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Kidd, E. (2006). [Review of the book Syntactic carpentry: An emergentist approach to syntax by William O'Grady]. Journal of Child Language, 33(4), 905-910. doi:10.1017/S030500090622782X.
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Kidd, E., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2006). Examining the role of lexical frequency in children's acquisition of sentential complements. Cognitive Development, 21(2), 93-107. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2006.01.006.
Abstract
We present empirical data showing that the relative frequency with which a verb normally appears in a syntactic construction predicts young children's ability to remember and repeat sentences instantiating that construction. Children aged 2;10–5;8 years were asked to repeat grammatical and ungrammatical sentential complement sentences (e.g., ‘I think + S’). The sentences contained complement-taking verbs (CTVs) used with differing frequencies in children's natural speech. All children repeated sentences containing high frequency CTVs (e.g., think) more accurately than those containing low frequency CTVs (e.g., hear), and made more sophisticated corrections to ungrammatical sentences containing high frequency CTVs. The data suggest that, like adults, children are sensitive to lexico-constructional collocations. The implications for language acquisition are discussed. -
Kidd, E. (2006). The acquisition of complement clause constructions. In E. V. Clark, & B. F. Kelly (
Eds. ), Constructions in acquisition (pp. 311-332). Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. -
Kidd, E., & Bavin, E. L. (2005). Lexical and referential cues to sentence interpretation: An investigation of children's interpretations of ambiguous sentences. Journal of Child Language, 32(4), 855-876. doi:10.1017/S0305000905007051.
Abstract
This paper reports on an investigation of children's (aged 3;5–9;8) comprehension of sentences containing ambiguity of prepositional phrase (PP) attachment. Results from a picture selection study (N=90) showed that children use verb semantics and preposition type to resolve the ambiguity, with older children also showing sensitivity to the definiteness of the object NP as a cue to interpretation. Study 2 investigated three- and five-year-old children's (N=47) ability to override an instrumental interpretation of ambiguous PPs in order to process attributes of the referential scene. The results showed that while five-year-olds are capable of incorporating aspects of the referential scene into their interpretations, three-year-olds are not as successful. Overall, the results suggest that children are attuned very early to the lexico-semantic co-occurrences that have been shown to aid ambiguity resolution in adults, but that more diffuse cues to interpretation are used only later in development
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