engleski

Language corpora and first language acquisition – a case study of the ditransitive construction

The issues concerning first language acquisition are analyzed from a wide array of perspectives, such as neurolinguistics, applied linguistics, psychology and biology. Our paper investigates the mechanisms of language acquisition by observing the patterns of ditransitive construction usage in child language. The idiosyncratic nature of the ditransitive construction allows us to study linguistic disparity with the progression of age in terms of learnability, productivity and flexibility. In order to resolve some of the mysteries concerning language acquisition, the paper approaches the subject matter through the use of corpus linguistics methods, relying on intra-linguistic rather than inter- or extra- linguistic evidence. The research we present in our paper is based on collected and annotated data from previous studies on English-speaking children, incorporated into the CHILDES language learner corpora, available via the Sketch Engine family of corpora. From the available data-set we extract the data on the “double-object dative” ditransitive construction (VP → NP1 → NP2) used by children and adults (age groups 0-3, 4-6 and 18 and over). Our main focus are the lexical and structural aspects of the ditransitive constructions, i.e. the typological analysis of ditransitive constructions and the frequency evaluation of different verbs and substantives used in them. Namely, the aim is to determine which verbs and nouns appear frequently in the aforementioned groups, which of them frequently co-appear and how many such distinctive types there are in child and adult language. Such analysis allows us to draw conclusions on whether the nature of language acquisition is prototypical in its essence, the assumption being that the learning of ditransitive constructions, like others, develops around archetypal verbs and arguments. It is expected that the child language will mirror the adult input in terms of frequency of particular verbs and nouns, whilst the general frequency and lexical richness will remain condensed in contrast to adult language, thus validating our assumptions on the prototypical and yet cognitively constrained nature of language development. The ultimate goal of the paper is to challenge the existing interpretations of how language is acquired and to address the results appropriately, whilst unbiasedly taking into account the main arguments of both usage-based (Lakoff 1987 ; Lakoff & Thompson 1975 ; Langacker 1987 ; Goldberg 1995 ; Tomasello 2000 & 2003) and nativist approaches (Chomsky 1959 ; Hauser et al. 2002 ; Pinker 2002 & 2003) to language acquisition theory.

corpora, ditransitive construction, first language acquisition

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