Emerging networks
The role of horizontal relations in the acquisition of the German ditransitive construction
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12197477 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laura Patrizzi (0009-0006-6935-0844, 27209 University of Basel , Basel , Switzerland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 137-166 |
| Publication date | 2026-01-30 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Cognitive Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0936-5907 • E-ISSN: 1613-3641 |
| Publisher | De Gruyter Mouton (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/cog-2025-0066 |
| OpenAlex | W7126187360 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 60 |
In the Construction Grammar framework, grammatical knowledge is described as a network of related constructions. While usage-based language acquisition research has investigated the emergence of taxonomic relations and the development of abstract grammatical knowledge from concrete representations, less is known about the development of horizontal relations between constructions at the same level of abstraction. Horizontal relations may emerge between lower-level, lexically specific patterns of different constructions, supporting the acquisition of complex constructions by linking them to simpler forerunner constructions. This study investigates the development of horizontal relations between the ditransitive construction (e.g., I give you a book ) and two related constructions, the reflexive ditransitive construction (e.g., I buy myself a book ) and the reflexive construction (e.g., I blame myself ) in the longitudinally sampled data of a German-speaking child. Evidence from the order of the emergence of these constructions, the development of pronoun frames, and the use of verb types in these pronoun frames suggests that shared lexical patterns at lower levels of abstraction serve as links between the constructions. The results indicate that horizontal relations may play a crucial role in language acquisition by facilitating the development of complex constructions from lexically specific patterns of previously established forerunner constructions
Construction Grammar · Dative case · Ellipsis (linguistics · German · Grammar · Horizontal and vertical · Pronoun · Reflexivity · Spatial relation · Transitive relation · Language Development and Disorders · Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
The Acquisition of Complex Sentences
Constructions at Work
Argument Structure in Usage-Based Construction Grammar
The Dynamics of the Linguistic System
The Grammar Network
The input–output relationship in first language acquisition
Testing the abstractness of children's linguistic representations
The development of abstract syntax
Constructions and their acquisition
Experience and sentence processing
Identifying partially schematic units in the code-mixing of an English and German speaking child
The acquisition of German relative clauses
Constructivist Approaches to First Language Acquisition
Early syntactic creativity
Similarity, analogy and development in radical exemplar theory
Abstractions made of exemplars or ‘You’re all right, and I’ve changed my mind’
Against stored abstractions
From formula to schema
Surface generalizations
A network of allostructions
Alternation-based generalizations are stored in the mental grammar
Of absent mothers, strong sisters and peculiar daughters
A sisterhood of constructions? A structural priming approach to modelling links in the network of Objoid Constructions
Changes in the midst of a construction network
Towards a lexically specific grammar of children’s question constructions
Gradual development of constructional complexity in German spatial language
Learning argument structure generalizations
Acquisition of reflexive and reflexively used pronouns in Croatian and Austrian German
The role of pronouns in young children's acquisition of the English transitive construction
Constructionist approaches
A New Look at the Acquisition of Relative Clauses
| Highly cited | No |
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