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A Reevaluation of the Basic Operations Hypothesis
Abstract
If the basic operations hypothesis (EJ 184 227) is interpreted as a general principle governing acquisition of all movement rules, it may obscure the fact that children distinguish between unbounded and local rules. Error patterns support this distinction, lending credence to theories with separate status for the two rule types. (Author/RD)
An alleged defect in transformational treatment of syntax acquisition is the absence from child speech of certain predicted errors with ‘wh-’ constructions. In this paper, a theory of acquisition dynamics and intensive longitudinal data are brought to bear on this issue. The key observations involve an early precursor, at 24—28 months, of the relative clause. The analysis sheds light on two fundamental issues in transformational acquisition theory: The permissibility of simultaneous rule changes and whether a transformation can be acquired before the associated deep structure. The issues and analysis can be translated into non-transformational terms.
Perner (1991) has claimed that the linguistic structures and reasoning tasks mastered by 4-year-olds share a requirement to handle metarepresentation. In contrast, de Villiers (2000) has argued that they share a requirement to handle misrepresentation. In the current study, a correlation is observed between success on false belief tasks and the acquisition of relative clause sentences. This correlation is not predicted by de Villiers's account because such sentences do not require the handling of misrepresentation, but it is consistent with Perner's account because such sentences do require the handling of metarepresentation. It is proposed that only an account that integrates the accounts of both de Villiers and Perner can explain extant data on language and cognition in 4-year-olds.
Even if we disregard all those nominal expressions employed with purely connotative meaning, that is, those which do not refer to any object, and confine our attention to nouns which are names of things, it is clear that no extant lexicon contains anywhere near enough expressions of this kind to suffice even for ordinary daily life. We cannot get along with any single common noun to refer to a familiar object, but must have at every moment modifiers with which to construct new, more complex names to use for all the specific instances of that object which we encounter and talk about [p. xvii].
There can be little doubt that there exists a process in English which deletes objects in sentences such as (1). We will call such processes Object Deletion (OD).1
Errors in child speech show that some children initially formulate tense-hopping and subject-auxiliary inversion as copying without deletion. Other errors suggest that some children may formulate other movement rules as deletion without copying. A claim about the nature of the language acquisition device is made on the basis of our analysis of these errors: the language acquisition device formulates hypotheses about transformations in terms of basic operations. The basic-operations hypothesis predicts that for any transformation which is composed of more than one basic operation, there exists a class of errors in child speech correctly analyzed as failure to apply one (or more) of the operations specified in the adult formulation of the rule.RésuméLes erreurs rencontrées dans le discours des enfants montrent que certains enfants formulent d'aboard la transformation affixe et l'inversion sujet-auxiliaire comme copie sans effacement. D'autres erreurs suggèrent que certains enfants peuvent formuler d'autres règles de mouvement comme l'effacement sans copie. En se fondant sur l'analyse de ces erreurs on fait une proposition sur le mécanisme de l'acquisition du langage: ce mécanisme d'acquisition du langage formule les hypothèses sur les transformations en terme d'opérations fondamentales. Cette hypothése d'opérations fondamentales prédit que pour chaque transformation composée de plus d'une opération fondamentale, il existe une classe d'erreur dans le langage de l'enfant. Cette classe d'erreur peut s'analyser comme unéchecàappliqueràune (ou plus) des opérations spécifiées par la formulation adulte de la régle.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Massachusetts, 1978.
Syntax since Aspects, in Report of the 22nd Annual Round Table Meeting on Lin-guistics and Language Study, No. 24. Brame, M. (1978) The base hypothesis and the spelling prohibition
- E Bach
Bach, E. (1971) Syntax since Aspects, in Report of the 22nd Annual Round Table Meeting on Lin-guistics and Language Study, No. 24. Brame, M. (1978) The base hypothesis and the spelling prohibition, Ling. Anal, 4, l-30.
Variables in the theory of transformations Formal Synfax A realistic transformational grammar A Transformational Approach fo English Syntax
- J Bresnan
Bresnan, J. (1977a) Variables in the theory of transformations. ln P. Culicover, T. Wasow and A. Akmajian (eds.), Formal Synfax. New York, Academic Press. Bresnan, J. (1977b) A realistic transformational grammar. To appear in M. Halle, J. Bresnan and G. Miller (eds.), Linguistic Theory and Psychological Reality. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press. Emonds, J. (1976) A Transformational Approach fo English Syntax. New York, Academic Press.
Linguistic theory and performance models
- Foss
The base hypothesis and the spelling prohibition
- Brame