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Growing (clausal) roots: All children start out (and may remain) multilingual
Abstract
This paper is concerned with problems of learnability. It speculates on how learners, with the help of UG and a few common-sense strategies, go about discovering abstract relationships between superficially different structural formats available in the input. Far from being confused by variation, learners can use what they perceive as conflicts between UG and experience to infer new system properties. According to the multiple-roots perspective proposed here, the monolingual child starts out like a bilingual child, that is, with coexisting (but not arbitrary) sentential roots, eventually deciding where convergence is possible and where (as in the case of the real bilingual) it is not. The knowledge domain for which this scenario is explored is the acquisition of finite and nonfinite verb placement in German. The paper also addresses the issue of how different target languages enhance or slow down the overall process of structure building and relates this to asynchronies observed in bilingual children.
... How, then, can we descriptively capture and explain the output of the child's grammars at different times, and how can we identify the mechanisms responsible for reducing the distance between steady state grammars-and there may well be more than one (Roeper 1999) -, and the transitional grammars of the child. When we speak of the child's "grammars" in the plural, we do not just have in mind an acquisition scenario where grammar G time1 is replaced by G time2 , but also a situation where two or more grammars coexist at any one time, even in the supposedly monolingual (Tracy 2002, Tracy andGawlitzek-Maiwald 2005). ...
... Another case in point of what we refer to as an uncaring UG are structures that have not yet been analyzed in sufficient depth. It has been observed that children initially build up repertoires of special or unique projections of selective lexical items (see already Braine andBowerman 1976, Roeper 1992), most of which will get reanalyzed and quickly converge on canonical patterns (Tracy 1991(Tracy , 2002. Some we may hold on to throughout our lives, their status is that of "pockets" (Roeper 1999:183) of earlier historical stages of the grammar without consequence for the current grammar. ...
... InTracy (2002) more options are discussed, for instance the bilingual learner's conclusion that both options are fine, albeit not in the same grammar. The paragraph here provides an abbreviated version of the trouble-shooting attributed to some imaginary protagonist, HECTOR, the Head deteCTOR. ...
This paper pursues a specific account of what and how Universal Grammar (UG) contributes to some of the central acquisition tasks children face and which properties of natural languages UG does not care about, hence the reference to "tolerance" in our title. We also recognize the need to consider aspects of language and language acquisition that UG cannot be held responsible for, such as highly idiosyncratic features of what has been considered the "periphery" as opposed to core-grammatical properties. For these aspects other, highly efficient but not infallible learning and decision-making strategies are needed. We bring together evidence from case studies (data obtained in experimental settings and conversational data) that allow us to explore how robust Universal Grammar is. They also allow us to find out what kind of variation, intra-and inter-individual as well as regarding acquisition type, is to be expected whenever UG proves lenient, and when it looks the other way. To test the limits of the robustness of UG, we look at acquisition data from diverse populations: monolingual children who develop normally and still show quite some variation, early second language learners (eL2) of German, and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Our rationale for including eL2 and SLI is that–like the variation observed within monolingual unimpaired children–non-canonical learner
populations can teach us a great deal about UG: if even learners who do not start acquiring the target language before the age of 2 and learners with severe language difficulty stay within the boundaries of UG, UG must be very robust.
... How, then, can we descriptively capture and explain the output of the child's grammars at different times, and how can we identify the mechanisms responsible for reducing the distance between steady state grammars-and there may well be more than one (Roeper 1999) -, and the transitional grammars of the child. When we speak of the child's "grammars" in the plural, we do not just have in mind an acquisition scenario where grammar G time1 is replaced by G time2 , but also a situation where two or more grammars coexist at any one time, even in the supposedly monolingual (Tracy 2002, Tracy andGawlitzek-Maiwald 2005). ...
... Another case in point of what we refer to as an uncaring UG are structures that have not yet been analyzed in sufficient depth. It has been observed that children initially build up repertoires of special or unique projections of selective lexical items (see already Braine andBowerman 1976, Roeper 1992), most of which will get reanalyzed and quickly converge on canonical patterns (Tracy 1991(Tracy , 2002. Some we may hold on to throughout our lives, their status is that of "pockets" (Roeper 1999:183) of earlier historical stages of the grammar without consequence for the current grammar. ...
... InTracy (2002) more options are discussed, for instance the bilingual learner's conclusion that both options are fine, albeit not in the same grammar. The paragraph here provides an abbreviated version of the trouble-shooting attributed to some imaginary protagonist, HECTOR, the Head deteCTOR. ...
