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Learning a novel pattern through balanced and skewed input*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2012

KIM MCDONOUGH  and
PAVEL TROFIMOVICH
KIM MCDONOUGH*
Affiliation:
Concordia University
PAVEL TROFIMOVICH
Affiliation:
Concordia University
*
Address for correspondence: Kim McDonough, Department of Education, Concordia University (LB-579), 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montréal, Québec, CanadaH3G 1M8[email protected]
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Abstract

This study compared the effectiveness of balanced and skewed input at facilitating the acquisition of the transitive construction in Esperanto, characterized by the accusative suffix -n and variable word order (SVO, OVS). Thai university students (N = 98) listened to 24 sentences under skewed (one noun with high token frequency) or balanced (equally-low token frequency) presentation following either inductive (rule not given) or deductive (rule given) instructions. In the testing phase, they heard 20 sentences (10 SVO, 10 OVS) with new nouns and identified the object. Only the group that received balanced input and deductive instructions detected the novel pattern.

Keywords

skewed inputconstruction learningtransitive constructionlow-variability inputEsperanto
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , July 2013 , pp. 654 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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Footnotes

*

This study was supported by a standard research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. We are grateful to Amélie Bissonnette and Teresa Hernández-González for their help with creating study materials and to Adele Goldberg and anonymous BLC reviewers for their helpful input and feedback on the content of this manuscript.

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