1. Language and the Mind Prof. R. Hickey SS 06 The Acquisition of Syntax
The Acquisition of Syntax in children from 0-5
A. Becker, MA Hs, LN
2, The Acquisition of Syntax in children from
K. Fülling, MA Gs, LN

2. children use grammatical rules from earliest stages of acquisition:
1; 0 – 1; 6 one-word stage (holophrastic stage = expressing a complete sentence in one word)
children use grammatical rules from earliest stages of acquisition:
language-particular constraints, i.e. whether a bare root of a major lexical category constitutes a well-formed word in their target language or not:
English: bottle, water, go, want, eat
Turkish: STEM-(PLURAL)-(POSSESSIVE)-CASE

3. allgone milk, baby sleep, more wet, byebye boat
1;6 – 2; 0 two-word stage
no syntactic or morphological markers like determiners, prepositions, auxiliaries or inflectional affixes
allgone milk, baby sleep, more wet, byebye boat

4. 2; 0 – 2; 6 telegraphic speech
increasing MLU (Mean Length of Utterances)
children produce infinite root clauses with null subjects
See window. No go in. Want more apple. Cat stand up table.
still dropping of functional elements (determiners, inflection morphemes)
prefunctional grammar (small clause hypothesis)
difference between production and comprehension of determiners:
children are able to distinguish the correct syntactic function in: Find THE bird for me from the incorrect use of an auxiliary in: Find WAS bird for me

5. general question: maturation vs. continuity
maturation: certain fundamental aspects of syntax are not present in the early grammar but subject to maturation
continuity.: all aspects of UG are available throughout development
! in either view UG principles are presumed to be innate !

6. Knowledge of basic syntactic dependencies
def.: A syntactic dependency is when a word or a morpheme in a sentence depends on the presence of some other word or morpheme in the sentence.
ex.: subject-verb agreement (I speak, he speaks, etc.) mastered even by children by the age of 1 ½
conclusions:
=> grammatical competence includes knowledge of basic dependencies
=> children have functional structure since agreement is an inflectional category

7. 2; 6 – 4; 0 comprehension and production of complex structures
Coordinated and embedded sentences:
- He was stuck and I got him out.
- I want this doll because she is big.
- I like to play with something else.

8. Knowledge of Reflexive Binding
Macbeth cut himself
antecedent
anaphor
This relation is governed by two basic principles:
1. the clausemate condition (reflexive and antecedent must be in the same clause)
2. the c-command condition (the antecedent must c-command the anaphor)
C-command is a relationship in grammatical parse trees which is similar to the idea of "siblings and all their descendents" in family trees

9. Knowledge of Reflexive BindingTP DP VP
Macbeth V
cut
himself

10. Knowledge of Reflexive BindingTP
DP2 VP
Macbeth´s V
DP3
cut
himself
DP1 NP
friend

11. Knowledge of Reflexive Binding
About the age of five years children reliably conform to rules of reflexivization, children under the age of four respond correctly to at least 50 percent.
Possible explanations for misinterpretation in earlier stages:
1. c-command condition as part of UG underlies maturation
2. children initially misanalyze himself as a possesive construction in the sense of his body – that would give support to the continuity hypothesis

12. The Acquisition of Syntax in Children from 5 to 10

13. QUESTIONS:
1. Does the child‘s syntax at the age of five still differ from an adult‘s syntax?
2. If it does, which structures are acquired after the age of five?
3. Is there an order in the acquisition of these structures?
4. What does it mean to learn a word?

