Issue

1
Issue

• Claim acquisition of discourse integration is an
  extended process
• Even up to 6 yrs of age children may fail in
  correct discourse-linking
• Pronouns
• Definite articles
• Tense(Karmiloff-Smith 1981 Avrutin 1999
  others)

2
But

• In ordinary everyday language use, children do no
  seem to have much trouble with phrases that rely
  on discourse integration, notably ellipses,
  neither in production nor comprehension.

3
Examples (Sarah corpus)

• CHI I drink it all up .
• CHI give me some more .
• CHI a lot .
• MOT I don't see any more .
• CHI yes you do .
• MOT want a little milk ?
• MOT want some ?
• CHI (a)n(d) shake it all up .
• CHI a bigger one ?
• MOT mmhm .

4
Question

• How do children understand such expressions?

5
Proposals

• Heavy reliance on discourse context (nonverbal
  and visual information)
• discourse context dominates syntax
• Children are in fact capable of reconstructing
  ellipsis
• syntax dominates discourse context

6
Our hypothesis

• Ellipsis reconstruction, and, hence, discourse
  linking through ellipsis, is a very early
  attainment in language acquisition.
• Reason ellipsis reconstruction depends on
  syntactic configuration (in contrast to discourse
  anaphors such as pronominals and determiners).
• Syntax is (very) early and can support the
  interpretation of ellipsis.

7
Hypothesis

• The acquisition of ellipsis should simply follow
  in the footsteps of the initial acquisition of
  grammar. As each new level is constructed, the
  child can construct a parallel level in silence.

8
Aims

• To show that children understand ellipsis at an
  early age
• To show that they do so by linguistic
  reconstruction, not deixis or, more generally,
  reliance on (nonverbal) context.

9
Means

• Three experiments probing childrens
  understanding of nominal ellipsis
• preferential looking (English)NP some ___
• Sentence-picture matching task (English and
  Dutch) NP two ___
• Truth-value judgment task (Dutch) NP two ___
  effect of there-insertion

10
Experiment 1(Jones, Hirsh-Pasek Roeper, in
preparation)

• Can young children infer the object of noun
  phrase ellipsis?
• Subjects 18 3-year-olds, range 36.00 - 46.99
  months, M 40.78
• Procedure
• Two labeled transitive action sequences, each
  followed by one test trial
• Participants asked to point to the video clip
  best representing the noun phrase elliptical
  sentence.
• Conditions counterbalanced for target order

11
John has socks
Can you find John wants to eat some.
Kate is cooking pancakes.
Can you find John wants some.
12
Experiment 1 Results

• Initial analyses show that 3-year-olds pointed to
  the target action 77.78 of the time, a result
  significantly different from chance, t(17)
  3.82, p .001.
• No effects of gender or target order.
• Tentative conclusion3-year-olds reconstruct the
  missing element in the elliptic expression some
  __.

13
Experiment 2(Wijnen, Roeper Van der Meulen,
2004)

• Participants
• 28 American English-speaking children mean age
  53.6 months (46, range 40-69)
• 47 Dutch-speaking children, mean age 41.5 months
  (36, range 28-57)
• Task sentence-picture verification
• Materials
• 15 short stories, ending in pertinent questions,
  combined with different pictures

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(introductory phrases) Some kids are playing in the sandbox. Are two upside down? kids argument In the sandbox adjunct
Adjunct mism.
Control
ArgAdj mism.
15
Reconstruction

• Some kids are playing in the sandbox.
• Are two upside down?
• Two two kidsARG in the sandboxADJ

16
Experiment 2 - Results
17
Experiment 2 - conclusion

• Results indicate adequate discourse integration.
• Reconstruction appears to take place (cf.
  difference control/mismatch conditions)
• This is syntactic integration
• QuestionDifference Eng-Du related to
  er/there?

18
There Er

• Eng Some kids are in the sandbox.Are two upside
  down?
• Du Er spelen kinderen in de zandbak.Staan er
  twee op hun kop?
• function of erthere
• expletive/existential, or contrastive
• contrastive there ? the bare cardinal will be
  taken to denote a parallel (contrast) set, I.e.,
  two girls somewhere else
• possibly contrastive function is acquired
  earlier than expletive/existential function

19
Experiment 3

• Aims
• Replicate previous results with a better design
  and slightly different procedure.
• Test the er/there-effect without the language
  confound.

20
Experiment 3 - method

• Participants 26 Dutch-speaking children, mean
  age 46 (range 3-6)
• Procedure
• Truth-value judgment (sentence-picture
  verification) children were instructed to help a
  girl robot learn to speak
• Materials
• 12 stories, paired with different pictures to
  instantiate 4 conditions.

21
Control Arg mismatch
Adj mismatch AA mismatch
Control
Arg. mismatch
Adj. mismatch
Arg. Adj. Mm
Drie jongens spelen in de zandbak, en twee zitten
ER op een emmertje.
22
Experiment 3 expectations

• Control
• ER yesER mixed (both subset full
  reconstruction and parallel set no adj
  reconstr reading are o.k.)
• Argument mismatch
• no, both in ER and ER
• Adjunct mismatch
• ER noER mixed (yes certainly possible)
• AA mismatch
• no, both in ER and ERyes only possible
  through deixis two anything anywhere

23
Experiment 3 results

• 5 year-olds have a very strong preference for
  yes answers across the board
• we present results of 3-4 yr. olds only

24
Experiment 3 Results ER
25
Experiment 3 Summary of ER results

• yes preference is quite strong (task effect?)
• Control vs. ArgAdj-mismatch
• Clear difference as expected
• Control vs. Adjunct mismatch
• smaller difference
• Control vs. Argument mismatch
• Hardly any difference ? possibly a materials
  artefact

26
Experiment 3 Results ER
27
Experiment 3Summary of ER results

• Control vs. Adjunct mismatch
• in line with expectation er makes parallel
  interpration (i.e., contrast) more acceptable,
  and suppresses the acceptability of full
  reconstruction interpretation
• Control vs. AA mismatch
• as expected
• Control vs. Argument mismatch
• unexpected possibly a materials artefact

28
Experiment 3 ER vs ER
29
Experiment 3 - Conclusion

• ControlAA-mismatch difference supports the idea
  that children reconstruct.
• But the difference between Control and partial
  mismatch conditions is less clearcut.
• arg.mismatch results may be artefactual.
• The effect of /-ER is marked including er
  renders the full reconstruction interpretation
  (control cond.) less acceptable, and favors
  contrastive interpretations.

30
General conclusions

• Results suggest that children are capable of
  reconstruction.
• However, the percentage yes responses does not
  drop to zero in the (partial) mismatch conditions
  ? deictic leakage
• Young children are sensitive to the interpretive
  effects of er/there.
• There is (predominantly) contrastive (cf.
  differences between younger and older children).
  It blocks syntactic reconstruction of the
  original locative. This corroborates our
  syntactic reconstruction account.