Abstract
This report compared production of infinitival object complements during conversational language sampling to production on an elicitation task. Subjects included 25 children between the ages of 3;7 and 5;4. The children produced more two-noun infinitives and produced infinitives with more main verbs on the elicitation task. In the conversational samples, the children produced infinitives almost exclusively with early-appearing main verbs. These findings suggest that conversational language sampling may underestimate children's grammatical knowledge.
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Eisenberg, S. Investigating Children's Language: A Comparison of Conversational Sampling and Elicited Production. J Psycholinguist Res 26, 519–538 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025075714023
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025075714023