Logically Speaking: Evidence for Item-Based Acquisition of the Connectives AND & OR

摘要

Why is it that young children use connectives correctly in conversation, yet frequently err when asked to use the same connectives in formal reasoning? One possibility is that connective acquisition is item-based in which usage rules are induced from natural language input. This possibility was evaluated by examining the correspondence between the structure of children's natural language environment and their own productions. AND and OR use was coded within 100,626 turns between parents and children between 2.0 and 5.0 for (a) frequency, (b) meanings, (c) syntactic frames, and (d) formal or informal use. The results are consistent with item-based learning in that children's initial productions were very similar to those of adults on each dimension investigated. AND was produced significantly more frequently than OR, meaning and syntactic frame use were highly consistent across ages and producers, and use was nearly always informal.