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

本论文旨在探讨以英语为第一语言的儿童如何习得英语问句的语法。本研究的最终目的是帮助理解为什么某些类型的错误，而不是其他的，在语言习得中发生，以及这些错误是如何与输入频率和单个单词的属性。该研究将包括主谓倒置泛化不足的两种情况（未能在直接疑问句中倒置主谓和助动词，例如，“你笑什么？）以及过度概括的情况（在间接疑问句中过度使用主谓倒装，例如，“我不知道现在几点了。“）由于这些形式在成年母语者的言语中完全不存在，这些是语言学习机制创造的语言模式。这些研究的结果将有助于理解疑问结构的习得和语言习得中的泛化机制。

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.