The role of prediction in construction-learning

It is well-established that (non-linguistic) categorization is driven by a functional demand of prediction. We suggest that prediction likewise may well play a role in motivating the learning of semantic generalizations about argument structure constructions. We report corpora statistics that indica...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of child language 2005-05, Vol.32 (2), p.407-426
Main Authors: GOLDBERG, ADELE E., CASENHISER, DEVIN M., SETHURAMAN, NITYA
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Argument structure
Behavioral Sciences
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child development
Child Language
Child, Preschool
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive psychology
Construction
Cues
Developmental psychology
Educational Research
Forecasting
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Generalizability
Grammar
Humans
Inferences
Language
Language Acquisition
Language development
Learning
Linguistics
Memory
Morphology
Motivation
Nouns
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reading Comprehension
Semantics
Semiotics
Sentences
Stimuli
Syntactic structures
Validity
Verbal Learning
Verbs
Young children
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:It is well-established that (non-linguistic) categorization is driven by a functional demand of prediction. We suggest that prediction likewise may well play a role in motivating the learning of semantic generalizations about argument structure constructions. We report corpora statistics that indicate that the argument frame or construction has roughly equivalent cue validity as a predictor of overall sentence meaning as the morphological form of the verb, and has greater category validity. That is, the construction is at least as reliable and more available than the verb. Moreover, given the fact that many verbs have quite low cue validity in isolation, attention to the contribution of the construction is essential.
ISSN:0305-0009
1469-7602
DOI:10.1017/S0305000904006798