Development ofMorphosyntax

319_11MAR08

The Nature of Children’s EarlyGrammars

What is the nature of nature?

Are children’s early grammars reallygrammars?

• What is a grammar? When do children showevidence they have one?

• Productivity• Overregularization

Daddy goed over thereI falled/felled downMy feets are coldBrigitte doesn’t have many tooths

Are children’s early grammars reallygrammars?

• Double MarkingWill you will make me supper?Do you can fix it?I did played at Tony’s houseI was maked it all by myself!It did flewed

• Inflection of novel forms‘wug’ test: This is a wug. Now, there’s another one.

There are two of them. There are two ___

Casting doubt on whether children’searly grammars are really grammars

• Productivity and the Verb Island Hypothesis(Tomasello)– Limited argument structure frames and inflectional

forms for novel verbs– Limited combinations of individual nouns used with

each verb in spontaneous speech– Early syntax = mainly memorized constructions

• Is there such a thing as ‘grammar’? Radicalconnectionist perspectives– No rules or abstract symbolic levels - just

activation patterns over units

Mechanisms for LearningGrammar

• Universal Grammar• Phonological/prosodic bootstrapping• Semantic bootstrapping• Cognition-supported language learning• General cognitive learning principles

Theories of MorphosyntacticAcquisition

Universal GrammarUsage-based/Constructivist

Contrasting UG-based andConstructivist Accounts

Outside-inOutside-in

Usage-based/Usage-based/ConstructivistConstructivist

UniversalUniversalGrammar-Grammar-basedbased

Inside-Inside-

outout

What Universal GrammarConsists of:

• Principles and Parameters– Principles = universals; parameters = options

• Lexical and functional categories– Lexical = nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs– Functional = tense, agreement, aspect,

determiners, complementisers (that)• Features within categories e.g., agreement = gender,

number, person– Functional categories = locus of crosslinguistic

differences

What Universal Grammar doesnot consist of:

• Lexical items (content and grammatical)and the feature specifications forgrammatical morphemes

• Children have a lot to learn inacquisition, but they come to the taskwith domain-specific tools in place, andtheir learning is guided

Maturation/Continuity• Omission of grammatical morphemes =

absence of functional categories in earlygrammars?

• Maturation– UG matures/changes over time– Tadpole-frog phenomenon– Functional categories not available before

2;0-2;6 in children’s grammars

Maturation/Continuity• Omission of grammatical morphemes = absence of

functional categories in early grammars?

• Continuity– UG stable over time; functional categories

always ‘available’– Children’s grammars always a subset of adult

grammars (no tadpole to frog)– Functional categories/features can be

instantiated gradually as a function of input

Tomasello’s Usage-based/Constructivist Account

• Domain general cognitive abilities and socialmotivation --> language learning

• Acquisition very gradual; from memorizedconstructions to abstract schemas

• Acquisition driven by frequency in the input• End-state grammar = construction grammar

– taxonomies of slot & filler templates; manymemorized chunks

UB Account of GrammaticalMorpheme Acquisition

• Constructions before words; wordsbefore “rules”

• Lexically-driven but piecemeal and slow• Input frequency determines sequences

in morpheme acquisition

Key Contrasts between UG andUB/Constructivist Accounts

• UG = domain-specific & nativist; UB= domain-general & non-nativist

• UG = early onset of abstract linguisticknowledge; UB = gradual, late emergence ofabstract linguistic knowledge

• UG and UB = different explanations forgrammatical morpheme acquisition

• UG and UB = different conceptualizations ofthe end-state adult grammar