The Prompt Hypothesis: Clarification Questions as Corrective Input for Grammatical Errors

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The Prompt HypothesisClarification
Questionsas Corrective Input for Grammatical
Errors

• Matthew Saxton

February 14th 2007
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Collaborators

• Phillip Backley
• Eleri Bevan
• Natasha Dawson
• Julie Dockrell
• Clare Gallaway
• Jo van Herwegen
• Carmel Houston-Price

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Overview

• Corrective input in child language
• CQs as corrective input
• Responding to CQs
• Observation and intervention

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Why seek clarification?

• pronunciation
• meaning
• misheard
• register surprise / amusement
• maintain flow of conversation

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Effects of CQs

• intentions of the adult in seeking clarification
• versus
• effects on the child
• independent of adult intentions
• currently unpredictable

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Correction of grammar

• might be one of several effects
• irrespective of adult intentions
• no conscious need to correct grammar
• a by-product of conversational interaction

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Errors in language acquisition

• So they can be aten up.
• He goes sometimes home.
• Whats the man who the forest doing?
• Legos more better than anything else.
• You make me an earache.

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Errors in language acquisition

• defining feature of a language learner
• all (typical) children retreat from error
• but how?

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Negative evidence

• evidence that a given structure is ungrammatical
• parental correction of child errors

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No negative evidence problem

• longstanding assumption
• parents do not correct their childrens errors
• no negative evidence

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• A basic premise of almost all work on language
  acquisition in a generative framework is that
  learning must progress without the aid of overt
  correction ? that is, the learner will not
  receive "negative evidence," in the form of adult
  feedback telling the child that his or her
  utterances do not conform with those of the adult
  grammar.
• Weissenborn, Goodluck Roeper (1992, p.9)

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Does it matter?

• no negative evidence assumption
• ..... one of the most important discoveries in
  the history of psychology (Pinker, 1988, p.104)

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Argument frompoverty of stimulus (APS)

• no negative evidence
• empirical support for APS

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Empirical support for APS

• it depends what counts as negative evidence
• parental Approval and Disapproval (Brown
  Hanlon,1970)
• Eve Mama isnt boy, he a girl.
• Mother Yes, thats right.

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There is not even a shred of evidence that
approval and disapproval are contingent on
syntactic correctness. Brown Hanlon (1970,
p.201)
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Possible forms of correction

• signal of Disapproval
• meaningful look or pause
• explicit grammar lesson
• clarification requests
• direct contrast between child and adult forms

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Beyond Disapproval

• repeats of ill-formed utterances usually
  contained corrections and so could be
  instructive.
• Brown Hanlon (1970, p.197)

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Diary study

• Matthew with Alex (aged 4 years)
• aim deliberately correct childs errors and
  gauge effect

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A That .... that ... that says you cant go
there. M Hmm. A That says you cant go
there. M Why cant you go there? A Cos thats
the part who you / l / .... who you see
.... M Its the .... A .... over. M Its the
part where you what? A Where you look over.
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A Im easy to eat you up. M You can eat me up
easily? A Yeah. M What? A I can eat you up....
bang M I bet you cant. A I bet you I ....
I, I, I can. I bet you cant eat me up easily.
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M What you doing? A Im rolling
about. M Youre spinning round, are you? A Im
rolling .... Im spinning around .... .... on
your chair. M Hmm.
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M You have to shut the doors / w / in
winter. A Yeah, but I dont want to. Its too
bored if I shut the door every day. M Its not
boring. A It is. M What do you
mean? A What? M Why do you say that? A Because
its .... because its .... too.... Its too
boring.
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Direct Contrast hypothesis

• Child He was the baddest one.
• Adult Yeah, he sounds like the worst.
• juxtaposition of erroneous and correct forms
• unique discourse context
• child may perceive adult form as being in
  contrast with their own

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APS revisited

• no empirical support for no negative evidence
  assumption
• of little value in specifying principles of
  Universal Grammar

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Clarification as correction

• A Knights have horse, they do.
• M They what?
• A Knights have horses, I said.

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Four conditions on CQs

• child can identify CQ qua CQ
• CQs can focus the child on grammatical form
• CQs should encourage more grammatical speech
• CQs should not provoke ungrammatical speech

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Early identification of CQs

• necessary because child errors are more frequent
  early in development
• CQs do feature in the input (Bohannon
  Stanowicz, 1988)
• 12-month-olds respond to CQs (Golinkoff, 1986)
• 23-month-olds produce CQs (Gallagher, 1981)

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Attention to grammatical form

• is attention to form one of the many possible
  effects of CQs?
• are multiple functions problematic?

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Multiple functions

• the more functions a given response type takes
  on, the more difficult it will be for the child
  to discern those occasions on which the response
  is intended to fulfil its syntax-correcting
  function.
• Morgan Travis (1989548)

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E?C

• Child I drawed a picture.
• Adult What?
• Child I drew a picture.

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C?E

• Child I drew a picture.
• Adult What?
• Child I drawed a picture.

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Rationale for studies

• if CQs have a grammar correcting function
• C?E gt E?C
• C?C gt E?E

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Child responses

• repetitions
• 10-30
• revisions
• 70-90
• repair vs. revision

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Single case study

• Eve, aged 16-23 (Brown, 1973)
• 49 hours of naturalistic conversational data
• 11 categories of grammatical error

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Coding

• based on grammaticality of individual structures
  within child utterances
• I having a biscuit
• grammatical subject, object, NP specifier
• ungrammatical auxiliary verb

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Experimental study

• variables of interest
• age (2-years vs. 4-years)
• type of CQ (general vs. specific)
• looped sequence (1st vs. 2nd CQ)

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Specific vs. general CQs

• general
• What?, Eh?, Huh?
• apply blanket-fashion to entire utterance
• specific
• You said what?, You left it where?
• focus on part of the utterance

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Looped sequences

• a single utterance can attract a (potentially
  unlimited) sequence of CQs
• levels of revision rise as a looped sequence
  progresses (Most, 2002)

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Experimental intervention

• aim supply 30 looped sequences
• looped sequence introduced into naturalistic
  conversation every 60 seconds
• three sessions, each 10-15 minutes

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Participants
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Results child grammaticality
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Summary of results

• C?E gt E?C
• CQs are associated with a shift towards more
  grammatical speech
• children do not vacillate randomly between
  grammatical and ungrammatical forms
• C?C gt E?E
• children are relatively reluctant to repeat
  ungrammatical forms

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Prompt hypothesis

• CQs can function as a weak form of corrective
  input for grammatical errors
• child must know correct form a priori
• competence vs. performance

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