The role of performance limitations in the acquisition of verb-argument structure: an alternative account

TLDR

Valian (1991) argues that intransitive frames are easier for children to produce early because they lack a direct object, leading children to produce fewer transitive verb utterances and omit direct objects more often with mixed verbs than with transitive verbs. This study investigates the role of performance limitations in children’s early acquisition of verb‑argument structure. The authors examined data from nine children aged 1;10.7 to 2;0.25, matched on MLU to Valian’s subjects. Analysis shows that while Valian’s abstract syntactic predictions hold, children’s verb‑frame choices are primarily driven by the patterns of verb use they hear from mothers, indicating that input rather than abstract grammatical knowledge constrained by performance limitations determines early verb‑argument structure acquisition.

Abstract

This study investigates the role of performance limitations in children's early acquisition of verb-argument structure. Valian (1991) claims that intransitive frames are easier for children to produce early in development than transitive frames because they do not require a direct object argument. Children who understand this distinction are expected to produce a lower proportion of transitive verb utterances early in development in comparison with later stages of development and to omit direct objects much more frequently with mixed verbs (where direct objects are optional) than with transitive verbs. To test these claims, data from nine children aged between 1;10.7 and 2;0.25 matched with Valian's subjects on MLU were examined. When analysed in terms of abstract syntactic structures Valian's findings are supported. However, a detailed lexical analysis of the data suggests that the children were not selecting argument structure on the basis of syntactic complexity. Instead, a clear predictor of the frames used by the children with specific verbs was the frames used by the children's mothers with those same verbs, regardless of whether they were transitive or intransitive. This suggests that the most important determinant of the children's use of verb frame was the specific patterns of verb use in the input rather than abstract grammatical knowledge constrained by performance limitations. The implications of these findings for performance-based explanations for children's early errors and early patterns of language use are discussed.