LIN 201

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LIN 201

• Fall 2005
• Lecture IX (9).
• Language Acquisition III

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Reminder

• Journal Entry I is due in Recitation next week.

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Exam I (1)

• Exam I will be graded and posted by about 4 this
  afternoon. Mean score was 22/30.
• The exam will be discussed in Recitation this
  week.
• Be sure to compare your hand-graded score with
  the official, posted score.

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Exam I (2)

• If there is a discrepancy between your
  hand-graded score and the official score, we will
  re-consider your score only if
• 1. you used a 2 pencil or a black pen.
• 2. There are no erasures on your Answer Sheet.
• 3. You filled in the Test Form bubble that
  matches your question sheet.

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Agenda

• 1. Evidence for innateness Review.
• 2. First words.
• 3. Acquisition of word meaning.
• 4. Acquisition of morphology.
• 5. The acquisition of syntax.
• 6. Acquisition of auxiliaries in English.

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Agenda

• 1. Evidence for innateness Review.

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Evidence for Innateness Review

• Ev (1) Complexity, speed.
• Ev (2) The Whole Object Assumption.
• Ev (3) The Mutual Exclusivity Principle.
• Ev (4) Specific principles (structure
  dependency, coordinate structure constraint.
• Ev (5) Early discrimination in sound perception
  and production.

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Agenda

• 2. First words.

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First words

• Appear about 12 mos. of age.
• Acquisition requires of the child that he/she
  analyze the continuous speech stream into words.
• At first, single word whole sentence. (Speech
  is holophrastic.)

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Agenda

• 3. Acquisition of word meaning.

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Word learning Process

• 1. Early.
• a. Will overextend the application of a word.
  socks all underwear.
• b. Object must be visible for use.
• 2. Later.
• a. Refines meaning social use.
• b. Presence of the object not necessary.

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Word learning Process

• 3. General.
• a. Nature of overextensions. In terms of some
  properties of objects (size, shape, texture) and
  not others (color).
• b. Whole Object Principle.
• c. Syntactic bootstrapping Children identify
  the category of the word (verb, noun, etc.) and
  therefore its meaning on the basis of syntactic
  characteristics (where it occurs in sentences).

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Agenda

• 4. Acquisition of morphology.
• a. Overgeneralization.
• b. Acquisition of languages with the two great
  ground plans.
• i. Noun case.
• ii. Verb agreement

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Agenda

• a. Overgeneralization.

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Present Past

• Stage 1. bring brought
• play played
• Stage 2. bring bringed
• play played
• Stage 3. bring brought
• play played

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Childs grammar (Stage 1)

• Lexicon
• bring
• brought
• play
• played
• No Rules for these forms.

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Childs grammar (Stage 2) (Overgeneralization)

• Lexicon
• bring
• play
• .
• Rule For past tense, add -ed.

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Childs grammar (Stage 3)

• Lexicon
• bring/special past form brought
• play
• walk
• ..
• Rule For past tense (for lexical items with no
  special past form), add -ed.

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Agenda

• b. Acquisition of the two great ground plans.
• i. Noun case.

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Two ground plans Inflectional ground plan (Latin)

• Cattus canem sustinet.
• cat dog supports
• The cat supports the dog.
• Canis cattum sustinet.
• dog cat supports
• The dog supports the cat.
• Cattum canis sustinet.
• The dog supports the cat.

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Case markers in Latin (1)

• Nominative the form of the Subject of a
  sentence ( the doer of the action) -s in Latin
• CattuS canem sustinet.
• cat dog supports
• The cat supports the dog.
• CaniS cattum sustinet.
• dog cat supports
• The dog supports the cat.
• Cattum caniS sustinet.
• The dog supports the cat.

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Case markers in Latin (1)

• Accusative the form of the Object of a sentence
  ( the receiver of the action) -m in Latin
• Cattus caneM sustinet.
• cat dog supports
• The cat supports the dog.
• Canis cattuM sustinet.
• dog cat supports
• The dog supports the cat.
• CattuM canis sustinet.
• The dog supports the cat.

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Two ground plans Word Order ground plan

• The cat_ supports the dog_.
• The dog_ supports the cat_.

