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
