Rules vs. ConstructionsA debate on question-acquisition

Lucia Pozzan, Lidiya Tornyova & Virginia Valian

IASCL 2011

Special thanks to Language Acquisition Research Center Team

Margarita Zeitlin

Nathan LaFavePaul Feitzinger

Erin QuirkSyelle Graves

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English Main Questions

• Subject-Auxiliary Inversion

Declarative: John is eating pizzaYes/no question: Is John eating pizza?Wh-question: What is John eating?

• Children’s questions: lack of inversion Why my dog is digging a hole?Katie’s brother is feeding the doll?

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Our View

• Input is important but it is not the only factor• Differences in syntactic properties are

reflected in the input and, therefore, in inversion patterns across languages

• Children analyze input in terms of syntactic features, categories, and operations

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Research Questions

• Study 1 (Tornyova & Valian): Are inversion patterns in acquisition determined by syntactic properties of the adult language (reflected in the target input)?

• Study 2 (Pozzan & Valian): Can input frequency alone account for inversion patterns in English-learning children?

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Study 1: Tornyova & Valian• Both Bulgarian and English display inversion in

main wh- and yes/no questions• Different properties of question formation

Bulgarian English

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Elicited Imitation

4 groups: • 2 Bulgarian (n=27, ages 2;2 - 3;3; Mean 2;9 )• 2 English (n=20, ages 2;4 - 3;2; Mean 2;9)• Imitated 24 wh- or yes/no questions

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ProcedureBulgarian wh-question

Kude e igral Ivan s tebe?Where aux-sum played Ivan with you

Bulgarian yes/no question

S tebe li e igral Ivan?With you li aux-sum played Ivan

English wh-question

Where did John play with you?

English yes/no question

Was John playing ball with you?

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Inversion by Question Type

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Summary• Children are sensitive to the syntactic

regularities that underlie input differences• Level of syntactic consistency predicts

differences in performance

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Bulgarian English

Study 2Elicited Production and Input

• Do frequencies of questions in the adult input account for children’s production patterns? • How should frequency of inversion be measured?

• Are production patterns better accounted for in terms of abstract categories (e.g., arguments vs. adjuncts)?

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L1 Production Participants & Materials

• N = 38 monolingual children • Age: 4;3 (Median: 4;2 Range: 3;2-5;8)• SPELT: 33/40• Materials: 16 main questions

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auxiliary wh- yes/no

is 4(what, which, why, when)

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are 4 (what, which, why, when)

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Total 8 8

ProtocolThis is an asking game.

This is Katie and this is her mom. Katie wants to know some things. We are going to help her ask her mom questions.

“Why my dog is digging a hole?”

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Question-typecorrect non-inversion no aux double

auxother

14Wilcoxon Signed Ranks: Z = 2.5, p=.012

Wh-typecorrect non-inversion no aux double

auxother

15Wilcoxon Signed Ranks: Z = 2.5, p=.011

Wh- by auxiliary

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correct non-inversion no aux double aux

other

• Can (token) frequency in adult input account for the observed pattern?• No input data on these particular children.

Assumption: adult input to children is fairly homogeneous

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How to measure frequency?

• Absolute Frequency (inverted main questions):

• Inverted wh-: Why are you laughing?• Inverted yes/no: Are you laughing?

• Relative Frequency (inverted main / all questions):

• Non inverted wh-: I don’t know why you are laughing.• Non inverted yes/no: You are laughing?

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CHILDES CorporaSEARCH:SEARCH:WhWh-elements: -elements: whatwhat, , whichwhich, , whenwhen, , why why Auxiliary and copula: Auxiliary and copula: isis, , areare

Corpus # Children Age Range Adult Input Utterances

Bates 27 1;8-2;4 11,274

Bloom 70 3 1;4-2;10 40,385

Clark 1 2;3-3;2 32,349

Gleason 24 2;1-5;2 37,698

Snow 1 2;3-3;9 19,801

Valian 21 1;9-2;8 26,250

Total 77 1;8-5;2 167,75719

Absolute Frequency(inverted questions)

CorpusQuestion-Type

What Which When Why Yes/No

Bates 735 5 3 19 258

Bloom 70 1339 16 12 33 1056

Clark 1092 16 2 125 299

Gleason 1008 26 4 27 487

Snow 800 23 5 21 59

Valian 1423 35 6 14 581

Total 6,397 121 32 239 2,740

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Relative Frequency(inverted/all questions)

CorpusQuestion-type

What Which When Why Yes/No

Bates 735/760 (97%) 5/5 (100%) 3/3 (100%) 19/21 (90%) 258/336 (77%)

Bloom 70 1339/1428 (94%) 19/22 (86%) 12/13 (92%) 33/35 (94%) 1056/1447 (73%)

Clark 1092/1190 (92%) 17/20 (85%) 2/5 (40%) 125/132 (95%) 299/766 (45%)

Gleason 1008/1205 (84%) 28/29 (96%) 4/4 (100%) 27/33 (82%) 487/772 (63%)

Snow 800/283 (97%) 24/27 (89%) 5/5 (100%) 21/25 (84%) 59/70 (84%)

Valian 1423/1599 (89%) 37/38 (97%) 6/10 (60%) 14/17 (83%) 581/919 (63%)

Total 6397/7005 (91%) 130/141 (92%) 32/40 (80%) 239/263 (91%) 2740/2210 (65%)

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Results

Absolute Frequency: errors should occur in which, when and why

Relative Frequency: errors should occur in yes/no and when-questions

Results: inversion errors only occur in when and why questions

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Take-home Message

• Study 1: input does matter! A grammar in which operations are implemented uniformly is a ‘simpler’ grammar

• Study 2: elements pattern together according to syntactic category, not just (token) frequency

• In progress:• Token vs. Type Frequency • Wh- + is/are + NP combinations• Relative frequency (counting all inverted and non-inverted strings)

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Bonus SlideWh- + is/are + NP combinations

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Auxiliary NP-Subject What When Which Why Yes/no

is

brother/dog/he 385 2 3 57 124

other 4670 16 90 98 1691

Total (is) 5056 18 93 155 1815

areyou 786 11 10 50 716

other 552 3 18 34 212

Total (are) 1338 14 28 84 928

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Bonus Slide 2 Overall Correct Imitation

Bulgarian- and English-speaking children show similar overall correct imitation rates