Cover not available

In:Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research: Selected papers from the 7th Meeting of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Edited by Tania Ionin and Matthew Rispoli
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 63] 2019
► pp. 35–58

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Children’s acquisition of sociolinguistic variation

 | Penn State University
Published online: 15 April 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.63.03mil
This paper provides a review of past research on children’s acquisition of sociolinguistic variation and the impact that variable input has on the acquisition of grammatical morphology. I describe findings from both corpus studies and experimental studies, focusing primarily on the acquisition of variably produced plural morphology and subject-verb agreement. I make two predictions: (i) variable input impacts the time course of acquisition, such that variably produced morphology takes longer to acquire than non-variably produced morphology. And, (ii) variable input does not impact patterns of acquisition. Regardless of input-type, children pass through the same developmental linguistic stages.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Acquisition of sociolinguistic variation
    • 2.1Methods for examining children’s production of sociolinguistic variation
    • 2.2Some general findings on children’s production of variable forms
  • 3.Acquisition of grammatical morphology when the input is variable
    • 3.1Acquisition of variably produced plural morphology
      • 3.1.1Methods
      • 3.1.2General results
    • 3.2Acquisition of variable agreement marking
  • 4.Conclusion
  • References
References (39)
References
Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chevrot, J.-P., Nardy, A., & Barbu, S. (2011). Developmental dynamics of SES-related differences in children’s production of obligatory and variable phonological alternations. Language Sciences, 33, 180–191. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clark, E. (1987). The principle of contrast: A constraint on language acquisition. In B. MacWhinney (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition (pp.1–33). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eisel Hendricks, A., Miller, K., & Jackson, C. (2015). Regularization or probability-matching? Acquisition of inconsistent gender marking in Fering-speaking children. In E. Grillo, K. Jepson, & M. LaMendola (Eds.), Boston University Conference on Language Development 39, Online Proceedings Supplement. Retrieved at < [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2018). Regularizing unpredictable variation: Evidence from a natural language setting. Language Learning and Development, 14, 1–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foulkes, P., Docherty, G., & Watt, D. (2005). Phonological variation in child-directed speech. Language, 81, 177–206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guasti, M. T., & Rizzi, L. (2002). Agreement and tense as distinct syntactic positions. In G. Cinque (Ed.), Functional structure in DP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures (pp.167–194). Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guy, G., & Boyd, S. (1990). The development of a morphological class. Language Variation and Change, 3, 1–18. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halberda, J. (2002). The development of a word-learning strategy. Cognition, 87, B23-B24. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hoekstra, T., & Hyams, N. (1998). Aspects of root infinitives. Lingua, 106, 81–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kovac, C., & Adamson, H. D. (1980). Variation theory and first language acquisition. In D. Sankoff & H. Cedergren (Eds.), Variation omnibus: Current inquiry into language and linguistics (pp.403–410). Edmonton, Alberta: Linguistics Research.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1989). The child as linguistic historian. Language Variation and Change, 1, 85–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lipski, J. M. (2015). From “more” to “less”: Spanish, Palenquero (Afro-Colombian creole) and gender agreement. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30(9), 1–12. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lukyanenko, C., & Miller, K. (2016). Learning the plural from variable input: An eye-tracking study. Paper presented at the Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition in North America (GALANA) 7, University of Illinois.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
MacWhinney, B. (2000). The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk (3rd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Markman, E., & Wachtel, G. (1988). Children’s use of mutual exclusivity to constrain the meaning of words. Cognitive Psychology, 20, 121–157. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, K. (2007). Variable input and the acquisition of plurality in two varieties of Spanish(Unpublished PhD dissertation). Michigan State University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2013). Acquisition of variable rules: /s/-lenition in the speech of Chilean Spanish-speaking children and their caregivers. Language Variation and Change, 25, 311–340. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(in preparation). Dominican Republic child-caregiver corpus (DRCC). National Science Foundation BCS-1322763, < [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, K., & Schmitt, C. (2010). Effects of variable input in the acquisition of plural in two dialects of Spanish. Lingua, 120, 1178–1193. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2012). Variable input and the acquisition of plural morphology. Language Acquisition: A Journal of Language Development, 19, 223–261. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(in preparation). Chilean child-caregiver corpus (CCC). National Science Foundation BCS-1061805 < [URL]Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, K. (2015). Children’s production of ain’t In: P. Donaher & S. Katz (eds.) Ain’thology: The History and Life of the Taboo Word Ain’t. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 96–112. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Montrul, S. & Potowski, K. (2007). Command of gender agreement in school-age Spanish-English Bilingual Children. International Journal of Bilingualism, 11(3), 301–328. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oetting, J. B., & McDonald, J. (2001). Nonmainstream dialect use and specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 44, 207–223. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rispoli, M., Hadley, P., & Holt, J. (2012). Sequence and system in the acquisition of tense and agreement. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55, 1007–1021. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, J. (1997). Acquisition of variable rules: A study of (-t,d) deletion in preschool children. Journal of Child Language, 24, 351–372. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schütze, C. (2010). The status of nonagreeing don’t and theories of root infinitives. Language Acquisition, 17(4), 235–271. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schütze, C., & Wexler, K. (1996). Subject case licensing and English root infinitives. In A. Stringfellow, D. Cahana-Amitay, E. Hughes, & A. Zukowski (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp.670–681). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shin, N. (2016). Acquiring constraints on morphosyntactic variation: Children’s Spanish subject pronoun expression. Journal of Child Language, 43, 914–947. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Singleton, J., & Newport, E. (2004). When learners surpass their models: The acquisition of American Sign Language from inconsistent input. Cognitive Psychology, 49, 370–407. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith, J., Durham, M., & Fortune, L. (2007). Mam, my trousers is fa’in doon!: Community, caregiver, and child in the acquisition of variation in a Scottish dialect. Language Variation and Change, 19, 63–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2009). Universal and dialect-specific pathways of acquisition: Caregivers, children, and t/d deletion. Language Variation and Change, 21, 69–95. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Suppes, P. (1974). The semantics of children’s language. American Psychologist, 29, 103–114. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wexler, K. (1994). Optional infinitives, head movement, and the economy of derivation in child language. In D. Lightfoot & N. Hornstein (Eds.), Verb movement (pp.305–350). Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1998). Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua, 106, 23–79. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolfram, W., & Schilling-Estes, N. (1998). American English. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Yang, C. (2002). Knowledge and learning in natural language. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (4)

Cited by four other publications

Barrière, Isabelle, Blandine Joseph, Katsiaryna Aharodnik, Sarah Kresh, Guetjens Prince Fleurio, Géraldine Legendre & Thierry Nazzi
2025. A multidimensional perspective on the acquisition of subject-verb dependencies by Haitian-Creole speaking children. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 40:1 ► pp. 35 ff. DOI logo
Shin, Naomi & Karen Lynn Miller
2024. Children’s Acquisition of Morphosyntactic Variation: A Reply to Commentaries. Language Learning and Development 20:1 ► pp. 83 ff. DOI logo
Lukyanenko, Cynthia & Karen Miller
2023. Agreeing when to disagree: A corpus analysis of variable agreement in caregiver and child English. Language Variation and Change 35:1 ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Shin, Naomi & Karen Miller
2022. Children’s Acquisition of Morphosyntactic Variation. Language Learning and Development 18:2 ► pp. 125 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue