Syntactic adaptation and word learning across contexts and development
Yu, Yukun
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/130082
Description
Title
Syntactic adaptation and word learning across contexts and development
Author(s)
Yu, Yukun
Issue Date
2025-07-08
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Fisher, Cynthia
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Fisher, Cynthia
Committee Member(s)
Dell, Gary
Montag, Jessica
Willits, Jon
Waxman, Sandra
Department of Study
Psychology
Discipline
Psychology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Word learning
Syntactic adaptation
Syntactic bootstrapping
Abstract
Children acquire language in the face of pervasive ambiguity, relying not only on innate biases but also on their ability to learn from linguistic experience. This dissertation examines syntactic adaptation as a mechanism through which children revise their expectations about the syntactic behavior of familiar words based on recent experience and use these updated expectations to support novel word learning. Building on research in syntactic bootstrapping and structural priming, I investigate whether syntactic adaptation reflects a form of long-term, implicit, error-driven learning that emerges early in development and generalizes beyond specific contexts. Across four preferential-looking experiments, children from three age groups (3-year-olds, 24-month-olds, 18-month-olds) received induction exposure in which a familiar ambiguous phrase, the baby, was consistently followed by either nouns (e.g., “the baby elephants”) or verbs (e.g., “the baby draws”). In subsequent test trials, children heard novel words following this phrase (e.g., “the baby gorps”). Findings revealed significant adaptation effects across all age groups: Children who received the verb induction exposure were more likely to interpret the novel words as verbs compared to those who received the noun induction exposure. These effects persisted over a one-day delay (Experiment 1), generalized in the absence of visual referential overlap (Experiment 2), and were observed even in 24- and 18-month-olds (Experiments 3 and 4). Among 3-year-olds, adaptation was stronger when the induction structure was less common in child-directed speech, suggesting a surprisal effect consistent with error-based learning accounts. In 24-month-olds, adaptation effects also varied by induction condition, but in a reversed way, raising questions about potential developmental differences in how children track and adapt to syntactic patterns. Possible explanations for these differences are discussed, along with broader developmental trends across the three age groups. Together, the findings demonstrate that children use recent input to update syntactic predictions about familiar content words and use these expectations to support word learning. This work advances our understanding of syntactic adaptation as a powerful mechanism in language development.
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