14. 1. Does the child‘s syntax at the age of five still differ from an adult‘s syntax?
{...} the grammar of a child of 5 differs in a number of significant respects from adult grammar (Chomsky, 1969)
(Before that, most studies on the acquisition of language concentrated on the early years of childhood, presumably because greater and faster progress could be observed in this early period. Thus, a common assumption was that a child has mastered the syntax of his native language by about the age of 5)
The mature speaker has internalized an intricate and highly complex set of rules which constitute the grammar of his language.
A child who is acquiring language has the task of constructing for himself a similar set of rules which will characterize the language that surrounds him and enable him to use it for both speaking and understanding (Chomsky, 1969)

15. “...speaking and understanding...“
discrepancy:
active usage vs. passive knowledge of syntactical functions:
The child‘s speech gives us evidence of various aspects of his internalized grammar.
but:
There are definitely many aspects of internalized grammar that are not evident in the child‘s spontaneous speech.
Interviewing does not suffice to test a child‘s knowledge of syntax; rather carry-out-tasks have to be set.

16. 2. Which structures are acquired after the age of five?
structures with potential for late acquistion are those which:
a) have a relatively inexplicit surface structure with respect to grammatical relationships
(Minimal Distance Principle; MDP)
b) deviate from a widely established pattern in the language (overgeneralization)
c) include a conflict between two of the potential syntactic structures associated with a particular verb (ask: 1. question 2. command)
d) have restrictions on a grammatical operation applied under certain limited conditions only

17. 2.a structures with a relatively inexplicit surface structure -----
The understanding of a sentence requires the listener‘s awareness of the grammatical relations among the words the sentence consists of. Explicity of these relations in the surface structure of a sentence facilitates the listener‘s task.
- standard pattern of an English sentence: S P (0)
example: John loves Mary.
- vs.: non-standard pattern: example: John is easy to see.
In the second sentence, John is only the superficial subject of the sentence, the sentence actually means that it is easy for someone to see John. Thus, understanding the second sentence linguistically is a more challenging task and it can be assumed that children manage to deal with it at a later point of their development than with the first sentence.

18. 2.a structures with a relatively inexplicit surface structure -----
experiment:
Chomsky placed a blindfolded doll in front of the children and asked: „Is this doll easy to see or hard to see?“

19. 2.a structures with a relatively inexplicit surface structure: results of experiment -----
(Chomsky, 1969, ages given in years and months, a prime distinguishes different children of the same age)

20. 2.a structures with a relatively inexplicit surface structure: results of experiment -----
number of incorrect answers dropped with increased age
almost all 5-year-olds answered incorrectly, almost all 9- year-olds answered correctly
6s,7s and 8s were mixed

21. 2.b structures deviating from a widely established pattern in the language
The syntactic rule: for Ss of the form
NP1 V NP2 to inf vb
assign NP2 as subject of the inf. verb
applies very generally in English to almost all verbs which take a complement construction.(Minimal Distance Principle, MDP)
examples: John told Bill to leave.
John persuaded Bill to leave.
John encouraged Bill to leave.
John ordered Bill to leave.
John caused Bill to leave.
John forced Bill to leave.
...

22. John promised Bill to leave.
2.b structures deviating from a widely established pattern in the language
for Ss of the form
NP1 V NP2 to inf vb
assign NP2 as subject of the inf. verb
John promised Bill to leave.
exception:
for Ss of the form
NP1 promise NP2 to inf vb
violate the MDP and assign NP1 as subject
of the inf. verb

23. 2.b structures deviating from a widely established pattern in the language
experiment:
Chomsky had the child manipulating two dolls, Bozo and Donald Duck, according to instructions like:
„Bozo tells Donald to hup up and down. Make him hop “
and
„Bozo promises Donald to hop up and down. Make him hop.“

24. 2.b structures deviating from a widely established pattern in the language: results of experiment
Stage children
tell - all correct (5 boys:
promise - all wrong girls: )
Assigned NP2 as subject throughout.
Stage children
tell - mixed (1 boy: 6.9
promised - mixed girls: )
Assigned both NP1 and NP2 as subject following both words.
Stage children
tell - all correct (3 boys:
promised - mixed girls: 6.5 & 8.8)
Assigned NP2 as subject consistently following tell and both
NP1 and NP2 following promise
Stage children
tell - all correct (13 boys:
promise - all correct 8 girls: )
Assigned NP2 as subject following tell, and
NP 1 as subject following promise.

