Showing papers in "Language Acquisition in 2007"

A Developmental Investigation of Processing Costs in Implicature Production

Abstract: Much developmental work has been devoted to scalar implicatures. These are implicitly communicated propositions linked to relatively weak terms (consider how Some pragmatically implies Not all) that are more likely to be carried out by adults than by children. Children tend to retain the linguistically encoded meaning of these terms (wherein Some is compatible with All). In three experiments, we gauge children's performance with scalars while investigating four factors that can have an effect on implicature production: (i) the role of (the presence or absence of) distractor items; (ii) the nature of the task (verbal judgments versus action-based judgments); (iii) the choice of scalar expression (the French quantifier quelques versus certains); and (iv) the type of scale that contextualizes the weak utterance (the affirmative All versus the negative None). Experiment 1 replicated earlier findings showing that 9-year-olds are more likely than adults to consider as true statements such as Some turtles are in...

Morphosyntactic Learning and the Development of Tense

Abstract: In this article, we propose that the Root Infinitive (RI) phenomenon in child language is best viewed and explained as the interaction between morphological learning and syntactic development. We m...

Young Children and A-chains: The Acquisition of Hebrew Unaccusatives

Abstract: SV sentences with unaccusative verbs like The leaf fell involve movement from object to subject position. This line of studies tested whether young children can produce this movement and whether th...

Aspectual Effects on Interpretation in Early Grammar

Abstract: This paper focuses on the temporal and modal meanings associated with root infinitives (RIs) and other non-finite clauses in several typologically diverse languages—English, Russian, Greek and Dutch. I discuss the role that event structure, aspect, and modality play in the interpretation of these clauses. The basic hypothesis is that in the absence of a tense specification, the temporal reference of non-finite clauses is determined by the event structure of the predicate, in particular by the property of event closure. General principles of aspectual interpretation, such as the Punctuality Constraint (Giorgi and Pianesi 1997) and the Default Anchoring Requirement (a special case of a broader requirement that all clauses be temporally interpreted) interact with the particular aspectual features of the target language to explain the cross-linguistic differences in the temporal interpretation (past/present/modal) non-finite clauses.

Child L2, Adult L2, Child L1: Differences and Similarities. A Study on the Acquisition of Direct Object Scrambling in Dutch

Abstract: In this thesis, I compare three different groups of language learners—nonnative (L2) children, L2 adults, and first language (L1) children—in their acquisition of the same target language property,...

Modality, Infinitives, and Finite Bare Verbs in Dutch and English Child Language

Abstract: This article focuses on the meaning of nonfinite clauses (“root infinitives”) in Dutch and English child language. I present experimental and naturalistic data confirming the claim that Dutch root infinitives are more often modal than English root infinitives. This cross-linguistic difference is significantly smaller than previously assumed, however. Explaining the observations, I assume that morphology operates separately from syntax and semantics (Beard (1982; 1995)) and rely on the notion of underspecification (Halle and Marantz (1993), Harley and Noyer (1999)). It is argued that the Dutch infinitival verb and the English bare verb are both underspecified vocabulary items that can be inserted in various syntactic contexts. Syntactic differences between Dutch and English result in the inclusion of tensed root infinitives in English, whereas Dutch root infinitives are limited to untensed clauses. This proposal accounts for cross-linguistic differences in the meaning of root infinitives, cross-linguistic ...

On the “Vulnerability” of Syntactic Domains in Swedish and German

Abstract: This article investigates the L2 acquisition of clausal syntax in postpuberty learners of German and Swedish regarding V2, VP headedness, and verb particle constructions. The learner data are tested against L2 theories according to which lower structural projections (VP) are acquired before higher functional projections (IP, CP), VP syntax is unproblematic (invulnerable), but where grammatical operations related to the topmost level of syntactic structure (CP) are acquired late (e.g., Platzack's (2001) vulnerable C-domain). It is shown that such theories do not hold water: Native speakers of Swedish learning German and native speakers of German learning Swedish both master V2 from early on. At the same time, these learners exhibit a nontargetlike syntax at lower structural levels: residual VO in the case of the Swedish-L1 learners of German, and persistent nontarget transitive verb particle constructions in the German-L1 learners of Swedish. I argue that these findings are best explained by assuming full ...

Differing Interpretations of Empty Categories in English and Japanese VP Ellipsis Contexts

Abstract: This article describes how English and Japanese children interpret empty categories in Verb Phrase Ellipsis contexts as in (1): The penguin [sat on his chair] and the robot did Δ, too. To obtain an adultlike interpretation of (1), English children have to do two things. First, they need to find a suitable antecedent for the empty verb phrase labeled with Δ; second, they need to find the antecedent of a pronoun (his, in this case). Finding the correct antecedent of the pronoun depends on the knowledge that English pronouns are ambiguous between referential and bound variable interpretations. It is theoretically debated whether Japanese children have to do the same thing as English children in interpreting the Japanese equivalent of (1) or whether they need to engage in a different operation, such as recovering a noun that consists of a bundle of semantic features (Hoji (1998)). This article reports and interprets results from three groups: 14 English-speaking children, 17 Japanese-speaking children, and 10...

Grandfather Effects: A Longitudinal Case Study of the Phonological Acquisition of Intervocalic Consonants in English

Abstract: In this article, I present a longitudinal study of a child's (male, aged 3;0–3;4) acquisition of intervocalic consonants characterized within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). At Stage I, th...

Learnability and Parametric Change in the Nominal System of L2 French

Abstract: In this article I provide evidence that despite frequently cited differences between child first language (L1) and adult second language (L2) speakers in overt behavior (performance) during grammat...

The Acquisition Path for Tense-Aspect: Remote Past and Habitual in Child African American English

Abstract: This article considers the comprehension of tense-aspect markers remote past BIN and habitual be by 3- to 5-year-old developing African American English (AAE)-speaking children and their Southwest Louisiana Vernacular English (SwLVE)-speaking peers Overall both groups of children associated BIN with the distant past; however, the AAE-speaking children were twice as likely to give a distant past response on the BIN went task These results are discussed in terms of event realization, the Aspect Hypothesis, and feature agreement We delineate a path that uses the lexical part of the Aspect Hypothesis, the role of semantics in defining the end state of a refined aspectual system, and an interface between syntax and semantics to explain subtle steps involving agreement in the acquisition process The AAE-speaking children scored significantly higher on the habitual be tasks than the SwLVE-speaking children, whose scores were not significantly different from chance The results suggest that the AAE-speaking c

The Acquisition of Classifiers in Verbs of Motion and Verbs of Location in Brazilian Sign Language

Abstract: This dissertation explores the relationship between the language model to which children are exposed and their resulting language acquisition. Bickerton (1981) and others claim that children can become proficient in a language even whether a particular threshold of proficiency in the input is required for complete acquisition in the child. The acquisition of Brazilian Sign Language (LSB) is an ideal testing ground to assess the limits of Bickerton’s claim. Most deaf children in Brazil are born to hearing parents and learn LSB at schools from teachers who are not proficient signers. This dissertation explores the effect of the variation of proficiency of LSB input on the acquisition of one linguistic structure, in 61 children ages 4;6 to 11;10. Two other variables are examined as controls: length of exposure to LSB and chronological age. The structure under study is the classifier. In signed languages, classifiers are used with verbs to indicate properties of the Theme including visual and geometric characteristics, abstract semantic category, and instrumental function. This study assesses the effect of the earlier mentioned variables on the age of onset of production of classifier handshapes, the relative difficulty of production of different handshapes, and errors produced indicating the sequence of classifier acquisition. Four hypotheses were tested and confirmed in this study: The first hypothesis stated that quality of exposure is a significant factor in determining output. The results showed that the children of deaf parents, who are exposed to a natural signed language in the normal process, benefit from this input in the acquisition process. The second hypothesis stated that the quantity of exposure has a significant effect in determining output, but it cannot fully compensate for quality of exposure. The results have shown that the deaf children of hearing parents who have longer exposure to a signed language performed better than the other children who have less exposure time; however, their mean proportion of correctness does not equal their peers who have deaf parents. The third hypothesis stated that age has a significant effect in the

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Abstract: In the past couple of decades, two important domains of grammar have held a central position in the study of children's grammatical development. One is children's acquisition of aspect, in particul...