Frequency and similarity are important determinants for the acquisition of children’s early item-based constructions. This paper argues that frequency and similarity are equally important for the development of more complex and intricate grammatical phenomena such as relative clauses. Specifically, the paper shows that the acquisition of relative clauses is crucially determined by the similarity between particular types of relative clauses and simple SVO constructions. Two specific hypotheses are proposed: First, since subject relatives have the same word order as ordinary SVO clauses, they usually cause fewer difficulties in comprehension studies than non-subject relatives. Second, while non-subject relatives are structurally distinct from SVO clauses, semantically they are expressed by prototypical transitive constructions, which arguably helps the child to learn this type of relative clause.
2016. Asymmetries in children's production of relative clauses: data from English and Korean. Journal of Child Language 43:5 ► pp. 1038 ff.
KIRJAVAINEN, MINNA, EVAN KIDD & ELENA LIEVEN
2017. How do language-specific characteristics affect the acquisition of different relative clause types? Evidence from Finnish. Journal of Child Language 44:1 ► pp. 120 ff.
2023. Why we need a gradient approach to word order. Linguistics 61:4 ► pp. 825 ff.
Llompart, Miquel & Ewa Dąbrowska
2024. Explicit instruction improves the comprehension of Spanish object relatives by young monolingual children. Language and Cognition► pp. 1 ff.
Mateu, Victoria & Nina Hyams
2021. Structural intervention effects in the acquisition of sluicing. Language Acquisition 28:1 ► pp. 6 ff.
Montag, Jessica L., Michael N. Jones & Linda B. Smith
2018. Quantity and Diversity: Simulating Early Word Learning Environments. Cognitive Science 42:S2 ► pp. 375 ff.
Reali, Florencia
2014. Frequency Affects Object Relative Clause Processing: Some Evidence in Favor of Usage‐Based Accounts. Language Learning 64:3 ► pp. 685 ff.
Rezaeian, Mehrdad, Firooz Sadighi, Mortaza Yamini & Mohammad Sadegh Bagheri
2018. The role of animacy and language proficiency in the comprehension of English restrictive relative clauses by Iranian EFL learners: an emergentist approach. Asian-Pacific Journal of Second and Foreign Language Education 3:1
Sanfelici, Emanuela & Petra Schulz
2021. Can Frequency Account for the Grammatical Choices of Children and Adults in Nominal Modification Contexts? Evidence from Elicited Production and Child-Directed Speech. Languages 6:1 ► pp. 35 ff.
Shenoy, Swathi & Sudhin Karuppali
2021. Determining the development of syntax in typically-developing Indian adolescents using a syntactic analysis package. International Journal of Adolescent Medicine and Health 33:1
2019. Mandarin–English speaking bilingual and Mandarin speaking monolingual children’s comprehension of relative clauses. Applied Psycholinguistics 40:4 ► pp. 933 ff.
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