Title: Acquisition de la syntaxe.
1Acquisition de la syntaxe.
- Anne Christophe
- Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et
Psycholinguistique, - CNRS-EHESS-ENS, Paris
- http//www.lscp.net
- http//www.lscp.net/persons/anne
- enseignement cours Acquisition de la syntaxe
2Paradoxe dinitialisation
- Les expériences chez les adultes suggèrent que la
structure syntaxique est extrêmement utile pour
contraindre lacquisition des verbes - or, pour apprendre la structure syntaxique, on
supposait quil fallait être capable danalyser
les phrases en mots, de connaître le sens de ces
mots, et de connaître le sens de la phrase
entière.
3Paradoxe dinitialisation
- Le lexique est un pré-requis pour lacquisition
de la syntaxe - la syntaxe est un pré-requis pour lacquisition
du lexique. - Solutions
- découper les composantes du langage en morceaux
- exploiter de linformation extérieure au
paradoxe ex prosodie informe lanalyse
syntaxique
4Initialisation syntaxique de lacquisition du
lexique
- Est-ce que les jeunes enfants exploitent la
structure syntaxique des phrases pour apprendre
un nouveau mot?
5Learning a new word noun vs adjective
Familiarization Phase
Test Phase
No Word "See here?" Novel Noun "See the
blicket? See what I have?" Novel
Adjective "See the blickish one?"
Waxman Markow, 1995
612-13 months-olds
p lt .05 Chance 50
7Learning a new word noun vs adjective objects
that share both category membership and a salient
property
- Can infants flexibly construe the very same
objects either - as members of an object category (animal
flamingo) or - as embodying an object property (purple soft)?
- . Does their construal vary systematically as a
function of naming? - Can we assess the evolution of infants
expectations?
8stringent test Pitting Category vs Property
FAMILIARIZATION
TEST CAT vs PROP
CONTRAST
(Booth Waxman, 2003)
9(No Transcript)
10At 14 months Infants tease apart the nouns
Booth Waxman (2003)
11Whether they are phrase final or medial Booth
Waxman (2003)
The ability to generalize adjectives depends on
several things
12Nouns vs adjectives Waxman et al.
- Infants become able to identify a new word as a
noun between 12 and 14 months of age (and infer
that it refers to objects) - adjectives are identified as not being nouns
whether infants are able to generalize to objects
sharing the same property depends on the task at
hand, even in very old children (3-4 years) it
seems that children need to have a
well-established category before they will learn
a word for one of its properties (color, texture).
13Pour tester la syntaxe des jeunes enfants
expériences de compréhension de phrases, avec
présentation d'une vidéo
- Suggèrent que les enfants connaissent déjà
l'ordre des mots dans leur langue (Hirsh-Pasek
Golinkoff, 1996) - peut-être qu'ils exploitent la structure
syntaxique des phrases pour inférer le sens du
verbe (Naigles) - difficultés d'interprétation...
14Testing early comprehension with the cross-modal
preferential looking task
- scenes a) big bird tickles cookie monster
- b) cookie monster tickles big bird
- task where is cookie monster tickling big
bird?
result subjects look more at appropriate video
than inappropriate video
Interpretation perform a syntactic analysis of
the sentence? Subject Agent? Or, know that
agent is named first in the sentence?
Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M. (1996). The
origins of grammar evidence from early language
comprehension. Cambridge Mass. MIT Press.
15Learning about verb meanings Naigles et al.
- Video synchronous action duck and bunny making
arm circlescausative action the duck forces
the rabbit to bend over - speech three groups of children1. the duck
is blicking the bunny!2. the duck and the
bunny are blicking!3. blicking!
Naigles, L. G., Kako, E. T. (1993). First
contact in verb acquisition defining a role for
syntax. Child Development, 64, 1665-1687.
16Learning about verb meanings Naigles et al.
- Test phase the two actions are separated (one on
the left, one on the right), children hear find
blicking - Results 2-year-olds look longer at causative
action when they had heard the verb in the
transitive frame (the duck is blicking the
bunny) - Ccl 2-year-old use the syntax of sentences to
make hypothesis about verb meaning - interprétation alternative???
17Exploiter la diversité des structures syntaxiques
pour inférer le sens d'un verbe initialisation
syntaxique
- Encore une fois, double actionune causative
(faire faire quelque chose à quelqu'un), une non
(action de contact) - présenter le verbe dans une seule construction
syntaxique, ou dans deux constructions - une transitive,
- une intransitive.
Naigles, L. (1996). The use of multiple frames in
verb learning via syntactic bootstrapping.
Cognition, 58, 221-251.
18- As Landau and Gleitman (1985) hypothesized in
their original proposal of Syntactic
Bootstrapping, children may exploit the multiple
frames in which a verb can be presented in their
acquisition of that verb's meaning. The idea is
that while a single frame may be insufficient to
accurately constrain a verb's meaning given a
particular extra-linguistic context, multiple
frames may provide enough information to do so.
For example, in Landau and Gleitman's
investigation of the acquisition of look by a
blind child named Kelli, they suggested that it
was the set of syntactic frames in which look
appeared that enabled Kelli to establish this as
a verb of perception. To Kelli, look was a verb
of haptic perception rather than visual
perception (i.e., it meant explore with the hands
rather than explore with the eyes).
19- Part of this meaning could be attributed to the
fact that Kelli's mother only used look in
reference to nearby things and not far-away
things. However, she also used such verbs as
have, give, play, and put in reference to nearby
things that is, the spatial context did not
distinguish look from the nonperceptual verbs.
