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The effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 August 2019

Erin CONWELL*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, USA
*
Address for correspondence: North Dakota State University, NDSU Dept. 2765, P.O. Box 6050, Fargo, ND 58108-6050. Tel: 1-701-231-6123. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

The English dative alternation has received much attention in the literature on argument structure acquisition in children. However, the data on the acquisition of this alternation have consistently revealed a counter-intuitive pattern: children look more proficient with the lower frequency prepositional form of the dative than with the higher frequency double object form (Conwell & Demuth, 2007; Rowland & Noble, 2010). This may be because the DO dative typically occurs with pronominal argument types in first post-verbal position, which may result in an over-reliance on stereotyped forms (e.g., give + me) for early comprehension and production (Conwell, O'Donnell, & Snedeker, 2011). This paper presents three studies of the effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension by three-year-olds. Children's comprehension of the DO dative improved significantly when the first post-verbal argument was pronominal; no other effects of pronoun use were significant. Children's experience affects their ability to use lexically general representations of syntactic structures.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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