From formula to schema: The acquisition of English questions

✍ Scribed by Dabrowska, Ewa

• Book ID: 111981226
• Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 239 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0936-5907
• DOI: 10.1515/cogl.2001.013

✦ Synopsis

This study traces the development of interrogative structures in a single child from the ®rst word combinations to age 3;8. It con®rms earlier ®ndings that child usage is highly formulaic and goes on to tackle the crucial issue of how children progress from rote-learned formulas to adult-like productivity. It is argued that this is accomplished by analyzing formulas and extracting constructional schemas from them. Constructional schemas are partly under-speci®ed symbolic units; unlike the abstract rules of formal linguistics, they are derived from actual expressions and have the same structure as their instantiations. They emerge spontaneously when the learner has acquired a sizeable repertoire of formulas. Their original function is to allow more ecient storage; but, once extracted, they are also available for the construction of novel expressions.