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The Inflectional ground plan

• Another example -- Russian

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Case markers in Russian (1)

• 1. doktor chitayet. (doktor Nominative)
• doctor reads The doctor reads.
• 2. on znayet doktora. (doktoraAccusative)
• he knows doctor He knows the doctor.
• 3. on pishet doktoru pismo. (doktoru
• he writes doctor letter.
  Dative)
• He writes the doctor a letter.

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Case markers in Russian (2)

• Dative the case marker of the Indirect Object
  ( the receiver of the Object -- in these
  examples, the receiver of the letter) -u in
  Russian.

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Acquisition of Noun Case in Russian

• Subject Zhenya.
• At 23 months No case markers.
• At 24 months Nominative, Accusative, and Dative
  acquired.

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Agenda

• b. Acquisition of the two great ground plans.
• ii. Verb agreement.

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Verb Agreement (1)

• Subject-Verb agreement in Italian and English --
• io leggO I read
• tu leggI you (sg.) read
• egli leggE he readS
• noi leggIAMO we read
• voi leggETE you (pl.) read
• essi leggONO they read

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Verb Agreement (2)

• The Italian-acquiring child attains the full
  Italian agreement system by 26 mos.
• The English-acquiring child attains the English
  system (that is, -s) only at 36 mos.

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Verb Agreement (3)

• Linguistic theory UG specifies the two
  groundplans as packages -- a given language
  will be predominantly either Inflectional or Word
  Order.
• Acquisition The child determines (tacitly)
  which of these types the language he/she is
  hearing belongs to, incorporates its
  characteristics into his/her grammar, and then
  works out the details.

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The two great ground plans, Universal Grammar,
Acquisition

• Universal Grammar specifies that there are two
  ground plans.
• Since UG is innate in the child, all the child
  has to do is (unconsciously) figure out whether
  the language he/she is learning has one of these
  ground plans or the other.
• Once he/she does this, the whole system of case
  markers falls into place.

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Language (review so far)

• Knowledge Lex Rules
• Use Stimulus-free
• Brain (1) Brcas and Wrncks areas and (2) an
  autonomous module of the mind/brain
• Acq No instruction much is innate.

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Agenda

• 5. The acquisition of syntax.

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Stages in the acquisition of syntax

• All ages approximate individual variation.
• 1. 12 mos. One-word stage.
• 2. 24 mos. Two-word stage.
• 3. 24-30 mos. Telegraphic stage.
• 4. 30-42 mos. Language explosion.

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One-word stage

• Holophrastic (one word a whole sentence).
• Perception of word order rules.

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Two-word stage

• Two-word utterances show certain semantic and
  syntactic relations (about 14 relations).
• a. Subjectobject Mommy sock Mommys putting on
  my sock.
• b. Possessorpossessed Mommy sock Mommys
  sock.
• c. Subject-locative Sweater chair
• d. etc.

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Telegraphic stage

• 1. Utterances longer that two words.
• 2. Combinations of relations from the two-word
  stage. E.g., Mommy sock chair Mommys sock is
  on the chair.
• 3. Inconsistent or no use of function words and
  morphemes at first.

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Telegraphic stage (cont.)

• 4. When function (grammatical) morphemes are
  acquired, they are acquired in essentially the
  same order by all children. This order is not
  related to the frequency of occurrence of these
  morphemes in the speech of the environment.

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Language explosion

• From the tape -- Sammy (three and a half years
  old)
• What do you think Cookie Monster eats?

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Agenda

• 6. Acquisition of Aux in English Negative
  sentences and questions.

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Negative sentences in English (1)

• Examples
• John will not study.
• John is not studying.
• John is not tall.
• John has not studied.
• John studies not.
• Rule of Neg insertion
• Place not after _______.

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Negative sentences in English (2)

• Sentence John is not studying.
• Deep Structure John is studying
• Neg Insertion John is not studying
• Surface Str John is not studying

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Acquisition of auxiliaries, negation, and
questions

• At the telegraphic stage, children have not yet
  acquired auxiliaries.
• Negative sentences at this stage
• He no bite you.
• Mommy not going store.
• Yes-no questions.
• He bite you?
• Mommy going store?

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Acquisition of auxiliaries, negation, and
questions (cont.)

• Wh-questions.
• What he bite?
• Where Mommy going?