How the input shapes the acquisition of verb morphology: Elicited production and computational modelling in two highly inflected languages

Engelmann, F; Granlund, S; Kolak, J; Szreder, M; Ambridge, B; Pine, J; Theakston, A; Lieven, E

Abstract

Abstract
The aim of the present work was to develop a computational model of how children acquire inflectional morphology for marking person and number; one of the central challenges in language development. First, in order to establish which putative learning phenomena are sufficiently robust to constitute a target for modelling, we ran large-scale elicited production studies with native learners of Finnish (N = 77; 35–63 months) and Polish (N = 81; 35–59 months), using a novel method that, unlike previous studies, allows for elicitation of all six person/number forms in the paradigm (first, second and third person; singular and plural). We then proceeded to build and test a connectionist model of the acquisition of person/number marking which not only acquires near adult-like mastery of the system (including generalisation to unseen items), but also yields all of the key phenomena observed in the elicited-production studies; specifically, effects of token frequency and phonological neighbourhood density of the target form, and a pattern whereby errors generally reflect the replacement of low frequency targets by higher-frequency forms of the same verb, or forms with the same person/number as the target, but with a suffix from an inappropriate conjugation class. The findings demonstrate that acquisition of even highly complex systems of inflectional morphology can be accounted for by a theoretical model that assumes rote storage and phonological analogy, as opposed to formal symbolic rules.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Feb 19, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jun 28, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 28, 2022
• Journal: Cognitive Psychology
• Print ISSN: 0010-0285
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Volume: 110
• Pages: 30-69
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2019.02.001
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2019.02.001