This Festschrift Issue of the University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers honors the 75th birthday of Tom Roeper. Collaborators, former students and friends over many years have come together to recognize Tom’s pioneering achievements in the field, and to acknowledge his generous and inspiring contributions to our work.
See the pdf for the Table of contents.
... Crucially, the architecture of both structures (6a) and (6b) is the same. The child structure (6a) grows into the adult one by fully expanding the ''telescope'' structure in (6b) (Tracy 2002). Competition for limited resources. ...
... It is well recognized in DST that in some phases systems are oriented towards the outside -as when their behavior is dominated by the external input -and in some phases they are more oriented towards the inside -as when their behavior is dominated by own structure-building processes. Overall, variability is a natural and valuable phenomenon in DST ( van Geert 1993, Smith and Thelen 1993, Tracy 2002, Hohenberger 2002, 2006, since it is indicative of the system's present state and its future options. ...
... c. syntactic notions: The learner needs prior knowledge of notions such as ''head'' and ''head of phrase'' (cf. Tracy 2002). Otherwise links from syntax to semantics in the form of thematic roles cannot be established. ...
This article outlines a nonlinear dynamic systems approach to language learning on the basis of developmental cognitive neuroscience. Language learning, on this view, is a process of experience-dependent shaping and se-lection of broadly defined domain-general and domain-specific genetic pre-dispositions. The central concept of development is (neuro)cognitive growth in terms of self-organization. Linguistic structure-building is synergetic and emergent insofar as the acquisition of a critical mass of elements on a local level (e.g., words) results in the emergence of novel qualities and units on a macroscopic level (e.g., syntax). We argue that language development does not take a linear path but comes in phases of intermittent turbulence, fluc-tuation, and stability, along a ''chaotic itinerary''. We review qualitative, quantitative and computational applications of this concept in the lexical, morphological, and syntactic domain. We identify as the most significant property of the dynamic approach the temporal nature of language learn-ing. As a medium-term forecast we anticipate a further diversification of the dynamic approach, an increase in more formal approaches, and a stron-ger interest in issues of embodiment and embeddedness.
... The study of negation in the first and second language acquisition of German has a much longer tradition (Becker 2005, Clahsen 1988, Dietrich & Grommes 1998, Meisel 1997, Verrips & Weissenborn 1992, Wode 1977 than the study of additive particles like auch (Benazzo 2003, Berger et al. 2007, Dimroth 2002, Hulk 2003, Nederstigt 2003, Penner et al. 2000, Schimke, Verhagen, and Dimroth 2008, Tracy 2002. ...
... (8) Florian, 2;08 (lies down and places toy man next to himself) mann auch schlafte man also sleep Penner et al. (2000) as well as Tracy (2002) consider these particles as syntactic precursors of finiteness and claim that auch and nicht project their own roots and take VP as their complement. Similar to the 'flipping pivot' analysis presented above, the particles are the head of a Focus-Particle Phrase (FP). ...
... While both approaches share the idea that these particles are precursors of finiteness, the actual spell out differs. Penner et al. (2000) and Tracy (2002) assume that from early on the particles lead to the creation of new layers of syntactic structure, whereas Dimroth at al. (2003) and Jordens & Dimroth (2006) assume a more limited contribution to structure building, through the occupation of a slot following the topic constituent that is later taken over by the first functional carriers of finiteness, namely auxiliary verbs. In addition, they argue that it is the function of the early particles to lexically specify the relation between predicate and topic, i.e. for example to express that some predicate does or does not hold for a given topic -a function that is later taken over by morphosyntactic finiteness marking. ...
... Wexler 1994) or as a gradual development of learners' knowledge on how to mark finiteness (e.g. Lasser 2002, Tracy 2002. According to the second view, learners have to acquire the means by which finiteness is expressed and whether it has to be expressed at all in a given context. ...
... In this phase, some finite elements appear that are predominantly placed in the second position. This seems to be a matter of individual variation (Tracy 2002). ...
... It is argued there that the order headfinal or head-initial might be deduced by the child from stress patterns in the input. See also Tracy (2002), Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy (this volume). ...
... Such a close relation between argument-hood and referentiality has been argued for by Williams (1994: chapter 6). See Evers & Van Kampen (2001) and Tracy (2002) for the role of the UTAH in establishing the argument position. ...
