Categorial creativity as evidence for a categoryless start

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Categorial creativity as evidence for a categoryless start

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Title: Categorial creativity as evidence for a categoryless start

1
Categorial creativity as evidence for a
category-less start

Marian Erkelens International Association for
the Study of Child Language - Berlin, 28 July 2005

2
Categories lexical vs. syntactic

Lexical categories
Connection with the lexicon?
Major categories
Categories like Verb, Noun, Adjective
categorizing content words in a language, not
necessarily in the lexicon.

3
Outline

Category acquisition a possible developmental
path
Dutch child language data on categorial
creativity
Conclusions / further research

4
Major categories are syntactic

Lexical items have defining syntactic
possibilities
Verbs predicate
Nouns head of an argument phrase
Adjectives modifier of arguments
Semantic properties are consequential

5
Research Question

How do Dutch children learn to make correct
combinations of lexical items and categories?

6
Developmental path

Category independent of lexical items
(cf. Marantz, 1997 Borer, 2003).
2. Input provides syntactic environment
(cf. Syntactic Bootstrapping Gleitman, 1990).
3. Lexical items used in the categorial context
from the input.

7
Problems for this path

Conversion
fietsV je mee? will you bike with me?
wil je een fietsN hebben? do you want a bike?
Children might want to express things for which
they have not heard a lexical item.
lexical gap in adult language or the childs own
language

8
Predictions for creativity

Creative use of lexical items that occur in
multiple categories in their input.
Creative use of lexical items in case of lexical
gap (either in adult language or in childs own
language)

9
Method

Four Dutch children from CHILDES
Matthijs and Tomas (Wijnen, 1993)
Laura and Sarah (Van Kampen, 1997)
Analysis of creative uses between 26 and 36

10
Results

All children used some lexical items occasionally
in syntactic categories in which adults cannot
use them (creatives).
Matthijs 11 creatives, Tomas 3 creatives,
Laura 5 creatives, Sarah 3 creatives

11
Examples

V N
dit is het tafeldek this is the lay-table
(Matthijs)
A N
is (ee)n heel mooi? is a very beautiful?
(Tomas)
N V
ikke wil zalve I want ointment-INF (Laura)
A V
neusje viest Nosie dirty-3SG (Sarah)

12
Analysis first prediction

Of the 22 creative uses, only 7 are multiple
category items in adult Dutch.
Adult veegN wipe / veegV to sweep
Matthijs een veegN ! a brush
Children do not only use multiple category items
creatively.

13
Analysis second prediction

Lexical gaps in adult language
to put on ointment, to walk sideways
Lexical gaps in their own language
head-phone, table cloth
...but not only with lexical gaps
speedway, brush

14
Conclusions

Children do not restrict their categorial
creativity to items that are flexible in adult
language.
Children do not only produce creative uses if the
appropriate lexical item is not available.
Syntactic categories are independent of the
lexical items in early development at least the
start of lexical development is category-less.

15
Further research

What other strategies might lead children to
correct syntactic categorial possibilities of
words?
What role does syntactic computation play
vis-a-vis lexical retrieval?

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