Acquisition of comparative forms in English.
Item
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Title
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Acquisition of comparative forms in English.
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Identifier
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AAI9924814
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identifier
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9924814
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Creator
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Graziano-King, Janine.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Helen Smith Cairns
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Date
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1999
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Language, Linguistics
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Abstract
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To what extent is lexical acquisition rule-governed? The research reported here addresses this question by investigating a particular case of lexical learning; i.e., the acquisition of the two forms of the adjectival comparative in English: the suffixed (Adj + er) and the periphrastic (more + Adj). The grammars of adults and of children (at ages 4 and 7) were studied by eliciting grammaticality judgments of comparative adjectives of both types; a small corpus based study was also conducted.;Experiments used real and novel adjectives to discover if the distribution of the comparative forms was rule-governed. Adjectives of various morphophonological types were tested, and, in the adult experiments, frequency and gradability were manipulated for real adjectives. While morphophonological type was not a good predictor of adults' comparative type preferences, frequency and gradability, for some adjective types, were. These effects were not cumulative and indicate that comparative type preference is a function of input frequency of the comparative form of the adjective, suggesting that suffixed comparatives are lexically listed and not rule-generated. Only disyllabic adjectives ending in - y were consistently preferred in the suffixed form, regardless of frequency and regardless of whether they were real or novel forms. However, the bimorphemic nature of these Y disyllabics suggests that comparative suffixation is a case of listing morpheme co-occurrences; i.e., the preference for the suffixed comparative for Y disyllabics has its source in listing the co-occurrence of -y and -er. Extending this analysis to include free morphemes can account for other suffixed comparative preferences indicated by the data.;In this study, the periphrastic emerges as a default and is characterized as an instance of more support that obtains where a listed lexical comparative is unavailable to check an abstract Deg-feature in the extended functional adjectival projection. Thus, when a suffixed comparative is listed, more support is blocked.;Both spontaneous and experimental child data are compatible with this account. The course of acquisition suggested by the data is one where children must first identify -er as a morpheme, then recognize its ability to check the Deg-feature, and finally learn the morphemes with which it co-occurs.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
