The input ambiguity hypothesis and case blindness

An account of cross-linguistic and intra-linguistic differences in case errors

Bibliographic Data

ID20366607
AuthorsSABRA D PELHAM (University of Florida, corresponding author)
Year2011
Volume38
Issue2
Pages235-272
Publication date2011-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Child Language (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0305-0009 • E-ISSN: 1469-7602
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0305000909990225
PMID20202289
OpenAlexW2123070942
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited28

English-acquiring children frequently make pronoun case errors, while German-acquiring children rarely do. Nonetheless, German-acquiring children frequently make article case errors. It is proposed that when child-directed speech contains a high percentage of case-ambiguous forms, case errors are common in child language; when percentages are low, case errors are rare. Input to English and German children was analyzed for percentage of case-ambiguous personal pronouns on adult tiers of corpora from 24 English-acquiring and 24 German-acquiring children. Also analyzed for German was the percentage of case-ambiguous articles. Case-ambiguous pronouns averaged 63·3% in English, compared with 7·6% in German. The percentage of case-ambiguous articles in German was 77·0%. These percentages align with the children's errors reported in the literature. It appears children may be sensitive to levels of ambiguity such that low ambiguity may aid error-free acquisition, while high ambiguity may blind children to case distinctions, resulting in errors

Ambiguity · Error Analysis · German · Language acquisition · Linguistics · Pronoun · Language Development and Disorders · Mathematics · Multilingual Education and Policy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology

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