HUDK 5024 Language Development

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HUDK 5024 Language Development

• Lecture 7 syntactic development

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Principles and parameters

• Universal Grammar The innately specified
  principles and properties that pertain to the
  grammars of all human languages
• Linguistic theory A hypothesis about Universal
  Grammar
• Principles and Parameters one such linguistic
  theory

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Principles and parameters

• Universal Grammar consists of
• Principles accounting for the similarities
  between languages
• E.g. Structure dependency, (extended) projection
  principle
• Parameters accounting for variation between
  languages

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Learnability

• The Principles and Parameters hypothesis can
  account for
• the specific ways in which (the grammars of)
  languages can differ and
• the speed with which children acquire their
  language
• under this hypothesis, the child only has to
  choose from among a narrowly restricted set of
  values in each of a limited number of innate
  parameters
• constrains the hypothesis space
• learning a language is reduced to parameter
  setting and lexical learning

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Acquisition of negation

• Data from English, German French
• Stage 1 (about 24 months) Neg sentence
• No the dollie sleep.
• Nein ich putt mache.
• No I kaputt make
• I didnt break it.
• Pas la poupee dormir.
• Not the doll sleep.

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Acquisition of negation

• Stage 2 (about 28 months)
• Constructions with negative marker but no
  auxiliaries
• The dollie no sleep.
• Ich mache das nich. (adult negation)
• I do that not
• La poupee dort pas. (adult negation)
• the doll sleep not

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Acquisition of negation

• Stage 3 (about 36 months)
• Negation with auxiliaries
• I didnt/cant do it. (adult negation)
• Why does it take English children longer to
  acquire adult-like negation than it takes German
  or French children?

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A negation parameter

• Either
• Any verb can carry negation, OR
• Only auxiliary verbs can carry negation
• French, German Any verb OK
• English only Aux OK
• Aux is acquired late (Brown 29-50 months)
• So in languages where Aux is required to carry
  negation, adult-like negation forms will also be
  acquired late

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Question formation adult grammar
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Question formation adult grammar
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Question formation adult grammar
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Question formation adult grammar
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Question formation adult grammar
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Acquisition of questions

• Stage 1 sentence with external question marker
• Mommy eggnog?
• Where milk go?
• (Boy eat?)
• (What boy eat?)

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Acquisition of questions

• Stage 2 Subject-Aux inversion in yes/no
  questions, but not in wh-questions
• Does the kitty stand up?
• Oh, did I caught it?
• Where the other Joe will drive?
• Why kitty cant stand up?
• (What the boy eat?)
• (What the boy did eat?)

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Acquisition of questions

• Stage 3 subject-auxiliary inversion in wh
  questions
• What did you doed?
• What does whiskey taste like?
• (What did the boy eat?)

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Back to the parameter

• Only aux / any verb can carry negation
• Reformulate distinction between auxiliaries and
  lexical verbs in terms of their distributional
  properties
• English yes
• French, German no
• In French or German, the lexical verb can be
  inverted to form a question
• Dort la poupee? -- Schläft die Puppe?
• Sleeps the doll?
• In French or German, the lexical verb can carry
  negation
• La poupee dort pas -- Die Puppe schläft nicht
• the doll sleeps not
• In English, these constructions will not look
  like the adult equivalents until the auxiliary
  system is acquired

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Parameters

• So that parameter captures a lot of
  cross-linguistic variation, as well as some facts
  about language acquisition
• The verb movement parameter
• Lexical verbs can either move, or they cant
• If they can (French, German), adult-like negation
  and question formation will be acquired earlier
• If they cant (English), adult-like negation and
  question formation will not be acquired until
  the auxiliary system matures

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Acquisition of complex sentences

• First multiple-clause structures refer to a
  single situation
• Complex sentences including complement or
  relative clauses emerge from simple sentences
  that are gradually expanded to multiple-clause
  structures

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Acquisition of complex sentences

• Complement clauses are often the complements of
  verbs like think, know, guess so may be
  correlated with development of Theory of Mind
  (Tomasello)

