Distributed for Center for the Study of Language and Information
Constructions in Acquisition
The Acquisition of Constructions is the culmination of new research into constructions of grammar in languages as diverse as Cantonese, English, French, German, Mandarin, Thai, and Tzeltal. The contributors, all noted scholars in the field of construction grammar, investigate the acquisition of constructions—that is, the consistent patterns for combining words and phrases within a language—in children, from the first and most rudimentary gesture combinations to the production of larger syntactic constructions and complex clauses. Timely and comprehensive, it will be a superb resource for scholars of syntax.
Table of Contents
Contributors
1 Constructions and Acquisition
EVE V. CLARK & BARBARA F. KELLY
2 The Development of Constructions Through Early Gesture Use
BARBARA F. KELLY
3 How Gesture Helps Children Construct Language
SEYDA ÖZÇALISKAN & SUSAN occurrence
4 Frequent Frames: Simple Co-occurence Constructions and Their Links to
Linguistic Structure
TOBEN H. MINTZ
5 Producing Multiword Utterances
ELENA LIEVEN
6 The Acquisition of Verb Compounding in Mandarin
JIDONG CHEN
7 From Holophrases to Abstract Grammatical Constructions: Insights from
Simulation Studies
PETER F. DOMINEY
8 Interim Solutions: The Acquisition of Early Verb Constructions in Hindi
NANCY BUDWIG, BHUVANA NARASIMHAN & SMITA
SRIVASTAVA
9 Learning Argument Structure Constructions
ADELE E. GOLDBERG & DEVIN CASENHISER
10 Causative Alternation Errors as Event-Driven Construction Paradigm
Completions
JEAN-PHILIPPE MARCOTTE
11 Caused Motion Constuctions and Semantic Generality in Early Acquisition of
French
FLORENCE CHENU & HARRIET JISA
12 Interactions in the Development of Constructions and the Acquisition of Word
Meanings
JUDITH C. GOODMAN & NITYA SETHURAMAN
13 Building Questions in Cantonese
STEPHANIE F. STROKES & ANITA M.-Y. WONG
14 The Acquisition of Complement Clause Constructions
EVAN KIDD
Name Index
Topic Index