Interestingly, the syntactic frames in which look
was used did provide this distinction look
differed from have in allowing PPs (compare Kelli
looked AT THE BALL with Kelli has AT THE BALL),
it differed from put in not allowing frames
containing three NPs (compare KELLI put THE BALL
in THE BASKET with KELLI looked THE BALL in THE
BASKET), and it differed from go in allowing
sentence complements (compare Look HOW TO DO IT
with Go HOW TO DO IT). Thus, Landau and Gleitman
conjectured that it was the conjunction of these
frames in Kelli's input, plus the accompanying
spatial contexts, which enabled Kelli to
establish explore haptically as the meaning of
look.
20Exemple des alternances
- Causative alternation(1) The girl dropped the
ball.(2) The ball dropped. - Object omission alternation(3) The cat was
scratching the door.(4) The cat was scratching.
21Dessin expérimental
- Causative alternationthe duck is sebbing the
frogthe frog is sebbing -gt action causative - Omitted objectthe duck is sebbing the frogthe
duck is sebbing -gt action de contact? (?) - Frameless sebbing! -gt indifférent
- Intransitive onlythe duck is sebbing. -gt
action de contact? (?)
22Matériel expérimental
23Set-up expérimental
24Exemple de scénario
25Résultats
F(1,112)3.19, plt0.05 (one-tailed)
16
16
16
12
Préférence globale pour l'action
causative seules les filles, dans la condition
'omitted object', ne la montrent pas.
26Résultats item par item
27Conclusion
- The current study supplies the first
experimental evidence that young language
learners can take advantage of cross-sentential
information. In this study, the pair of
sentence frames (the transitive/intransitive
alternation) makes a specific prediction
concerning the meaning of the verb that appears
in it. That is, hearing a verb in a transitive
frame can inform a child that the verb's action
affects an object, possibly in a causative
relation, and so directs the child to focus on
these types of actions in the accompanying scene.
Hearing a verb in an intransitive frame suggests,
among other things, that the verb's action is
spontaneous or internally controlled, so that the
child's attention is directed to these types of
actions. Hearing the same verb in both frames may
inform the child that both types of actions are
feasible for this verb, but may not (yet) provide
enough direction for the child's attention in a
given scene of set of scenes.
28Conclusion
- However, hearing the verb in both frames in the
Omitted Object alternation provides information
that the verb's action is not causative, and that
it refers to an ongoing activity in the scene (in
this study, this was one involving contact). In
sum, the information provided by the two frames
in the OO alternation in this study would seem to
be more specific than that provided by sentence
forms being considered in combination but not in
relation to each other. Both kinds of
cross-sentential information are likely to be
useful to the language learner, though, and both
should be investigated in more detail. - ???
29Perspectives
- How can the child learn about syntax?
- If possible, before he/she knows many words?
- Pay attention to grammatical words, articles,
pronouns, etc, to identify syntactic categories
(noun/verb/) - E.g. look, the gorp is blicking!!
30Bootstrapping syntaxique test expérimental
- Les bébés peuvent-ils exploiter les mots
grammaticaux pour inférer la catégorie syntaxique
des mots de contenu? - - je jaurime -gt jaurime est un verbe,
réfère probablement à une action. - - une jaurime -gt jaurime est un nom, réfère
probablement à un objet. - (note bien moins complexe que verbe de pensée
vs verbe de communication)
31Test
- Les bébés apprennent un mot nouveau ex
observent une pomme qui tourne sur
elle- même entendent regarde, elle
dase! (répété quatre fois). - test deux pommes, une qui tourne sur elle-même,
une qui fait autre chose, - question montre-moi celle qui dase!
- réponse en pointant du doigt (bébés
préalablement entraînés à pointer du doigt vers
lécran 4 mots nouveaux, 2 essais par mot).
32Résultats bébés de 23 mois.
Montre-moi celle qui dase!
33Groupe contrôle
- pomme qui tourne sur elle-mêmeGroupe
verbe Groupe Nom regarde, elle dase!
regarde la dase! - test deux pommes, une qui tourne sur elle-même,
une qui fait autre chose, - Groupe verbe Groupe Nom montre-moi mont
re-moi celle qui dase! la
dase! (question idiote).
34Résultats bébés de 23 mois.
Montre-moi celle qui dase!
Montre-moi la dase!
Savita Bernal (thèse de doctorat).
35Conclusion initialisation syntaxique
- L'information sur la structure syntaxique peut
être utile pour contraindre l'acquisition du sens
des mots (étude adulte, Gillette et al. 1999) - les enfants (américains) de 14 mois distinguent
déjà entre un mot nouveau présenté comme un nom
( objet) et un mot nouveau présenté comme un
adjectif ( pas objet mais pas encore
propriété) - les enfants (français) de 23 mois distinguent
entre un mot nouveau présenté comme un nom (
objet) et un mot nouveau présenté comme un verbe
( action) - qu'en est-il des enfants plus jeunes?? (18 mois)
- Comment ont-ils fait pour apprendre ça??
36Objectif des expériencesTomasello, M.,
Akhtar, N. (1995). Two-year-olds use pragmatic
cues to differentiate reference to objects and
actions. Cognitive Development, 10, 201-224.
37Discussion générale.
- Lenfant utilise des indices socio-pragmatiques
pour déterminer si un adulte qui prononce un mot
nouveau cherche à indiquer un objet ou une action
(Tomasello Akhtar). - L'enfant utilise des indices linguistiques pour
déterminer si un nouveau mot réfère à un objet ou
à une action (Gleitman Bernal) - Y a-t-il un paradoxe?