Misha Becker
Biographic Data
| ID | 3839163 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Misha Becker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Misha |
| FAMILY NAME | Becker |
| SIGNATURE | BECKER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9998-143X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
More hard words
How do young children learn the meanings of adjectives that label emotions and mental states, like happy or confident? The concepts behind these words seem easy to grasp, and yet the properties they denote are abstract and lack reliable visual correlates, much as with verbs such as think or know. There is robust evidence that the linguistic context in which mental state verbs appear supports their acquisition. Using a two-pronged approach, we exp…
In Support of Phonological Bias in Implicit Learning
This paper explores the hypothesis that children pay more attention to phonological cues than semantic cues when acquiring grammatical patterns. In a series of artificial allomorphy learning experiments with adults and children we find support for this hypothesis but only for those learners who do not show clear signs of explicit learning. In particular, learners who cannot verbalize a correct rule after the experiment nevertheless perform above …
Language attitudes of primary school teachers in Vitoria-Gasteiz
Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital city of the bilingual Basque Autonomous Community of Spain, is a largely Spanish-speaking city: over 90% of the city’s population claims Spanish as their native language and less than one-fifth of the city’s adult population is bilingual in Basque and Spanish (compare with more than one-third of the population of San Sebastián). Nevertheless, enrollment in Basque immersion (Model D) schools has grown over the last thr…
Which it is it? The acquisition of referential and expletive it
The purpose of this study was to determine the natural order of acquisition of the proform it , comparing deictic pronoun it , anaphoric pronoun it and expletive it . Files from four children (Adam, Eve, Nina and Peter) aged 1 ; 6–3 ; 0 in the CHILDES database were coded for occurrences of NP it ( here it is ) and expletive it ( it's raining ). Occurrences of NP it were coded for whether they followed an overt discourse anaphor (anaphoric it ) or…
There Began to Be a Learnability Puzzle
One of the fundamental puzzles language learners must solve is the mapping of a string of words onto a particular (correct) syntactic structure. In this article, I examine the problem of how learners should resolve the ambiguity presented by a string that could have either a raising or a control structure. I provide both logical and empirical arguments against the view that children should be biased to assume that such a string has a control stru…
Learning Verbs Without Arguments
Is isn't be
Syntactic Structure of Predicatives
This paper explores the syntax of main clause predicatives from the perspective of trying to account for an asymmetry in copular constructions in certain languages. One of the languages in which we find such an asymmetry is child English (around age 2). Specifically, new results show that children acquiring English tend to use an overt (and inflected) copula in individual-level predicatives, but they tend to omit the copula in stage-level predica…
Why Children Omit Function Morphemes
There Began to Be a Learnability Puzzle
One of the fundamental puzzles language learners must solve is the mapping of a string of words onto a particular (correct) syntactic structure. In this article, I examine the problem of how learners should resolve the ambiguity presented by a string that could have either a raising or a control structure. I provide both logical and empirical arguments against the view that children should be biased to assume that such a string has a control stru…
Learning Verbs Without Arguments
Is isn't be
Why Children Omit Function Morphemes
Syntactic Structure of Predicatives
This paper explores the syntax of main clause predicatives from the perspective of trying to account for an asymmetry in copular constructions in certain languages. One of the languages in which we find such an asymmetry is child English (around age 2). Specifically, new results show that children acquiring English tend to use an overt (and inflected) copula in individual-level predicatives, but they tend to omit the copula in stage-level predica…
Is isn't be
Learning Verbs Without Arguments
There Began to Be a Learnability Puzzle
One of the fundamental puzzles language learners must solve is the mapping of a string of words onto a particular (correct) syntactic structure. In this article, I examine the problem of how learners should resolve the ambiguity presented by a string that could have either a raising or a control structure. I provide both logical and empirical arguments against the view that children should be biased to assume that such a string has a control stru…
Which it is it? The acquisition of referential and expletive it
The purpose of this study was to determine the natural order of acquisition of the proform it , comparing deictic pronoun it , anaphoric pronoun it and expletive it . Files from four children (Adam, Eve, Nina and Peter) aged 1 ; 6–3 ; 0 in the CHILDES database were coded for occurrences of NP it ( here it is ) and expletive it ( it's raining ). Occurrences of NP it were coded for whether they followed an overt discourse anaphor (anaphoric it ) or…
Language attitudes of primary school teachers in Vitoria-Gasteiz
Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital city of the bilingual Basque Autonomous Community of Spain, is a largely Spanish-speaking city: over 90% of the city’s population claims Spanish as their native language and less than one-fifth of the city’s adult population is bilingual in Basque and Spanish (compare with more than one-third of the population of San Sebastián). Nevertheless, enrollment in Basque immersion (Model D) schools has grown over the last thr…
In Support of Phonological Bias in Implicit Learning
This paper explores the hypothesis that children pay more attention to phonological cues than semantic cues when acquiring grammatical patterns. In a series of artificial allomorphy learning experiments with adults and children we find support for this hypothesis but only for those learners who do not show clear signs of explicit learning. In particular, learners who cannot verbalize a correct rule after the experiment nevertheless perform above …
More hard words
How do young children learn the meanings of adjectives that label emotions and mental states, like happy or confident? The concepts behind these words seem easy to grasp, and yet the properties they denote are abstract and lack reliable visual correlates, much as with verbs such as think or know. There is robust evidence that the linguistic context in which mental state verbs appear supports their acquisition. Using a two-pronged approach, we exp…
Linguistics (8 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Language Development and Disorders (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (4 works) · Child and Animal Learning Development (4 works) · Mathematics (4 works) · Natural language processing (4 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (3 works)