25. 2.b structures deviating from a widely established pattern in the language: interpretation of results of experiment
Stage 1 The child has learned MDP, but is not yet aware of the exception promise; the child‘s treatment of verbs at this stage is uniform.
Stage 2 The child has become aware that MDP does sometimes not apply, but not yet the related conditions. Thus, it breaks down the former uniformity, as he/she is in the transitional phase of acquiring a new rule.
Stage 3 The child‘s uncertainty about when to and when not to apply MDP is reduced, the confirming verb tell is used correctly in all of the cases again.
Stage 4 Complete control over both the new rule for promise and the MDP is gained.

26. 2.c conflict between two of the potential syntactic structures associated with a particular verb
example:
two different meanings of the verb ask as in
John asked Bill to leave.
For ask + to + inf vb, follow MDP
John asked Bill what to do.
For ask + wh- + to + inf vb, violate MDP

27. 2.c conflict between two of the potential syntactic structures associated with a particular verb
example of experiment:
Chomsky placed a doll and a box of play foods in front of two children.
The children had to figure out the difference between
“Tell X what to feed the doll.“
and
“Ask X what to feed the doll.“

28. 2.c conflict between two of the potential syntactic structures associated with a particular verb: results of experiment
Stage A 8 children ( )
ask and tell processed alike for all constructions, tell - interpretation imposed everywhere
Stage B 2 children (6.6&6.9)
manage ask/tell + wh-clause when subject is supplied
Stage C 9 children ( )
+ ask/tell + noun phrase
Stage D 6 children ( )
& ask/tell + noun phrase
& about 50% of ask/tell + wh-clause with omitted subject
Stage E 14 children ( )
all constructions correct

29. 3. Is there an order in the acquisition of these structures?
predictable: order of acquisition
unpredictable: age of acquisition
other examples of regularity in order of language acquisition:

30. 4. What does it mean to learn a word?
Children of the age of 5 and older:
Have knowledge of the meaning/concept of words like
promise/ask/tell
but (in most cases) still don‘t have full awareness of the constructions into which these words can enter and the resulting consequences on their meaning.
When confronted with the above mentioned words in a context they are not yet aware of, they misunderstand the statement, that is they understand the statement up to the degree they have already acquired the constructions related to the word.

31. 4. What does it mean to learn a word?
Thus, to learn a word means
a) to learn the concept attached to the word
and
b) to learn the constructions into which the word can enter

32. Summary
1.The child‘s syntax at the age of five differs from an adult‘s syntax.
2. Structures acquired after the age of five are those of higher complexity, and the process is always from easier constructions to more complex ones and predictable as far as the order (not the age) of acquisition is concerned.
3. In order to achieve the level of a mature speaker of the language, the child has to learn both the concepts and the possible constructions of a respective word.

33. Thank you for your attention!

34. references
Fromkin, Victoria [ed.]: Linguistics, Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000
Atkinson, Martin: Children´s Syntax – An Introduction to Principles and Parameters Theory, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1992
Chomsky, Carol: The Acquistion of Syntax in Children from 5 to 10, M.I.T., 1969
Bowerman, Melissa: Reorganizational processes in lexical and syntactic development, in: (ed.) E.Wannert and L.R. Gleitman:Language Acquisition: The state of the art, Cambridge, 1982
Brown, Roger and Bellugi Ursula: Three processes in the Child’s Acquisition of Syntax, in: J.A. Emig, J.T. Fleming, H.M. Popp(ed.): Language and Learning, New York, Chicago, 1966
Crain Steven, Thornton Rosalind: Acquisition of Syntax and Semantics; on: ntics.pdf ( )
Peters, A.M.: Strategies in the Acquisition of Syntax, on:
presentationsPDF/strategiesInAcqOfSyntax.pdf - ( )