Abstract
In this paper form-function correlations in child Dutch will be compared to patterns in adult Dutch. Furthermore, we will try to find out if the correlations we found are learnable from the language input children receive. This will be done with an artificial learning mechanism. Our main aim is to check Ingram & Thompson’s (1996) “what they hear is what you get” hypothesis. Ingram & Thompson (henceforth I&T) claim that children learn modal root infinitives (RIs) directly from the input they are exposed to. Their proposal, however, is not convincingly supported by child-directed speech data (CDS). So, we did a follow-up study in which we took a closer look at the speech data of two Dutch mothers and their children.
Article Footnote
*The research reported in this paper was supported by a Research Grant of the Fund for Joint Basic Research (FKFO 2.0101.94) of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FWO), and by grants of the Dutch-Flemish Co-operative Programme on language and culture (VNC, nrs. G.2201.96 and 200–41.031), sponsored by FWO and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aha, D., Kibbler, D., & Albert, M. (1991). Instance-based learning algorithms. Machine Learning, 6, 37–66.
Blom, E., Wijnen, F., & Gillis, S. (1998). Modal Infinitives in the Speech of Dutch Mothers and Their Children. In: Auwera, J. van der, Durieux, F., & L. Lejeune (Eds.) English as a human language: to honour Louis Goossens. Munchen: LINCOM, 12–21.
Boser, K., Lust, B., Santelmann, L., & Whitman, J. (1992). The syntax of CP and V2 in Early Child German (ECG): The strong Continuity Hypothesis. Proceedings of NELS 22. Amherst (Mass.): GLSA.
Daelemans, W, Gillis, S., & Durieux, G. (1994). The acquisition of stress: a data-oriented approach. Computational Linguistics, 20,421–451.
Ginneken, J. van (1917). De roman van een kleuter. Den Bosch/Antwerpen: L.C.G. Malmberg.
Hoekstra, T., & Hyams, N. (1998). Aspects of Root Infinitives. Ms., UCLA/HIL.
Ingram, D., & Thompson, W. (1996). Early syntactic acquisition in German: evidence for the modal hypothesis. Language,72, 97–120.
Kempen, M., Gillis, S., & Wijnen, F. (1997). Dutch children and their mothers’ infinitives. In: Sorace, A., Heycock, C., & Shillcock, R. (Eds.) Proceedings of the GALA 97 Conference on Language Acquisition., University of Edinburgh.
MacWhinney, B. (1995). The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. Second Edition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Quinlan, J.R. (1986). Induction of decision trees. Machine Learning, 1, 81–106.
Shannon, C.E., & Weaver, W. (1969) The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2000 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blom, E., Kempen, M., Gillis, S., Wijnen, F. (2000). What They Hear is What You Get? Infinitives and Modality in Child Language and Child-Directed Speech*. In: Perkins, M., Howard, S. (eds) New Directions In Language Development And Disorders. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4157-8_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-4157-8_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-6865-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-4157-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive