Novelty and regularization : the effect of novel instances on rule formation
Elizabeth Wonnacott, Elissa L. Newport · 2005
of inconsistent linguistic structures. Inconsistent input is unusual in normal language acquisition, but may occur in certain atypical language environments, for example when the learner is exposed to a pidgin language or to the language system of a late learner. Singleton and Newport (2004) have studied the language development of a single child who received ASL input from his late learner parents. This child, whom they named Simon, was profoundly deaf and received no other ASL input. Singleton and Newport studied Simon’s and his parents ’ production of a particular class of morphemes in ASL (morphemes of movement). The parents were found to use these morphemes inconsistently, producing them around 70 % of the time in obligatory contexts. In contrast, Simon used these forms very consistently, around 90 % of the time in obligatory contexts. This level of consistency was equivalent to that seen in the productions of control children who had been exposed to native ASL. Thus Simon did not reproduce the probabilistic structure of his input, but instead reorganized that input so that his own linguistic system was rule-governed. We will refer to this