Learning What "Not" to Say: The Role of Statistical Preemption and Categorization in "A"-Adjective Production

A persistent mystery in language acquisition is how speakers are able to learn seemingly arbitrary distributional restrictions. This article investigates one such case: the fact that speakers resist using certain adjectives prenominally (e.g. ??"the asleep man"). Experiment 1 indicates tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inLanguage (Baltimore) Vol. 87; no. 1; pp. 55 - 83
Main Authors Boyd, Jeremy K, Goldberg, Adele E
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Linguistic Society of America 01.03.2011
Subjects
Classification
Form Classes (Languages)
Generalization
Language Acquisition
Language Processing
Language Research
Language Usage
Role
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Summary:A persistent mystery in language acquisition is how speakers are able to learn seemingly arbitrary distributional restrictions. This article investigates one such case: the fact that speakers resist using certain adjectives prenominally (e.g. ??"the asleep man"). Experiment 1 indicates that speakers tentatively generalize or "categorize" the distributional restriction beyond their previous experience. Experiment 2 demonstrates that speakers are sensitive to "statistical preemption"--that is, speakers learn not to use a formulation if an alternative formulation with the same function is consistently witnessed. Moreover, they are able to generalize the restriction to apply to other members of the category as well. Finally, experiment 3 finds evidence that speakers "discount" a pseudopreemptive context, rationally ignoring it as uninformative.
ISSN:0097-8507
DOI:10.1353/lan.2011.0012