Language and Cognition Colombo, June 2011 Day 1 Introduction to Linguistic Theory, Part 2

Plan Identifying syntactic categories Words and morphemes Brown’s stages of morphosyntactic development MLU (mean length of utterance)

Nouns can have a plural –s inflection cannot take any of the following inflectional and derivational affixes: present tense –ing comparative –er negating un- or in- adverbializing –ly nominalizing –ness can be premodified by adjectives or a determiner can complete a sentence like We have no Semantic information: mass nouns vs. count nouns

Verbs can have a present tense –ing inflection some can take an un- or in- negating prefix (e.g. untie, invalidate) cannot take any of the following inflectional or derivational affixes: plural –s comparative –er adverbializing –ly nominalizing –ness can occur after infinitival to can complete a sentence like They / it can can be modified by an adverb can be transitive, intransitive or ditransitive

Adjectives can take the following derivational affixes: comparative –er negating prefixes un- or in- adverbializing suffix –ly nominalizing suffix –ness cannot take the following inflectional affixes:plural –s present tense –ing can occur after very (if gradable) can be stacked can occur in structures like She is very

Adverbs tend to end in –ly can take the following derivational affixes: comparative –er negating un- or in- nominalizing –ness cannot take the following inflectional and derivational affixes: plural –s present tense –ing adverbializing –ly can occur after very (if gradable) can appear in structures like She ran very cannot appear in structures like She is very ---- can postmodify the verb in structures like She behaved ---- He treats her ----

Determiners premodify nouns, and determine the referential or quantificational properties of the noun expressions that follow them determiners come in two main types, defined semantically: referential determiners – tell us about referential properties of the noun articles: the, a possessives: my, your, his demonstratives: this, that, these, those some other things – e.g. both, either quantificational determiners – tell us about quantificational properties of the noun some, many, most, every, all

Determiners determiners cannot be stacked ( so are not like adjectives) sometimes two determiners can appear together, but such constructions are very restricted and seem to be limited to the co-occurrence of a quantifier and another Det the many books, all my children determiners (apart from possessives and the) seem to have individual restrictions as to the kinds of noun they can modify – again, this shows that Det are not like Adj: a modifies a singular count noun much modifies a mass noun several modifies a plural count noun more modifies a plural count noun or a mass noun demonstratives agree for number

Pronouns the most familiar kind is personal pronouns: these do not = people they encode the grammatical properties of PERSON and NUMBER, and they also vary with regard to GENDER and CASE PERSONNUMBERGENDER CASE NOMINATIVE ACCUSATIVE 1SingularM / FIme 1PluralM / Fweus 2Sing / PlM / Fyouyou 3SingularMasculinehehim 3SingularFemininesheher 3SingularNeutralitit 3PluralM / Ftheythem

Pronouns so pronouns do not pick out an entity in the world, like nouns do; they encode bundles of grammatical features some words belong to the class of both determiners and pronouns; because most of these do not change their form depending on their use, we have to use substitution to decide which class they belong to in a particular sentence Some children were ill / Some were ill Both cats were sick / Both were sick I prefer this book / I prefer this I don’t have any cigarettes / I don’t have any No student failed the test / None failed the test It’s my teddy / It’s mine

Auxiliaries can only be followed by another verb mark grammatical properties of the following verb: tense aspect voice mood can undergo inversion to form yes/no questions can be directly negated by a following not can appear in sentence-final ‘tag questions’

Infinitival to infinitival to is like an Aux as well: Chomsky compared it to the auxiliary should – they appear in the same positions in a clause – they both take an infinitival verb as a complement – they both allow ellipsis of their complement infinitival to is not like a preposition: it takes a verb phrase as its complement (P takes a nominal element), and it can’t be modified by right or straight infinitival to and Aux are both labelled I, or INFL (for INFLECTIONAL ELEMENT)

Complementizers are grammatical markers that indicate a complement clause The report that war had broken out I don’t know whether she smokes I am anxious for you to do well they indicate whether the clause they introduce is tensed or not they mark illocutionary force of the complement clause – i.e. its semantic / pragmatic function: declarative interrogative resultative

Complementizers not like prepositions: they take a whole clause as a complement (prepositions take a nominal complement) I am hoping for a pay rise= P I am hoping for you to enjoy this class= C not like determiners: phonological evidence I’m not sure that you did it right I want that book

