Research article summary:

Determinants of acquisition order in wh-questions: re-evaluating the role of caregiver speech.

Abstract Extract:
Accounts that specify semantic and/or syntactic complexity as the primary determinant of the order in which children acquire particular words or grammatical constructions have been highly influential in the literature on question acquisition. One ... (Full abstract text below)

Published 2003Aug in Journal: J Child Lang (Language : eng)

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1. J Child Lang. 2003 Aug;30(3):609-35

Determinants of acquisition order in wh-questions: re-evaluating the role of caregiver speech.

Rowland CF, Pine JM, Lieven EV, Theakston AL

Department of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Bedford Street South, Liverpool L69 7ZA, UK. crowland@liverpool.ac.uk

Accounts that specify semantic and/or syntactic complexity as the primary determinant of the order in which children acquire particular words or grammatical constructions have been highly influential in the literature on question acquisition. One explanation of wh-question acquisition in particular suggests that the order in which English speaking children acquire wh-questions is determined by two interlocking linguistic factors; the syntactic function of the wh-word that heads the question and the semantic generality (or 'lightness') of the main verb (Bloom, Merkin & Wootten, 1982; Bloom, 1991). Another more recent view, however, is that acquisition is influenced by the relative frequency with which children hear particular wh-words and verbs in their input (e.g. Rowland & Pine, 2000). In the present study over 300 hours of naturalistic data from twelve two- to three-year-old children and their mothers were analysed in order to assess the relative contribution of complexity and input frequency to wh-question acquisition. The analyses revealed, first, that the acquisition order of wh-questions could be predicted successfully from the frequency with which particular wh-words and verbs occurred in the children's input and, second, that syntactic and semantic complexity did not reliably predict acquisition once input frequency was taken into account. These results suggest that the relationship between acquisition and complexity may be a by-product of the high correlation between complexity and the frequency with which mothers use particular wh-words and verbs. We interpret the results in terms of a constructivist view of language acquisition.

PMID : 14513470 [PubMed - Indexed for MEDLINE]

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Full Author Information

First Name	LastName	Initials
Caroline F	Rowland	CF
Julian M	Pine	JM
Elena V	Lieven	EV
Anna L	Theakston	AL

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, Bedford Street South, Liverpool L69 7ZA, UK. crowland@liverpool.ac.uk

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