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| Presentation | 2018-07-29 10:30 Explaining the Morpheme Acquisition Order with Contingency and Type Frequency Zoe Pei-sui Luk (Edu U of HK)  TL2018-34 |
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| Abstract | (in Japanese) | (See Japanese page) |
| (in English) | Although Brown (1973) and others identified an acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes, there is little consensus as to why the order resulted. Brown (1973) rejected parental frequencies as a determinant because of the insignificant correlation between the adult and child data, but his analysis using token frequency is questionable. The present study reanalyzes the role of frequency in the forms of contingency and type frequency, and tests whether they can predict the acquisition order. The contingency (ΔP) model postulates that judgements about the reliability of a cue that leads to an outcome depend on how often the cue and the outcome co-occur, how often only the cue or only the outcome occurs, and how often neither is present. Following Ellis (2006a), I apply this to the learning of grammatical morphemes. I treated a phonological form that is homophonous to a morpheme as a cue, and the meaning of the morpheme as an outcome. For instance, the phonological form [d] is used to signify pastness (e.g., called). However, there are cases where [d] occurs at the word-final position but has no past meaning (e.g., bend, which may be analyzed as benned), and cases where the phonological form is absent but the past meaning is present (e.g., ran). The contingency of a morpheme is the differential of the proportions of the events for which an outcome is present with and without the cue (Ellis, 2006a, 2006b). I hypothesized that the larger the contingency of a morpheme is, the earlier the morpheme will be acquired, because the morpheme?s meaning is less ambiguous for a large contingency. To test this, I examined the distributions of five morphemes, (progressive -ing, plural -s, third person singular -s, possessive -?s, and regular past -ed) in the data from the caregivers of the three children in Brown?s (1973) study. The data were annotated for whether the phonological form (cue) of a morpheme and the meaning of it (outcome) is present. I also examined the number of word types to which each morpheme is attached. According to Bybee (2010), the higher the type frequency of a morpheme is, the easier it is for learners to abstract patterns from the input, and thus the earlier the morpheme will be acquired. Results from an ordinal logistic regression analysis show that there is a main effect of contingency (t = 2.179, p < 0.05). The main effect of type frequency is insignificant (t = 1.185, p = 0.236), but the interaction between contingency and type frequency is significant (t = -2.279, p < 0.05). These findings suggest that both contingency and type frequency are important predictors of the acquisition order, in that morphemes with higher contingencies will be acquired earlier, but the order can be altered by the number of word types a morpheme is associated with. The results support both Ellis?s (2006a, 2006b) and Bybee?s (2010) claims that language acquisition can be explained by the statistical distribution of the input without resorting to a domain-specific mechanism in neither L1 nor L2 as claimed in the morphemes studies. |
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| Keyword | (in Japanese) | (See Japanese page) |
| (in English) | Contingency / morpheme acquisition order / type frequency / / / / / | |
| Reference Info. | IEICE Tech. Rep., vol. 118, no. 163, TL2018-34, pp. 107-107, July 2018. | |
| Paper # | TL2018-34 | |
| Date of Issue | 2018-07-21 (TL) | |
| ISSN | Print edition: ISSN 0913-5685 Online edition: ISSN 2432-6380 | |
| Copyright and reproduction |
All rights are reserved and no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Notwithstanding, instructors are permitted to photocopy isolated articles for noncommercial classroom use without fee. (License No.: 10GA0019/12GB0052/13GB0056/17GB0034/18GB0034) | |
| Download PDF | TL2018-34 |
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| Conference Information | |
| Committee | TL |
| Conference Date | 2018-07-28 - 2018-07-29 |
| Place (in Japanese) | (See Japanese page) |
| Place (in English) | Keio University |
| Topics (in Japanese) | (See Japanese page) |
| Topics (in English) | Human Language Processing and Learning |
| Paper Information | |
| Registration To | TL |
| Conference Code | 2018-07-TL |
| Language | English |
| Title (in Japanese) | (See Japanese page) |
| Sub Title (in Japanese) | (See Japanese page) |
| Title (in English) | Explaining the Morpheme Acquisition Order with Contingency and Type Frequency |
| Sub Title (in English) | |
| Keyword(1) | Contingency |
| Keyword(2) | morpheme acquisition order |
| Keyword(3) | type frequency |
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| 1st Author's Name | Zoe Pei-sui Luk |
| 1st Author's Affiliation | The Education University of Hong Kong (Edu U of HK) |
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| Speaker | Author-1 |
| Date Time | 2018-07-29 10:30:00 |
| Presentation Time | 30 minutes |
| Registration for | TL |
| Paper # | TL2018-34 |
| Volume (vol) | vol.118 |
| Number (no) | no.163 |
| Page | p.107 |
| #Pages | 1 |
| Date of Issue | 2018-07-21 (TL) |
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