Limber, J. (1973). The genesis of complex
sentences. In T. Moore (ed.), Cognitive
development and the acquisition of language
(pp.169-186). New York Academic Press.
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Acquisition of complex sentences

• Complex sentences including adverbial or
  co-ordinate clauses develop by integrating two
  independent units into a biclausal unit

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Individual differences in complex sentence
acquisition
Holger Diessel (2004). The Acquisition of complex
sentences. Cambirdge University Press.
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Limber, J. (1973). The genesis of complex
sentences. In T. Moore (ed.), Cognitive
development and the acquisition of language
(pp.169-186). New York Academic Press.
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Language development after age 5 phonology

• 50 of 4-5 year olds can tap out of syllables
  in a word 90 of 6 year-olds can
• Change task to tapping out of phonemes 0 of 4
  year olds could tap out number of phonemes, 17
  of 5 year olds could, and 70 of 6 year olds
  could
• Phonemic awareness very important for literacy
  and a good predictor of future reading skill
• a. Preschool children who do well on these tests
  are better readers later on
• b. Preschool children who do poorly are still
  having difficulty reading at 10.
• What causes phonemic awareness?
• Language games 3 year olds who know more nursery
  rhymes have better awareness of rimes onsets
  (even when IQ, SES partialled out). Caveat this
  is knowledge not exposure, and may reflect
  childrens memory
• Reading promotes phonological awareness
• Illiterate adults and Chinese adults have little
  phonemic awareness, but some preliterate children
  have phonemic awareness
• Genetics genetic component to phonemic awareness

Courtesy Prof Karin Stromswold, Rutgers
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Language development after age 5 morphology

• Derivational morphology is acquired later than
  inflectional morphology
• Compounding easiest
• What do you call a house for wugs? A wughouse.
  (47 of Berkos 4-7 year olds)
• Diminutives are harder
• What do you call a tiny wug? A wugette? (Very few
  4-7 year olds ever produce)
• Agentive er
• What do you call a man whose job is to wug? A
  wugger? (Very few 4-7 year olds)
• But note that even adults dont have perfect
  control of derivations
• a. Black bird-house vs. Blackbird house (All
  adults get this)
• b. Housebird glass. Small glass for canaries? Or
  a bird made of glass?

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Language development after age 5 lexical
knowledge

• 1st grade 10,000 words, 3rd grade 20,000 words,
  5th grade 40,000 words
• Quick incidental learning Rice Woodsmall
  (1988) Learning a new word from a narrative in a
  cartoon An artisan comes down the road - 5
  year olds learn what artisan means, but 3 year
  olds dont. Suggests that fast mapping abilities
  in 3 year-olds require additional aspects of the
  interaction (e.g., joint attention, explicit
  labeling)
• SAT vocabulary section is based on the idea that
  the more one reads, the more words one will know.
• Although for the others, the party was a
  splendid success, the couple there on the blind
  date was not enjoying the festivities in the
  least. An acapnotic, he disliked her smoking and
  when he removed his hat, she, who preferred
  ageless men, eyed his increasing phalacrosis
  and grimaced.
• But people can be explicitly taught new
  vocabulary words, and some studies suggest this
  is the most successful
• Relationship between reading and vocabulary
  development is very strong. Better vocabulary
  leads to better reading which in turn increases
  vocabulary.

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Language development after age 5syntax

• Control sentences
• John is eager to please. Who is eager to please?
  Who does the pleasing?
• John is easy to please. Who is easy to please?
  Who does the pleasing?
• John is easy to see. Who is easy to see? Who
  does the seeing?
• John asked Bill to go. Who is going?
• John promised Bill to go. Who is going?
• John asked Bill what to do. Who is doing?
• He knew John was going to win the race. Who does
  he refer to?
• Carol Chomsky Minimal Distance Principle
• Prior to age 10, children interpret the NP
  closest to the verb as the subject of the verb
• The zebra told the deer to jump over the fence.
  Who jumped over the fence?
• The zebra touched the deer after jumping over
  the fence. Who jumped over the fence?

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Raising constructions