Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: First Language Acquisition of English Main and Embedded Questions

本论文研究以英语为第一语言的儿童如何习得英语疑问句的语法。本研究的最终目的是帮助理解语言习得中为什么会出现某些类型的错误，而不是其他类型的错误，以及这些错误与输入频率和单个单词的性质之间的关系。这项研究将包括主助语倒装的泛化不足的两种情况(在直接疑问句中未能倒置主语和助词，例如，“你为什么在笑？”)也有过度泛化的情况(间接疑问句中过度使用主助词倒装，例如“我不知道现在几点了”)。由于成年母语人士的言语中完全没有这种形式，这些都是语言学习机制创造的语言模式。本研究的结果将有助于揭示疑问结构的习得和语言习得中泛化机制的本质。

This dissertation project examines how children learning English as their first language acquire the grammar of English questions. The ultimate goal of this study is to contribute to an understanding of why some types of errors, but not others, occur in language acquisition, and how these errors relate to input frequency and the properties of individual words. The research will include both cases of under-generalization of subject-auxiliary inversion (failure to invert the subject and the auxiliary in direct questions, e.g., "Why you are laughing?") and also cases of over-generalization (over-application of subject-auxiliary inversion in indirect questions, e.g., "I don't know what time is it.") Since such forms are entirely absent from the speech of adult native speakers, these are linguistic patterns created by the language learning mechanism. The outcomes of the proposed studies will shed light on the acquisition of interrogative structures and on the nature of generalization mechanisms in language acquisition.