edited by Barbara Kelly and Eve V. Clark
Construction grammar offers a new framework in which to consider the
consistent patterns for combining words and phrases within a language. Yet
what counts as a construction as a child acquires language? How do children
identify constructions? How are constructions linked to the acquisition of
words and word meanings?
The study of these questions has progressed to the point where this
collection of recent results is both timely and coherent. This volume covers
a broad range of research on construction acquisition by children, from the
earliest rudimentary gesture combinations to the production of larger
syntactic constructions and complex clauses. Included are studies from a
variety of languages such as Cantonese, English, French, German, Mandarin,
Thai, and Tzeltal, presented by noted scholars in the field of construction
grammar.
Barbara Kelly is assistant professor in the Department of Linguistics and
Applied Linguistics at the University of Melbourne.
Eve V. Clark is professor of linguistics at Stanford University.
- Contributors vii
- 1 Constructions and Acquisition 1
Eve V. Clark & Barbara F. Kelly
- 2 The Development of Constructions Through Early Gesture Use 15
Barbara F. Kelly
- 3 How Gesture Helps Children Construct Language 31
Seyda Özçalişkan & Susan Goldin-Meadow
- 4 Frequent Frames: Simple Co-occurrence Constructions and Their Links to Linguistic Structure 59
Toben H. Mintz
- 5 Producing Multiword Utterances 83
Elena Lieven
- 6 The Acquisition of Verb Compounding in Mandarin 111
Jidong Chen
- 7 From Holophrases to Abstract Grammatical Constructions: Insights from Simulation Studies 137
Peter F. Dominey
- 8 Interim Solutions: The Acquisition of Early Verb Constructions in Hindi 163
Nancy Budwig, Bhuvana Narasimhan & Smita Srivastava
- 9 Learning Argument Structure Constructions 185
Adele E. Goldberg & Devin Casenhiser
- 10 Causative Alternation Errors as Event-Driven Construction Paradigm Completions 205
Jean-Philippe Marcotte
- 11 Caused Motion Constructions and Semantic Generality in Early Acquisition of French 233
Florence Chenu & Harriet Jisa
- 12 Interactions in the Development of Constructions and the Acquisition of Word Meanings 263
Judith C. Goodman & Nitya Sethuraman
- 13 Building Questions in Cantonese 283
Stephanie F. Stokes & Anita M.-Y. Wong
- 14 The Acquisition of Complement Clause Constructions 311
Evan Kidd
- Name Index 333
- Topic Index 341
9/1/2005