Competition, Copying and Cues: The Acquisition of Whquestions in English and Norwegian

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Competition, Copying and Cues The Acquisition of
Wh-questions in English and Norwegian

• Marit Westergaard
• Department of Language Linguistics/CASTL

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1. Introduction

• (1) Dad Wheres Mommy?
• Child She goed to the store.
• Dad Mommy goed to the store?
• Child NO! (annoyed) Daddy, I say it that
  way, not you!
• (Pinker 1999 199)

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• Optionality in the child grammar
• Wh-questions in English
• Why he cant hit? (Adam 34.01)
• What am I saying? (Adam 34.01)
• Optionality in the input
• Wh-questions in Norwegian (Tromsø)
• (4) Ka sir du? / Ka du sir?
• what say you / what you say
• What are you saying?

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2. The Structure of the Target Languages

• English Subject-auxiliary inversion
• (5) Peter will eat the olives.
• What will Peter eat?
• No inversion in embedded questions/declaratives
• (6) I dont know what will Peter eat
• (7) Then will Peter eat.
• No inversion w/lexical verbs, except be
• (8) What ate Peter? / (9) Where was Peter?
• Residual Verb Second (V2) (Rizzi 1996)

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• Norwegian Classical V2
• Dialects No strict V2 in wh-questions (e.g.
  Vangsnes 2006).
• (10) kor er mitt fly? (INV, file Ole.17) V2
  beDP
• where is my plane
• Where is my plane?
• (11) kor vi lande henne? (INV, file
  Ole.17)Non-V2 pronV where we land LOC
• Where do we land?
• V2 subject is discourse new (Westergaard 2003)
• Non-V2 subject is discourse given

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• Long (phrasal) wh-elements require V2
• (12) Korfor kommer du? /Korfor du kommer?
• why come you
• Why are you coming?
• Embedded questions require non-V2 (like English)
• Subject questions require non-V2
• (13) Kem som kommer? /Kem kommer?
• who SOM come
• Who is coming?

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• Word order variation in wh-questions in adult
  grammars dependent on
• clause type (question vs. decl., main vs.
  embedded)
• wh-element (short vs. long, subject vs.
  non-subject)
• verb (lexical verbs vs. aux and/or be)
• subject (given vs. new)
• quite a bit of detail must be learned from
  input.

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3. Competition, Copying or Cues

• Generative grammar (Competition)
• Children endowed with a Universal Grammar (UG)
  containing major word order parameters, e.g.
  /-V2.
• Children only need to be exposed to a few
  examples to set the parameter and generalize to
  all cases (e.g. Wexler 1999).
• Childrens mistakes due to competing parameter
  settings.

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• Constructivist accounts (Copying)
• No UG - children learn from input only.
• Early grammar has no categories (N or V) or rules
  (e.g. S-aux inversion/V2).
• Children sensitive to frequent word combinations
  in the input, e.g. wh-wordaux.
• (2) Why he cant hit? (Adam 34.01) whycant
• (3) What am I saying? (Adam 34.01) whatam
• RowlandPine 2000, 2003, Rowland et al 2003,
  Ambridge et al 2006.

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• Cues
• Cue is piece of (hierarchical) structure,
  produced in a childs I-language on exposure to
  triggers in the input.
• (14) Cue for V2 syntax CPXP CV...
  (Lightfoot 2006 86)
• BUT Given the variation in adult languages, cues
  must be much more fine-grained - i.e. micro-cues.
  
• (Westergaard 2007, forthcoming,
  LightfootWestergaard 2007)
• Micro-cues
• (15) Cue for V2 in wh-questions (English)
  IntP(wh) Int?I...

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• Predictions
• Setting major word order parameter
• Massive overgeneralization
• Copying frequent word combinations
• Some overgeneralization (frequent infrequent,
  i.e. embedded questions, questions with long
  wh-elements)
• Micro-cues
• Generally target-consistent production

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4. Acquisition data - Norwegian

• Corpus of Norwegian child language (Tromsø),
  Anderssen (2006).
• Long wh-phrases (Westergaard 2003, 2005).
• Target-consistent V2 (96, 97/101)
• Embedded wh
• Target-consistent non-V2 (99.1,107/108)
• Monosyllabic wh-words
• Target-consistent V2 and non-V2

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• Word order dependent on information structure
• (16) kor e babyen? (Ina 21.0) where is
  baby.DEF
• Where is the baby?
• (17) ka løva like å spise mamma?
  (Ann 26.21)
• what lion.DEF likes to eat mommie
• Mommie, what does the lion like to eat?

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• Subject questions
• Functional element som missing at early stage.
• Initial word combination ka som/kem som - not
  copied
• (18)ADULT nei og nei ka som skjer
  der
• no and no what SOM happens there
• Oh no, what is happening there?
• CHILD nei og nei ka skjer der. (Ole 21.5)

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5. Acquisition data - English

• As soon as aux appear, target-consistently
  inverted.
• No overgeneralization of S-aux inversion to other
  clause types or verb types. (Radford 1992, Roeper
  1999, 2007)
• Adam?
• Questions with be (Westergaard 2008)
• Target-consistent inversion 96.4 (455/472)
• (19) where is a box? (Adam 30.11)

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• Embedded wh-clauses
• Target-consistent non-inversion 94.2 (97/103)
• (20) So we can know where the mailman is. (Adam
  32.21)
• where is frequent combination in main clauses
• Long wh-elements
• Target-consistent inversion 91.7 (35/39)
• (21) What kind of butterfly is this? (Adam
  33.18)

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• Whats Adams problem?
• Distinction aux/be
• aux - inverted 34.2 (25/73), age 32-35
• Distinction between wh-elements
• what - inverted 96.6 (689/713)
• why - inverted 11.9 (7/59)
• (2) Why he cant hit? (Adam 34.01)

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6. Acquisition Data - Summary

• Children zoom in on target word order in
  different contexts early - making distinctions
  between linguistically relevant (sub-) categories
  - micro-cues.
• No copying of frequent word combinations - no
  competition between major parameter settings.
• Given the complexity of word order in
  wh-questions, a cue may be delayed.
• Adams grammar is conservative/makes finer
  distinctions than the target language (even
  smaller micro-cues) - e.g. does not generalize be
  to aux, what to why (cf. Tromsø).

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7. Conclusion

• (1) Mommy goed to the store.
• (2) Why he cant hit?
• Overgeneralization of past tense morphology -ed
  vs.
• underapplication of S-aux inversion.
• No principled reason why goed is ungrammatical -
  -ed rule applies blindly to any verb.
• Strictly speaking, no principled reason why (2)
  is ungrammatical either (cf. Indian Vernacular
  English).
• BUT There ARE principled reasons for when the
  S-aux/V2 rule applies - micro-cues, preventing
  children from overgeneralizing.

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• Learning the target form has no effect on
  meaning/communication.
• goed went
• Why he cant hit? Why cant he hit?
• Yet, well before the age of 3, children
  distinguish between main and embedded
  wh-questions, subjects and non-subjects, phrases
  and heads, auxiliaries and lexical verbs...
• Why should they care?

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• Language is certainly a powerful tool for
  communication, but children could not acquire its
  details by figuring out which ones help in
  communication they learn the whole language,
  with all its strengths and weaknesses, because
  they just cant help it.
• (Pinker 1999 194)

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