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Article published In: Selected Papers from Constructionist Approaches to Language Pedagogy 4
Edited by Thorsten Piske and Thomas Herbst
[Pedagogical Linguistics 7:1] 2026
► pp. 109–146

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The role of input variability in generalizing phrasal constructions featuring non-adjacent dependencies

A German as a foreign language primary school intervention

ORCiD logo with link | University of Oxford | University of Education Freiburg
 | University of Oxford
 | University of Oxford
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Oxford.

Published online: 14 November 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pl.25001.sch
Abstract
Controlled experiments demonstrate that increased input variability in the intervener-slot of non-adjacent dependencies (NADs) improves children’s inductive generalization of the dependency (Gómez, R. L. (2002). Variability and Detection of Invariant Structure. Psychological Science, 13(5), 431–436. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Experiments targeting different linguistic structures show that variability benefits not only children’s inductive generalization but also their productive extension of those generalizations to novel contexts (Wonnacott, E., Boyd, J. K., Thomson, J., & Goldberg, A. E. (2012). Input effects on the acquisition of a novel phrasal construction in 5year olds. Journal of Memory and Language, 66(3), 458–478. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Combined, these findings motivated our investigation into applying variability benefits to NAD learning in classrooms, considering their ubiquity in natural language.
We present a two-week quasi-experimental teaching intervention with two British Year 2 German as a foreign language classes (age 6; 20 students/class). This proof-of-concept trial, comprising a high and low input variability condition, focused on three sets of NADs, realized by German subordinate clauses (“Subj [intervener prepositional phrase] Verb”), featuring 30 or 5 ‘interveners’, respectively. Post-tests showed ambiguous results regarding the effect of increased input variability on the generalization of NADs and the ability to extend the generalization to novel contexts (i.e., unknown interveners). Nonetheless, the findings across conditions demonstrate a positive role for targeted input flooding of particular constructions in instructed FL development suggesting young learners can pick up large linguistic units after minimal exposure. We discuss the ambiguous results and highlight methodological and pedagogical implications.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methodology
    • 2.1Participants and design
    • 2.2Materials and stimuli
      • 2.2.1Pre-tests
      • 2.2.2Teaching intervention
    • 2.3Outcome measurements
    • 2.4Procedure
    • 2.5Outcome measurement procedure
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Statistical approach
    • 3.2Statistical analyses
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Factors impacting performance in ‘familiar’ and ‘wrong dependency’ trials
    • 4.2No generalization — despite learning?
    • 4.3Individual differences, explicit instruction, and future directions
    • 4.4Limitations
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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