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"Frequent frames" in German child-directed speech: a limited cue to grammatical categories.

Publication ,  Journal Article
Stumper, B; Bannard, C; Lieven, E; Tomasello, M
Published in: Cognitive science
August 2011

Mintz (2003) found that in English child-directed speech, frequently occurring frames formed by linking the preceding (A) and succeeding (B) word (A_x_B) could accurately predict the syntactic category of the intervening word (x). This has been successfully extended to French (Chemla, Mintz, Bernal, & Christophe, 2009). In this paper, we show that, as for Dutch (Erkelens, 2009), frequent frames in German do not enable such accurate lexical categorization. This can be explained by the characteristics of German including a less restricted word order compared to English or French and the frequent use of some forms as both determiner and pronoun in colloquial German. Finally, we explore the relationship between the accuracy of frames and their potential utility and find that even some of those frames showing high token-based accuracy are of limited value because they are in fact set phrases with little or no variability in the slot position.

Duke Scholars

Published In

Cognitive science

DOI

EISSN

1551-6709

ISSN

0364-0213

Publication Date

August 2011

Volume

35

Issue

6

Start / End Page

1190 / 1205

Related Subject Headings

  • Speech
  • Linguistics
  • Language
  • Humans
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Child, Preschool
  • Child Language
  • 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
  • 5202 Biological psychology
  • 5201 Applied and developmental psychology
 

Citation

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Stumper, B., Bannard, C., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2011). "Frequent frames" in German child-directed speech: a limited cue to grammatical categories. Cognitive Science, 35(6), 1190–1205. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01187.x
Stumper, Barbara, Colin Bannard, Elena Lieven, and Michael Tomasello. “"Frequent frames" in German child-directed speech: a limited cue to grammatical categories.Cognitive Science 35, no. 6 (August 2011): 1190–1205. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01187.x.
Stumper B, Bannard C, Lieven E, Tomasello M. "Frequent frames" in German child-directed speech: a limited cue to grammatical categories. Cognitive science. 2011 Aug;35(6):1190–205.
Stumper, Barbara, et al. “"Frequent frames" in German child-directed speech: a limited cue to grammatical categories.Cognitive Science, vol. 35, no. 6, Aug. 2011, pp. 1190–205. Epmc, doi:10.1111/j.1551-6709.2011.01187.x.
Stumper B, Bannard C, Lieven E, Tomasello M. "Frequent frames" in German child-directed speech: a limited cue to grammatical categories. Cognitive science. 2011 Aug;35(6):1190–1205.
Journal cover image

Published In

Cognitive science

DOI

EISSN

1551-6709

ISSN

0364-0213

Publication Date

August 2011

Volume

35

Issue

6

Start / End Page

1190 / 1205

Related Subject Headings

  • Speech
  • Linguistics
  • Language
  • Humans
  • Experimental Psychology
  • Child, Preschool
  • Child Language
  • 5204 Cognitive and computational psychology
  • 5202 Biological psychology
  • 5201 Applied and developmental psychology