User:Leahfren/sandbox

Causative Alternation

Inchoative a.	John broke the vase. b.	The vase broke. The intransitive variant in this case describes the theme (the vase) undergoing a change of state, becoming, for example, broken; this type of meaning is called inchoative. The transitive variant describes the causation of this state and it is called causative.

Causative alternation in Children:

Languages have patterns and regularities that are followed and children often overgenerate these patterns. Each verb has its own number of arguments and children must learn both the semantic representation for verbs and their argument structure to produce grammatical sentences. Children learn these things through negative evidence; for example a child learning english with learn that a verb like ‘throw’ can never be in a subject position * "the ball threw.”

Example of child making mistakes (overgeneralization) :

But he disappeared the green one and he disappeared the blue one! (Watching magican do tricks with scarves on TV.)