Emerging networks: the role of horizontal relations in the acquisition of the German ditransitive construction

Abstract In the Construction Grammar framework, grammatical knowledge is described as a network of related constructions. While usage-based language acquisition research has investigated the emergence of taxonomic relations and the development of abstract grammatical knowledge from concrete representations, less is known about the development of horizontal relations between constructions at the same level of abstraction. Horizontal relations may emerge between lower-level, lexically specific patterns of different constructions, supporting the acquisition of complex constructions by linking them to simpler forerunner constructions. This study investigates the development of horizontal relations between the ditransitive construction (e.g., I give you a book ) and two related constructions, the reflexive ditransitive construction (e.g., I buy myself a book ) and the reflexive construction (e.g., I blame myself ) in the longitudinally sampled data of a German-speaking child. Evidence from the order of the emergence of these constructions, the development of pronoun frames, and the use of verb types in these pronoun frames suggests that shared lexical patterns at lower levels of abstraction serve as links between the constructions. The results indicate that horizontal relations may play a crucial role in language acquisition by facilitating the development of complex constructions from lexically specific patterns of previously established forerunner constructions.