Multiword Expressions in Child Language

Abstract

The goal of this work is to introduce CHILDES-MWE, which contains English CHILDES corpora automatically annotated with Multiword Expressions (MWEs) information. The result is a resource with almost 350,000 sentences annotated with more than 70,000 distinct MWEs of various types from both longitudinal and latitudinal corpora. This resource can be used for large scale language acquisition studies of how MWEs feature in child language. Focusing on compound nouns (CN), we then verify in a longitudinal study if there are differences in the distribution and compositionality of CNs in child-directed and child-produced sentences across ages. Moreover, using additional latitudinal data, we investigate if there are further differences in CN usage and in compositionality preferences. The results obtained for the child-produced sentences reflect CN distribution and compositionality in child-directed sentences.

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