This paper argues that the universal categories N/V are not applied to content words before the grammatical markings for reference D(eterminers) and predication I(nflection) have been acquired (van Kampen, 1997, contra Pinker, 1984). Child grammar starts as proto-grammar with language-specific operators and category-neutral content words X o . The first content words are used as proper names with topic-intention and as brand names with characterizing-intention. The language-specificity of early operators may be illustrated by the use of wh-pronouns (what/where?) in English versus the use of illocution particles ( nou/denn?) in Dutch/German child language.
Subsequently, deictic operators for topic are regularized as D o and deictic operators for comment as I o . These functional categories are the bootstraps for category assignment <+V> and <+N>, as a subdivision of the lexicon. The generalized conclusion is that language-specific systems are not acquired due to a common UG entrance. They rather are highly frequent language-specific bootstraps that coax the child into an adult system that eventually fits UG principles.
The operators in proto-grammar are situation-related, whereas the functional categories I o /D o are highly sensitive to syntactic context. This explains why, in a bilingual situation, a language switch in the context-free operators will be relatively easy. A language switch in functional categories, by contrast, will have a reflex on the syntactic context and be less easy.
... It is argued there that the order headfinal or head-initial might be deduced by the child from stress patterns in the input. See also Tracy (2002), Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy (this volume). ...
... Such a close relation between argument-hood and referentiality has been argued for by Williams (1994: chapter 6). See Evers & Van Kampen (2001) and Tracy (2002) for the role of the UTAH in establishing the argument position. ...
Learnability of the universal categories Noun and Verb from the language-specific categories Inflection and Determiner with examples from Dutch language acquisition.
... A restriction to monolinguals is not even feasible for empirical research, because it is not clear who would qualify as a "true monolingual." Language is always variable, speakers' repertoires always involve a range of options which could be captured as different grammars (e.g., Tracy, 2002;Roeper, 2003), and the interaction of linguistic resources within repertoires is not categorically different for languages versus dialects, registers, or styles (cf. Li Wei, 2016). ...
We argue for a perspective on bilingual heritage speakers as native speakers of both their languages and present results from a large-scale, cross-linguistic study that took such a perspective and approached bilinguals and monolinguals on equal grounds. We targeted comparable language use in bilingual and monolingual speakers, crucially covering broader repertoires than just formal language. A main database was the open-access RUEG corpus, which covers comparable informal vs. formal and spoken vs. written productions by adolescent and adult bilinguals with heritage-Greek, -Russian, and -Turkish in Germany and the United States and with heritage-German in the United States, and matching data from monolinguals in Germany, the United States, Greece, Russia, and Turkey. Our main results lie in three areas. (1) We found non-canonical patterns not only in bilingual, but also in monolingual speakers, including patterns that have so far been considered absent from native grammars, in domains of morphology, syntax, intonation, and pragmatics. (2) We found a degree of lexical and morphosyntactic inter-speaker variability in monolinguals that was sometimes higher than that of bilinguals, further challenging the model of the streamlined native speaker. (3) In majority language use, non-canonical patterns were dominant in spoken and/or informal registers, and this was true for monolinguals and bilinguals. In some cases, bilingual speakers were leading quantitatively. In heritage settings where the language was not part of formal schooling, we found tendencies of register leveling, presumably due to the fact that speakers had limited access to formal registers of the heritage language. Our findings thus indicate possible quantitative differences and different register distributions rather than distinct grammatical patterns in bilingual and monolingual speakers. This supports the integration of heritage speakers into the native-speaker continuum. Approaching heritage speakers from this perspective helps us to better understand the empirical data and can shed light on language variation and change in native grammars. Furthermore, our findings for monolinguals lead us to reconsider the state-of-the art on majority languages, given recurring evidence for non-canonical patterns that deviate from what has been assumed in the literature so far, and might have been attributed to bilingualism had we not included informal and spoken registers in monolinguals and bilinguals alike.
... The acquisition of verb and negation placement in L1 German is a well-studied subject (e.g., Meisel 1990Meisel , 1994Clahsen 1991;Tracy 1991Tracy , 2002Clahsen, Kursawe & Penke 1996;Lasser 2002). At the early stage of language development, when children have yet to acquire subjectverb agreement, they frequently produce utterances with nonfinite verbs placed in clause-final position (see Lasser 2002, for an overview). ...
