ASSESSING THE PRODUCTIVITY OF THE CAUSATIVE ALTERNATION

有一群孩子，他们唯一明显的发育迟缓 出现在语言领域。这些孩子的特点是 在词汇发展方面表现出严重的局限性。建议数 这项研究是对以下人群词汇产生率的初步调查 语言障碍儿童。具体地说，这项研究的重点是 英语使用者之间使役交替的产出性 特别是语言障碍(埃斯利语儿童，对比组 讲英语的正常发育儿童(完)，以及 发育正常的基切语儿童(KND)。 尽管他们在词汇习得方面有记载的困难， 关于埃斯利儿童如何融入社会，我们知之甚少 他们对词条知识的句法限制。这个 使役交替在与词汇相关的过程中尤其有趣 收购。有证据表明，正常发育的儿童 在获得使役交替时遇到了一些困难。他们 可以说‘我让它的墙变得更陡了’。一 假设是，学习英语的孩子们开始依赖于 一组受限的语义特征，用于区分 经历使役交替和非使役交替。语义学 特征将动词词典分成不同的子类，从而使一些 子类(状态更改或包含的运动动词)允许 使役交替而其他(表示意志的动作或动作的动词 在指定的方向上)不要。 伊斯利语儿童可能会发现很难学习使役交替。 至少有三个原因。首先，埃斯利的孩子们可能会特别喜欢它 很难提取有关单词的语言上下文的信息。 其次，虽然有一定的学习新单词的能力，但英语儿童可能会 不能从他们所学的词汇中提取概括 像正常发育的孩子一样容易，第三，曾经的伊斯利孩子 掌握了一个新词，他们可能会遇到不同寻常的困难 在会话交换过程中检索该特定单词。 这项初步研究是首次尝试引出因果错误。 来自埃斯利的孩子们。这项初步研究的价值是双重的。 首先，它允许对英语儿童使用英语的情况进行初步评估 从使役结构看不同语境中的动词 另一种。这些信息可能有助于理解自然 有特定的语言障碍。其次，它允许测试 与以下理论立场相关的基本假设 关注动词词汇的跨语言组织 比较。

There is a group of children whose only apparent developmental delay occurs in the domain of language. These children characteristically display severe limitations in their lexical development. The proposed research is a pilot investigation of lexical productivity among language-impaired children. Specifically, this study focuses on the productivity of the causative alternation among English-speaking specifically language-impaired (ESLI children, comparison groups of English-speaking normally developing children (END), and normally-developing K'iche'-speaking children (KND). Despite their documented difficulties with lexical acquisition, relatively little is known concerning how ESLI children incorporate syntactic restrictions in their knowledge of lexical entries. The causative alternation is especially interesting in relation to lexical acquisition. There is evidence that normally developing children experience some difficulty in acquiring the causative alternation. They might say 'I steepened its walls' (= I made its walls steeper). One hypothesis is that children learning English come to rely upon a restricted set of semantic features to distinguish between verbs that undergo the causative alternation and those that do not. The semantic features break the verb lexicon into distinct subclasses such that some subclasses (change of state or contained motion verbs) allow the causative alternation while others (verbs of volitional action or motion in a specified direction) do not. ESLI children may find it difficult to learn the causative alternation for at least three reasons. First, ESLI children may find it especially difficult to extract information about the linguistic context of words. Second, while having some ability to learn new words, ESLI children may not be able to extract generalizations from their learned vocabulary as easily as normally developing children, Third, once ESLI children had acquired a new word, they might experience unusual difficulties in retrieving that specific word in the course of a conversational exchange. This pilot study represents the first attempt to elicit causative errors from ESLI children. The value of this preliminary research is twofold. First, it allows for a rudimentary evaluation of ESLI children's use of verbs in varying linguistic contexts as revealed by the causative alternation. This information may contribute to understanding the nature of specific language impairment. Second, it allows for testing the underlying assumptions associated with the theoretical positions that concern the organization of the verb lexicon by using crosslinguistic comparisons.