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The effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2019

Erin CONWELL
Erin CONWELL*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: North Dakota State University, NDSU Dept. 2765, P.O. Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050. Tel: 1-701-231-6123. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

The English dative alternation has received much attention in the literature on argument structure acquisition in children. However, the data on the acquisition of this alternation have consistently revealed a counter-intuitive pattern: children look more proficient with the lower frequency prepositional form of the dative than with the higher frequency double object form (Conwell & Demuth, 2007; Rowland & Noble, 2010). This may be because the DO dative typically occurs with pronominal argument types in first post-verbal position, which may result in an over-reliance on stereotyped forms (e.g., give + me) for early comprehension and production (Conwell, O'Donnell, & Snedeker, 2011). This paper presents three studies of the effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension by three-year-olds. Children's comprehension of the DO dative improved significantly when the first post-verbal argument was pronominal; no other effects of pronoun use were significant. Children's experience affects their ability to use lexically general representations of syntactic structures.

Keywords

language acquisitionargument structurepronounscomprehension
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 46 , Issue 6 , November 2019 , pp. 1127 - 1141
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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