Title: Beyond frequency: cognitive factors in children’s acquisition of morphosyntax
Theme session conveners: Laura de Ruiter, Virve Vihman
Introduction
Frequency has often been seen as the flagship explanatory category for cognitive linguistics,
across fields such as language variation, change, grammaticalisation and acquisition. However,
many questions remain about what frequency means and how it interacts with other cognitive
and linguistic factors. It is unclear whether the frequency of occurrence of linguistic elements
is a measure with psychological reality or whether it stands as a proxy for other factors, such as
cognitive salience, predictability or class size. In addition, it is clear that frequency interacts
with other factors, like morphological complexity and functional transparency, but it is not
always evident how to incorporate these interactions into models of first language (L1)
acquisition.
Linguistic frequency has been explored as a phenomenon in its own right (Bybee & Hopper
2001) and has informed decades of work in linguistic processing and acquisition (e.g., Gries &
Divjak 2012, Behrens & Pfänder 2016). Gülzow and Gagarina (2007) present various
arguments both for and against frequency as an explanatory concept in L1 acquisition.
Ambridge et al. (2015), on the other hand, make a strong case for the prominent role of
frequency in acquisition, on every level from vocabulary to syntax. They advocate for a more
nuanced view of frequency in explanation, but the details of this approach still need to be spelled
out. They also raise, but leave open for discussion, the question of interaction with other factors,
such as utterance position, relative complexity in a linguistic domain, or pragmatic
foregrounding.
With this session, we aim to stimulate discussion regarding the state of the art in the study of
frequency effects and their broader context, including theoretical, methodological and empirical
issues such as:
•
What do we mean when we speak of frequency?
•
How and what should we measure when assessing the role of frequency?
•
What other factors affect the course of morphosyntactic acquisition, and how does
frequency interact with these?
The first paper provides a theoretical grounding for the session and raises important distinctions
between where and how it is appropriate to invoke frequency in explanation. The other six
papers present empirical investigations of frequency effects in various areas of morphosyntactic
acquisition, across languages, and in interaction with various cognitive and linguistic factors.
Finally, the session is rounded out in a discussion section, bringing together the various themes
and issues raised and allowing for discussion of implications for theory and research practice.
References:
Ambridge, Ben, Evan Kidd, Caroline F. Rowland & Anna L. Theakston. 2015. The
ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 42: 239273. doi:10.1017/S030500091400049X.
Behrens, Heike & Stefan Pfänder, eds. 2016. Experience Counts: Frequency Effects in
Language.
Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-034691-6. Bybee, Joan L. & Paul J. Hopper, eds.
2001. Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure. Vol. 45. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins Publishing.
Gries, Stefan Thomas & Dagmar Divjak. (eds.). 2012. Frequency effects in language
learning and processing (Vol. 244). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-0273786.
Gülzow, Insa & Natalia Gagarina (eds.) 2007. Frequency effects in language acquisition:
Defining the limits of frequency as an explanatory concept. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN
978-3-11- 019671-9.