A central goal of research into language acquisition is explaining how, when learners generalize to new cases, they appropriately restrict their generalizations (e.g., to avoid producing ungrammatical utterances such as *the clown laughed the man; "*" indicates an ungrammatical form). The past 30 years have seen an unresolved debate between statistical preemption and entrenchment as explanations. Under preemption, the use of a verb in a particular construction (e.g., *the clown laughed the man) is probabilistically blocked by hearing that other verb constructions with similar meanings only (e.g., the clown made the man laugh). Under entrenchment, such errors (e.g., *the clown laughed the man) are probabilistically blocked by hearing any utterance that includes the relevant verb (e.g., by the clown made the man laugh and the man laughed). Across five artificial-language-learning studies, we designed a training regime such that learners received evidence for the (by the relevant hypothesis) ungrammaticality of a particular unattested verb/noun + particle combination (e.g., *chila + kem; *squeako + kem) via either preemption only or entrenchment only. Across all five studies, participants in the preemption condition (as per our preregistered prediction) rated unattested verb/noun + particle combinations as less acceptable for restricted verbs/nouns, which appeared during training, than for unrestricted, novel-at-test verbs/nouns, which did not appear during training, that is, strong evidence for preemption. Participants in the entrenchment condition showed no evidence for such an effect (and in 3/5 experiments, positive evidence for the null). We conclude that a successful model of learning linguistic restrictions must instantiate competition between different forms only where they express the same (or similar) meanings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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学习者使用抢占而不是巩固来限制他们的语言概括：来自成人和儿童人工语言学习研究的证据。


语言习得研究的一个中心目标是解释当学习者对新情况进行概括时，他们如何适当地限制他们的概括（例如，避免产生不合语法的话语，例如 *小丑笑了这个人;“*” 表示不合语法的形式）。在过去的 30 年里，统计先发制人和作为解释的根深蒂固之间存在着悬而未决的争论。在抢占下，在特定结构中使用动词（例如，*the clown laughed the man）会因为听到其他仅具有相似含义的动词结构（例如，the clown made the man laugh）而被概率地阻止。在根深蒂固的情况下，此类错误（例如，*the clown laughed the man）被听到任何包含相关动词的话语（例如，by the clown made the man laugh and the man laughed）在概率上被阻止。在五项人工语言学习研究中，我们设计了一个训练制度，使学习者通过仅抢占或仅根深蒂固的方式接收到特定未经证实的动词/名词 + 小品词组合（例如，*chila + kem;*squeako + kem）的（通过相关假设）不语法性的证据。在所有五项研究中，处于抢占条件（根据我们预先注册的预测）的参与者认为未经证实的动词/名词组合对训练期间出现的限制性动词/名词的可接受性低于训练期间未出现的不受限制的、新奇的动词/名词，即抢占的有力证据。在壕沟条件下的参与者没有显示出这种效果的证据（在 3/5 的实验中，没有阳性证据）。 我们得出的结论是，一个成功的学习语言限制模型必须仅在不同形式表达相同（或相似）含义的情况下实例化它们之间的竞争。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2025 APA，保留所有权利）。