From formula to schema: The acquisition of English questions

This study traces the development of interrogative structures in a single child from the first word combinations to age 3;8. It confirms earlier findings that child usage is highly formulaic and goes on to tackle the crucial issue of how children progress from rote-learned formulas to adult-like productivity. It is argued that this is accomplished by analysing formulas and extracting constructional schemas from them. Constructional schemas are partly underspecified symbolic units; unlike the abstract rules of formal linguistics, they are derived from actual expressions and have the same structure as their instantiations. They emerge spontaneously when the learner has acquired a sizeable repertoire of formulas. Their original function is to allow more efficient storage; but, once extracted, they are also available for the construction of novel expressions.

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