Frequent frames as a cue for grammatical categories in child directed speech
Abstract
This paper introduces the notion of frequent frames, distributional patterns based on co-occurrence patterns of words in sentences, then investigates the usefulness of this information in grammatical categorization. A frame is defined as two jointly occurring words with one word intervening. Qualitative and quantitative results from distributional analyses of six different corpora of child directed speech are presented in two experiments. In the analyses, words that were surrounded by the same frequent frame were categorized together. The results show that frequent frames yield very accurate categories. Furthermore, evidence from behavioral studies suggests that infants and adults are sensitive to frame-like units, and that adults use them to categorize words. This evidence, along with the success of frames in categorizing words, provides support for frames as a basis for the acquisition of grammatical categories.
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Children are sensitive to frequent frames, defined as ordered pairs of words that frequently co-occur with exactly one word position intervening.
“In a different context, a number of studies (Mintz, 2003; Chemla, Mintz, Bernal, and Christophe, 2009; Weisleder & Waxman, 2010; but see Erkelens, 2009; Stumper, Bannard, Lieven & Tomasello, 2011) have demonstrated that children are also sensitive to frequent frames: “ordered pairs of words that frequently co-occur with exactly one word position intervening (occupied by any word)” (Mintz, 2003, p.”
From The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition (2015) · cites this paper as Mintz, 2003
Formulaic contexts and slot-and-frame patterns can strongly constrain the nature of the slot-filler.
“Formulaic contexts as well as slot-and-frame patterns (Braine, 1976) or frames (Mintz, 2003) can strongly constrain the nature of the slot-filler (e.g., the context once upon a __ highly predicts the word time; the context a lot of __ highly predicts nouns; the frame to __ it highly predicts verbs, etc.).”
From Effects of Availability, Contingency, and Formulaicity on the Accuracy of English Grammatical Morphemes in Second Language Writing (2022) · cites this paper as Mintz, 2003
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Distributional Information: A Powerful Cue for Acquiring Syntactic Categories
Redington, M., Chater, N., & Finch, S. (1998) · Cognitive Science · doi:10.1207/s15516709cog2204_2 · Cited by 535 · see citing works
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Chang, F., Dell, G. S., & Bock, K. (2006) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/0033-295x.113.2.234 · Cited by 984 · see citing works
More than words: Frequency effects for multi-word phrases
Arnon, I., & Snider, N. (2010) · Journal of Memory and Language · doi:10.1016/j.jml.2009.09.005 · Cited by 791 · see citing works
The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition
AMBRIDGE, B., KIDD, E., ROWLAND, C. F., & THEAKSTON, A. L. (2015) · Journal of Child Language · doi:10.1017/s030500091400049x · Cited by 589 · see citing works
The Infancy of the Human Brain
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The extraction and integration framework: A two-process account of statistical learning
Thiessen, E. D., Kronstein, A. T., & Hufnagle, D. G. (2013) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/a0030801 · Cited by 202 · see citing works
Murakami, A., & Ellis, N. C. (2022) · Language Learning · doi:10.1111/lang.12500 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
- Authors
- Mintz, T. H.
- Affiliations
- University of Southern California (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mintz, Toben H
- ORCID
- Mintz, Toben H
- Venue
- Cognition
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2003-11
- Volume
- 90
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 91-117
- ISSN
- 0010-0277 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2125856668
- Cited by
- 597
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 85 · 2019: 42 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 35 · 2015: 28 · 2014: 20 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 33
- FWCI
- 19.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cognition (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Intel Corporation
- National Institutes of Health
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD 040368, R01HD040368)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Categorization, perception, and language
- Keywords
- grammatical categories, child-directed speech, word classification, distribution patterns, co-occurrence patterns, language acquisition
- MeSH terms
- Child Development, Cognition, Humans, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Language Development, Linguistics
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