corpora of 14 Hebrew-speaking children (1;04–2;08) were analyzed, 9 females and 5 males, White and predominantly middle class. There was facilitation of learning among the first 10 verbs in the VI pattern, as evidenced by the accelerating growth curves. However, there was much semantic variability among the 10 indirect objects, and most had no semantically similar antecedents in the same construction. The results indicate that facilitation of learning of early syntax is most probably not mediated by semantic similarity.
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
Articles in the same Issue
- Towards a lexically specific grammar of children’s question constructions
- A frame-based approach to case alternations: The swarm-class verbs in Czech
- The mental space structure of verbal irony
- Accelerated learning without semantic similarity: indirect objects
- Conceptual blending, somatic marking, and normativity: a case example from ancient Chinese
- Book reviews
Articles in the same Issue
- Towards a lexically specific grammar of children’s question constructions
- A frame-based approach to case alternations: The swarm-class verbs in Czech
- The mental space structure of verbal irony
- Accelerated learning without semantic similarity: indirect objects
- Conceptual blending, somatic marking, and normativity: a case example from ancient Chinese
- Book reviews
