Individual differences in discourse priming
A traceback approach
In this paper we use corpora of four monolingual German-speaking children at 2 years of age to analyze the effect
of input on the activation of chunks and frame-and-slot patterns. For this purpose, we first investigate to what extent chunks and
patterns can be traced back to the direct input compared to input which is not part of the immediate discourse situation. Second,
we take mean length of utterance (MLU) into account to see how the level of proficiency influences the amount of priming in each
child. Results indicate that children with a lower MLU rely more on priming than children who are more proficient. This conclusion
is consistent with the usage-based assumption that children’s linguistic development starts with a strongly item-based
reproduction of input patterns that gradually gives rise to increasingly creative and productive uses of constructions.
Article outline
- 1.Acquiring inventories: A usage-based perspective
- 2.Tracing back utterances
- 3.Case study
- 3.1Data
- 3.2Method
- 3.3Results
- 4.Discussion and conclusion
- Notes
-
References
References (18)
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2024.
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Gaskins, Dorota, Antje Endesfelder Quick, Anna Verschik & Ad Backus
2022.
Usage-based approaches to child code-switching: State of the art and ways forward.
Cognitive Development 64
► pp. 101269 ff.

Quick, Antje Endesfelder, Dorota Gaskins & Maria Frick
2021.
Priming of Frames and Slots in Bilingual Children’s Code-Mixing: A Usage-Based Approach.
Frontiers in Psychology 12

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