From formula to schema: The acquisition of English questions

This study traces the development of interrogative structures in a single c hild from the first word combinations to age 3;8. It confirms earlier findi ngs that child usage is highly formulaic and goes on to tackle the crucial issue of how children progress from rote-learned formulas to adult-like pro ductivity. It is argued that this is accomplished by analyzing formulas and extracting constructional schemas from them. Constructional schemas are pa rtly underspecified symbolic units; unlike the abstract rules of formal lin guistics, they are derived from actual expressions and have the same struct ure as their instantiations. They emerge spontaneously when the learner has acquired a sizeable repertoire of formulas. Their original function is to allow more efficient storage; but, once extracted, they are also available for the construction of novel expressions.