The Ubiquity of Frequency Effects in First Language Acquisition

Autor/inn/en	Ambridge, Ben; Kidd, Evan; Rowland, Caroline F.; Theakston, Anna L.
Titel	The Ubiquity of Frequency Effects in First Language Acquisition
Quelle	In: Journal of Child Language, 42 (2015) 2, S.239-273 (35 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0305-0009
DOI	10.1017/S030500091400049X
Schlagwörter	Language Acquisition; Child Language; Morphology (Languages); Syntax; Language Processing; Vocabulary + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; 'Children''s language'; Kindersprache; Morphology; Morphologie; Sprachverarbeitung; Wortschatz
Abstract	This review article presents evidence for the claim that frequency effects are pervasive in children's first language acquisition, and hence constitute a phenomenon that any successful account must explain. The article is organized around four key domains of research: children's acquisition of single words, inflectional morphology, simple syntactic constructions, and more advanced constructions. In presenting this evidence, we develop five theses. (i) There exist different types of frequency effect, from effects at the level of concrete lexical strings to effects at the level of abstract cues to thematic-role assignment, as well as effects of both token and type, and absolute and relative, frequency. High-frequency forms are (ii) early acquired and (iii) prevent errors in contexts where they are the target, but also (iv) cause errors in contexts in which a competing lower-frequency form is the target. (v) Frequency effects interact with other factors (e.g. serial position, utterance length), and the patterning of these interactions is generally informative with regard to the nature of the learning mechanism. We conclude by arguing that any successful account of language acquisition, from whatever theoretical standpoint, must be frequency sensitive to the extent that it can explain the effects documented in this review, and outline some types of account that do and do not meet this criterion. (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01