We used a multi-method approach to investigate how children avoid (or retreat from) argument structure overgeneralisation errors (e.g., *You giggled me). Experiment 1 investigated how semantic and statistical constraints (preemption and entrenchment) influence children’s and adults’ judgments of the grammatical acceptability of 120 verbs in transitive and intransitive sentences. Experiment 2 used syntactic priming to elicit overgeneralisation errors from children (aged 5–6) to investigate whether the same constraints operate in production. For judgments, the data showed effects of preemption, entrenchment, and semantics for all ages. For production, only an effect of preemption was observed, and only for transitivisation errors with intransitive-only verbs (e.g., *The man laughed the girl). We conclude that preemption, entrenchment, and semantic effects are real, but are obscured by particular features of the present production task.

中文翻译：

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英语不及物和及物结构的动词论证结构过度概括：语法判断和生产启动

我们使用多种方法来调查儿童如何避免（或退出）论证结构过度概括错误（例如，*你笑我）。实验 1 研究了语义和统计约束（抢占和巩固）如何影响儿童和成人对及物和不及物句子中 120 个动词的语法可接受性的判断。实验 2 使用句法启动来引出儿童（5-6 岁）的过度概括错误，以研究相同的约束是否在生产中起作用。对于判断，数据显示了所有年龄段的抢占、巩固和语义的影响。对于生产，只观察到抢占效应，并且仅用于不及物动词的及物化错误（例如，*男人笑了女孩）。我们得出结论，抢占、巩固和语义效果是真实的，但被当前生产任务的特定特征所掩盖。