Linking Rule Acquisition in Novel Phrasal Construction

Likewise, a number of computational models have demonstrated that constructions and the mapping generalizations that they specify are, in principle, learnable from the input without the need for specifically linguistic constraints (Allen, 1997; Morris et al., 2000). However, although these models suggest that children can learn mapping generalizations—as does the data on children’s early conservative behavior—they do not conclusively prove that this is the case. Such a conclusion would be bolstered by studies that demonstrate actual construction learning in a controlled experimental setting. There has, however, been precious little work along these lines, and the studies that have addressed this issue have not definitively demonstrated that participants learn to associate specific syntactic positions with specific semantic arguments.