Prepositions note that prepositions fall in many ways between the lexical vs functional divide many prepositions do have antonyms, and therefore could be thought of as having descriptive content (e.g. under/over, to/from, with/without, in/out, up/down) but many prepositions do not have antonyms, and do not seem to pick out any particular spatial or temporal relationship; they perform a function, such as case assignment (e.g. of, by, for…..) prepositions are a closed class

Prepositions do not vary their form, so cannot take any of the following inflectional and derivational affixes: plural –s present tense –ing comparative –er negating prefixes un- or in- adverbializing –ly nominalizing –ness can often be intensified by a word like right or straight can be transitive or intransitive

Substitution When you’re not sure what kind of phrase or word an item is, use substitution This just means taking a word or phrase you are sure of, and inserting it in place If you end up with a grammatical sentence, you know the category of the item you’re working with If not, try something else (morphosyntactic evidence, semantic or phonological information, educated guesswork…)

Exercise Identify the word class of each of the italicized words in the following sentences. Give reasons for your analysis and identify any problems. 1. This hedgehog is eating a beetle. 2. The car came round the corner. 3. The moon is round tonight. 4. The exams have come round again. 5. I gave you a book for her. 6. Fred asked if he should explain things to her. 7. He is anxious for her to do well. 8. He must really squirm. 9. Have you got any idea what that was about? 10. Karen said that she hadn’t got any.

Change of pace… We’re starting to have some background and a vocabulary that allows us to discuss problems of language in a relatively technical way Before we continue to develop those tools, we’re going to lay some foundations for putting all this information into perspective On to some background/revision about child language acquisition, especially with reference to morphology and syntax

Roger Brown – Studied Adam, Eve and Sarah – Wrote: “A First Language” (1973) – MLU – 14 grammatical morphemes – Trained ~90% of the top language acquisition researchers Divided the language development into 5 stages (mainly focused on I, II)

Brown’s five stages I: MLU II: MLU III: 2.5 – 3.0 MLU IV: 3.0 – 3.5 MLU V: 3.5 – 4.0 MLU

One-word speech FIrst utterances are single words – plus occasional “unanalyzed” phrases – Look-at-that Open-the-door rarely use words simply for naming objects Often expresses relations and predicates (aboutness) “Daddy” = Daddy’s slippers When using language in everyday speech we do not simply name things, but we say things about them.

Semantic Relations in 1-word stage POSSESSION: “Daddy” (=slippers) IMPERATIVE “Open” = open the jar “blow” = blow my nose NEGATIVE“no” = negate actions LOCATION“down” = getting down from high chair RECURRENCE“more” DISAPPEARANCE “allgone”

Stage 1 MLU = 1.75 : First Word Combinations Productive use of combinations Lack of inflection – MLU (morphemes) = MLU (Words) Lack of function words Assignment: Calculate MLU for one of the Adam files in CLASSWEB

Stage 2 MLU = 2.25 : Development of inflections MLU (morphemes) > MLU (words) Telegraphic

Telegraphic Speech Tends to be missing the functors (= closed class words = grammatical morphemes) – Redundant – Have very little semantic content – Children focus on meaning (?) – only use content words

2-Word Combinations want daddyDaddy go want thattruck go want herethat up want moremommy up

Acquisition Order for Grammatical Morphemes (Brown, 1973) OrderMorpheme Example 1 Present Progressive I driving 2-3 Prepositions in, on 4 Plural balls 5 Irregular Past Tense broke, fell 6 Possessive Daddy's chair 7 Uncontractible Copula This is hot 8 Articles a, the 9 Regular past tense She walked 10 3rd person present tense, reg He works 11 3rd preson present tense, irreg She does 12 Uncontractible auxilliary Ross is winning 13 Contractible copula He's a clown 14 Contractible auxiliary She's drinking

14 Grammatical Morphemes Development of the closed class - Brown’s 14 morphemes. 90% obligatory contexts consistency Parental frequency - not correlated semantic & syntactic complexity - yes

90% Obligatory Contexts

Calculating MLU MLU is based on the average length of a child’s sentences The length is determined by morphemes rather than by words What does addition of a morpheme indicate? MLU calculation procedure: – Transcribe children’s conversation – Divide the conversation into utterances – Divide the utterances into morphemes – Count the number of morphemes in the first 100 utterances, then divide the total by 100

MLU calculations Speech sample: “Mommy, want cookie. No dinner! Drink juice.” How many utterances? How many morphemes? What is the MLU?