This study addresses the question of how the main factors related to input-including the environment in which children are exposed to both languages, the relative timing of the onset of the exposure to them and the amount of input-affect bilingual language acquisition at primary-school age. We examined the data of 42 German Polish bilinguals who had acquired German from birth and German monolinguals, comparing on the one hand simultaneous bilingual children speaking German as a majority language with simultaneous bilinguals who speak German as a heritage language and, on the other hand, comparing heritage speakers of German who are simultaneous bilinguals with those who are sequential bilinguals. We studied their word order patterns in German, specifically the position of verb and negation, by dint of several tasks including acceptability judgment, forced choice, sentence repetition, and narrative tasks. The results revealed the effect of all three factors on word order patterns used by bilinguals between the ages of 7 and 13. The performance of simultaneous bilingual heritage speakers varies across the tasks. We conclude that they have problems inhibiting their stronger language in tasks that place higher demands on processor, leading to a non-target-like performance in their weaker language in producing narratives.
... Tracy 1991 with respect to the monolingual acquisition situation), viz. differentiated (cf.Tracy 1991Tracy , 2002Döpke 2000 regarding the bilingual development). As the apparent alternation continues to occur until the end of the recording time, we cannot establish whether or not Hamida succeeds in this task. ...
... So even though the parents increased the child's access to English, target-like finite German main clauses were produced several months before their English equivalents. The explanation was sought in the lack of salience of English tense and agreement marking and in the cliticization potential involving the English copula, auxiliary and modal verbs in canonical clauses in English (Gawlitzek-Maiwald 1997, Gawlitzek-Maiwald/Tracy 2005, Tracy 1995, 2002, Tracy/Gawlitzek-Maiwald 2000. ...
Children growing up with more than one first language present us with a unique opportunity for raising questions about language acquisition which we could hardly answer on the basis of monolingual data alone. In our contribution we will take a close look at developmental asynchronies, i.e. cases where one of the child's languages develops faster than the other. On the basis of a longitudinal study involving English and German as first languages, we will show what asynchronies can teach us about the relative complexity of a child's two input languages. In addition, we will identify clever learner strategies (language mixing, the employment of cross-linguistic placeholders, discourse borrowing) that provide us with interesting insights into bilingual children's metalinguistic awareness of gaps in one of their linguistic systems.
... The IP-approach is the standard structure building approach in the L1 research on German/Dutch, where it is argued that from the beginning of syntactic acquisition, children posit at least one functional projection (Clahsen's 1991 FP, or some IP-level projection), but the CP projection is acquired later. 4 Clahsen's (1988Clahsen's ( , 1991 Lexical Learning approach of Clahsen and the 4 But see Tracy (2002) who argues that the potential IP-related constructions in the earliest German data are instead "V2 mimicry" which should be treated as unanalyzed, memorized chunks. Döpke's (1998; longitudinal data from four bilingual English/German children indeed reveal a bare VP stage. ...
This paper addresses the fundamental question of whether (or how) functional projections are acquired during the development of syntax. However, rather than concentrating on the actual acquisition of functional projections, we consider the starting point of syntactic development: if functional projections develop during acquisition, there must be an early stage that can at least occasionally be attested that does not reveal evidence of functional projections. The relevant data concerns utterances distinct from the target language that appear to involve reduced structure. By briefly reviewing the relevant literature, we conclude that there is suggestive evidence that reduced structure is an option for all language learners. This points to the conclusion that the possibility of positing reduced structure is an option in the language module, regardless of age.
... Hence one might claim that all children start out as bilinguals (or rather multilinguals) anyway, proceeding very much like simultaneous bilinguals who manage to keep their input languages apart, until they find sufficiently strong evidence for convergence (cf. Tracy 2002, Gawlitzek-Maiwald & Tracy 2005. ...
... Moreover, they do not explore the role of the external systems in the development of inversion, despite the significance of the interpretable feature [Wh] in their analysis. 30 As a last illustration, Tracy (2002) defends the idea that children make use of three di¤erent resources when discovering the abstract properties of grammars: (i) a six domain-specific principled UG; (ii) certain general cognitive strategies; and (iii) a mechanism in charge of inferring the existence and the position of heads and thus establishing the linking between UG and the input (HEad DeteCTOR or Hector). Components (i) and (ii) represent an evident interplay of maximalist and minimalist means in order to reach the goal of acquiring the grammar of a given language. ...
The Minimalist Program introduced a new concept of language and added new content to the innateness position concerning our linguistic capacity. It also redefined the metatheoretical role of the theory of acquisition within generative grammar. This article explores at length all these issues and o¤ers a critical survey of the disconcerting situation dominating today's relationship between syntacticians and acquisitionists.
... 4 It is claimed here that the lexicon inspires the underlying structure (cf. Evers & van Kampen 2001, Tracy 2002, van Kampen, to appear). Due to the lexicon the learner returns to the original frame from which the new and perceived pattern can be derived. ...
Jakobson (1948) predicted typological significance and a more stable status for features acquired early, whereas features acquired later on were expected to show less stability in history and dialects. Jakobson’s view translates easily in an acquisition difference between major parameters and micro parameters.
The present paper sketches the acquisition of wh-question formation in English and Dutch from a basic typological difference between the two languages. The wh-marking of questions in child English is as early as the appearance of the wh-questions themselves. The wh-marking of questions in child Dutch (and the other Germanic languages) is delayed until the acquisition of articles and free anaphoric pronouns. An acquisition procedure is proposed that succeeds to set first a typological difference, Vfin second for Dutch and SVfinO for English. The different setting of the typological parameters determines the wh-development in subsequent acquisition steps. The learnability approach relativizes Chomsky's poverty of the stimulus, but affirms his position that language is "perfect" in the sense of being learnable as a cultural construct without the assumption of innate grammar-specific a prioris.
... Evers & Van Kampen 2001, Tracy 2002. Due to the lexicon the learner returns to the original frame from which the new and perceived pattern can be derived. ...
Interfaculty meeting of the Helmholz-institute, Rudolf Magnus Institute for Neuroscience and UiL OTS
... Such a close relation between argument-hood and referentiality has been argued for by Williams (1994: chapter 6). See Evers & Van Kampen (2001) and Tracy (2002) for the role of the UTAH in establishing the argument position. ...
1. UG as the outcome of the acquisition process It is a common position in generative acquisition studies to accept Chomsky's view that first language acquisition is determined by a set of innate grammatical a priories. The development of the child would be more a matter of biological maturation than a matter of input-control. Because language universals are innate in the human mind, they cause grammar to grow into the mind almost automatically under the slightest provocations. Early child language would already show the relevance the grammatical a priories. Generative grammarians guided by this view have often drawn far-reaching conclusions about the structure of early child language. The present paper will present an alternative view, the derivation of UG principles from structural acquisition steps. It acknowledges that it is indeed a sentence-generating system that is acquired, but contends that generative systems are learned from the language-specific input material. The basic argument for this approach is that all eventual 'UG' properties are identified due to local relations with language specific shapes. One might see the language specific shapes as an entrance to the UG distinctions. Unless a grammar offers a way to identify UG properties, it will not be learnable. This suggests that UG properties may be seen as the outcome of an acquisition procedure rather than being its source.
Das Erlernen der Muttersprache ist ein faszinierender Prozess, der auf der Grundlage verschiedener linguistischer Theorien untersucht wird. Die Beschreibung der mentalen Grammatik des Menschen, die durch die Generative Theorie geliefert wird, ermöglicht eine sehr detaillierte Untersuchung des Phänomens. Der vorliegende Artikel stellt die Entwicklung der funktionalen Kategorien im Erwerb des Deutschen und des Polnischen als Muttersprache(n) dar. Ein Vergleich des Prozesses in beiden Sprachen unterstützt die Hypothese, die den Erstspracherwerb als eine graduelle Entwicklung der Sprachstruktur im kindlichen Gehirn erklärt.
Desde su aparición, el enfoque biolingüístico ha producido importantes avances en el entendimiento biológico del lenguaje humano. Recientemente, el profesor Raymundo Casas Navarro ha publicado en esta misma revista un trabajo con muchas implicaciones (Casas Navarro 2011), que aborda aspectos centrales del mencionado enfoque. En concreto, su artículo se centra en cómo se debe repensar la noción de innatismo (y cuestiones relacionadas) según las líneas sugeridas por el Programa Minimalista. El presente artículo tiene como objetivo discutir algunas de las principales tesis de Casas Navarro, defendiendo alternativas diferentes a las sostenidas por este autor, con el fin de enfatizar y reforzar todavía más el replanteamiento de los aspectos innatos del lenguaje. Frente a las tesis sostenidas por Casas Navarro, este artículo sostiene, entre otros aspectos, que los planos genético e innato no pueden equipararse.
Für das Deutsche wird gemeinhin eine strikte V2-Beschränkung angenommen, die für deklarative Hauptsätze besagt, dass sich vor dem finiten Verb genau eine Konstituente befinden muss. In der Literatur werden häufig Beispiele angeführt, in denen sich zwei Konstituenten vor dem finiten Verb befinden und die somit gegen die V2-Beschränkung verstoßen. Diese syntaktische Konfiguration, so das Argument, führt zu Ungrammatikalität: (1) *Gestern Johann hat getanzt. (Roberts & Roussou 2002:137) Die Bewertung in (1) fußt jedoch nicht auf empirischer Evidenz, sondern spiegelt ein introspektives Urteil der Autor*innen wider. Daten zum tatsächlichen Sprachgebrauch zeigen, dass Sätze wie in (2) im Deutschen durchaus verwendet werden: (2) Aber immer alle sagen das. [BSa-OB, #16] Die Dissertation beschäftigt sich mit dem Status dieser V3-Deklarativsätze im Deutschen. Der Status wird aus drei einander ergänzenden Perspektiven auf Sprache untersucht: Sprachverwendung, Akzeptabilität und Verarbeitung. Hierzu werden Daten, die in einer Korpus-, einer Akzeptabilitäts- und einer Lesezeitstudie erhoben wurden, ausgewertet. Basierend auf den empirischen Befunden diskutiere ich V3-Modellierungen aus generativer Sicht und entwickle einen Modellierungsvorschlag aus konstruktionsgrammatischer Sicht. Die Arbeit zeigt, dass die Einbeziehung von nicht-standardsprachlichen Mustern wichtige Einblicke in die sprachliche Architektur gibt. Insbesondere psycholinguistisch gewonnene Daten als empirische Basis sind essenziell, um mentale sprachliche Prozesse zu verstehen und abbilden zu können. Die Analyse von V3 zeigt, dass solche Ansätze möglich und nötig sind, um Grammatikmodelle zu prüfen und weiterzuentwickeln. Untersuchungen dieser Art stellen Grammatikmodelle in Frage, die oft einer standardsprachlichen Tradition heraus erwachsen sind und nur einen Ausschnitt der sprachlichen Realität erfassen. V3-Sätze entpuppen sich nach dieser Analyse als Strukturen, die fester Bestandteil der Grammatik sind.
We are pleased to present to the readers of the Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft
a Special Issue in honor of Rosemarie Tracy. We hereby recognize Rosemarie
Tracy’s important contributions to linguistic research as well as her talent for
making linguistic insights and their significance available to an audience that
extends beyond academia. Rosemarie Tracy has served the field of linguistics in
several professional roles, i.a. between 2003 and 2006 as head of the Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS, German Linguistic Society). Accordingly
there can be no better place than a special issue of the ZS and a selection
of contributions from the field to reflect on Rosemarie Tracy’s academic career
landmarks and her varied linguistic achievements.
This article is concerned with the funclional and formal properties of German-English mixed utterances produced by bilingual adults and children. After illustrating the conceptual challenges involved in the analysis of utterances exhibiting different mixing intensities, it will be shown on the basis of data frorn a German immigrant to the U.S. that it is possible to identify individual mixing preferences (i.e. different mixing profiles). It will then be argued that bilingual children between the ages of two and three, who are already capable of choosing their languages according to their interlocutors, rely on language mixing to fill temporary lexical and structural gaps. Mixing, it can be concluded, allows us privileged access to the creative and highly systematic manner in which humans deal with language in general.
This article presents the results of experimental data on language production and comprehension. These show that adult learners of Dutch as an additional language, with different language backgrounds, and a L2 proficiency below level A2 (Waystage) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001), use dummy auxiliaries as a structural device and interpret them as semantically vacuous. Proficiency level in the target language, more than language background, seems to determine the occurrence of dummy auxiliaries, and also which dummy auxiliary is used. Participants at a lower level of language acquisition use both dummy auxiliaries zijn (‘be’) and gaan (‘go’), whereas more advanced learners continue using predominantly dummy auxiliary gaan. These findings suggest that both dummy auxiliaries have a trigger function in setting the step from nonfinite utterances, to utterances with dummy auxiliaries carrying morphological information, and finally to utterances in which the morphological information is carried by the finite verb.
Resumen. La noción de 'programa genético' ha jugado un papel central en la biología moderna, de modo que la explicación de cualquier rasgo biológicamente asentado se remitió por defecto a un programa genético o blueprint que supuestamente contenía de manera preformada los aspectos esenciales para el desarrollo del rasgo. Esta primacía del programa genético ha regido también en Gramática Generativa: desde sus orígenes, esta corriente ha asumido la necesidad de un blueprint específico para el lenguaje. Este trabajo pretende dar cuenta de cómo tal noción ha sido recientemente cuestionada, de modo que su importancia ha sido relativizada, tanto en biología como en la propia lingüística (Programa Minimalista). Al tiempo, pretende explorar las consecuencias de tal perspectiva para la conceptualización del desarrollo del lenguaje en la teoría chomskyana. Palabras clave: desarrollo del lenguaje; Programa Minimalista; programa genético; blueprint del lenguaje; Teoría de los Sistemas de Desarrollo; epigénesis. AbstRAct. The notion of 'genetic program' has played a prominent role in modern biology. Thus, explanations of any biologically seated feature were attributed to a genetic program or blueprint, where the core aspects of the feature could be said to be preformed prior to its unfolding. Such a relevance of the genetic program has also been at work within Generative Grammar: from its very inception, this theory has assumed the need for a specific blueprint of language. This paper aims at showing how the Data de recepción: 06-09-2007. Data de aceptación: 08-10-2007. 1 Este trabajo ha sido realizado en el marco del proyecto de investigación "Biolingüística: fundamento gené-tico, desarrollo y evolución del lenguaje", subvencionado por el Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (ref.: HUM2007-60427/FILO) y cofinanciado parcialmente por fondos FEDER. Quiero expresar mi agradecimien-to al Dr. Guillermo Lorenzo por sus comentarios a una versión previa de este trabajo.
Research into the acquisition and use of two or more languages shows that the human mind is well equipped to deal with contact situations and that bilingual individuals skilfully exploit their linguistic resources (Auer 1998; Muysken 2004; Myers-Scotton 2002; Tracy 1996, 12). While language contact phenomena like code-switching or the mixing of elements of two distinct languages in bilinguals' productions have often been regarded as evidence of a linguistic confusion there is a consensus today in the area of bilingualism research that these phenomena reflect a sophisticated interaction of two distinct grammars in the productions of bilingual speakers/signers. In the domain of developmental linguistics, the study of language contact phenomena in the productions of bilingual learners provides further insights into the structures available and the learners' metalinguistic awareness about their bilingualism (cf. Lanza 1997, Tracy & Gawlitzek-Maiwald 2000 among others). In sign bilingualism research, there is a general agreement about the positive effects deriving from an early exposure to sign language for the acquisition of literacy in young deaf signers in the sense of Cummins' Interdependence theory (Dubuisson et al., to appear, Hoffmeister 2000, Niederberger, to appear, Strong & Prinz 2000; for a strong critique of the use of this model see Mayer & Wells 1996). However, only few studies have been dedicated to the investigation of the interaction of both languages at the level of grammar. As theories about second language and bilingual language acquisition have been refined over the last three decades, they shed a new light on this topic. If, as is currently assumed, language mixing occurs as a developmentally constrained phenomenon that affects specific linguistic properties during specific phases in the bilingual Sign Languages: spinning and unraveling the past, present and future. TISLR9, forty five papers and three posters from the 9th.
The discussion on root infinitives has mainly centered around their supposed modal usage. This article aims at modelling the form-function relation of the root infinitive phenomenon by taking into account the full range of interpretational facets encountered cross-linguistically and interindividually. Following the idea of a subsequent "cell partitioning" in the emergence of form-function correlations, I claim that it is the major fission between [+-finite] which is central to express temporal reference different from the default here&now in tense-oriented languages. In aspectual-oriented languages, a similar opposition is mastered with the marking of early aspectual forms. It is observed that in tense-oriented languages like Dutch and German, the progression of functions associated with the infinitival form proceeds from nonmodal to modal, whereas the reverse progression holds for the Russian infinitive. Based on this crucial observation, a model of acquisition is proposed which allows for a flexible and systematic relationship between morphological forms and their respective interpretational biases dependent on their developmental context. As for early child language, I argue that children entertain only two temporal parameters: one parameter is fixed to the here&now point in time, and a second parameter relates to the time talked about, the topic time; this latter time overlaps the situation time as long as no empirical evidence exists to support the emergence of a proper distinction between tense and aspect.
In this paper, we bring together recent discussions about the role of function words in emerging monolingual grammars with the discussion about role of these words in mixed utterances in emerging bilingual grammars.
Recently several linguists have addressed the question of determining the organizing principles of early syntax in developing grammars of monolingual children. Van Kampen (this volume), Tracy (2002), among others, note that in early two-word utterances certain “function” words occur very frequently and play a special role: they appear as illocutionary operators and seem to have a bootstrapping function with respect to the development of syntactic structure. In this article, we consider spontaneous production data from three bilingual Dutch/French children and seek to answer the question whether the role of “function” words is the same in these bilingual developing grammars as in monolingual grammars. We show that this indeed appears to be the case. We then examine the claim by Deuchar and Quay (2000) that “function words” are mixed more readily than other words. We argue that our data do not present convincing arguments in favor of such a hypothesis.
Our contribution deals with the nature of children's earliest word combinations. Based on data from monolingual (German) and bilingual (German/English) children we argue that there is no pregrammatical stage once children move beyond single-word utterances. As soon as words combine, basic organizational principles, such as the binary distinction between head and non-head, are activated and enter into coalitions with other (semantic, pragmatic) levels of representation.
In addition we claim that monolinguals behave very much like bilinguals in that initially all children create coexisting grammars. Various types of evidence in favor of this proposal are considered. Convergence comes about when children (assisted by universal grammar) reconstruct derivational relationships linking hitherto independent systems. The overall process is slow, making it possible for us to detect transitional problems. Bilingual language mixing yields important insights into children's early awareness of cross-linguistic equivalence and contrasts and can be related to specific properties of a child's grammars at different developmental stages.
Research over the last decades has shown that language development in its multiple forms is characterized by a succession of stable and unstable states. However, the variation observed is neither expected nor can it be accounted for on the basis of traditional learning concepts conceived of within the Universal Grammar (UG) paradigm. In this paper, I argue that modularly organized grammars bear much more of a dynamic potential than admitted thus far, and I propose a dynamic approach to the development of grammars, based on a conception of change as developed in the realm of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). In my discussion of the available evidence of system-internal inconsistencies in different types of language acquisition and diachronic language change, I suggest that the nonlinear behavior observed results from a complex information flow modeled by internal and external feedback processes and that changes in grammars are tied to the amplification of new information leading to system-internal conflicts. Finally, I reconsider the role of UG in the apparent dichotomy of chance and necessity in the evolution of grammars. I argue that their stability is tied to universal principles and constraints on the format of natural languages (hence the self-similar or fractal nature of language), whereas the potential for change is given in the functional categories and their associated properties (the loci of grammars' bifurcation sensitivity).
In some recent papers, Chomsky has suggested some non-trivial analogies between the biolinguistic approach and evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo). In this paper, the point is made that those analogies should be handled with caution. The reason is that the Evo-Devo version chosen by Chomsky in order to build the analogies fully assumes a gene-centric pers-pective. Although providing genes with a special power fits in well with the Principles-and-Parameters model, it does not agree at all with the reduction of the power attributed to genes that the Minimalist Program has placed on the agenda. Nevertheless, other Evo-Devo approaches exist that seem more accurate than the particular version adopted by Chomsky — approaches therefore which are more promising for fulfilling the minimalist biolinguistic approach.
Scope-bearing elements for negations and questions may appear in Dutch child language as “doubling” constructions. The doublings are not part of the adult system. They arise spontaneously in early and later child language. I will discuss two temporal doubling constructions in child Dutch, the doubling of a wh-element and the doubling of a Neg-element. The early examples double the wh-element or Neg-element by means of a sentence adverb in a sentence-final position. A later temporary doubling appears as Negative Concord in negative constructions that contain a quantifier, as analyzed in Zeijlstra (2004). I will consider the temporary doublings in child Dutch as attempts to maintain an earlier, more simplified construction. Temporary options in child language may result from a learnability hierarchy.
Scope-bearing elements for negations and questions may appear in Dutch child language as “doubling” constructions. The doublings are not part of the adult system. They arise spontaneously in early and later child language. The early doublings have a -element or a -element in sentence-initial position and double it by means of a sentence adverb in a sentence-final position. These doublings disappear in child Dutch after the acquisition of V-second. A later temporary doubling appears in negative constructions that contain a quantifier. The analysis below will consider the temporary doublings in child Dutch as attempts to maintain an earlier, more simplified construction. Temporary options in child language may result from a learnability hierarchy.
Die zunehmende Annäherung von theoretischer Linguistik und Spracherwerbsforschung hat in den letzten zehn Jahren zur Entwicklung minimalistischer Modelle der menschlichen Sprach(erwerbs)fähigkeit geführt (vgl. Chomsky 1995, 2001, Wunderlich/Fabri 1995, Jackendoff 1997, Clahsen 1996, