作者: Ramya Maitreyee , Gaurav Saxena , Bhuvana Narasimhan , Dipti Misra Sharma , Pruthwik Mishra
DOI:
关键词:
摘要: Background: A question that lies at the very heart of language acquisition research is how children learn semi-regular systems with exceptions (eg, the English plural rule that yields cats, dogs, etc, with exceptions feet and men). We investigated this question for Hindi ergative ne marking; another semi-regular but exception-filled system. Generally, in the past tense, the subject of two-participant transitive verbs (eg, Ram broke the cup) is marked with ne, but there are exceptions. How, then, do children learn when ne marking is required, when it is optional, and when it is ungrammatical?Methods: We conducted two studies using (a) acceptability judgment and (b) elicited production methods with children (aged 4-5, 5-6 and 9-10 years) and adults.Results: All age groups showed effects of statistical preemption: the greater the frequency with which a particular verb appears with versus without ne marking on the subject …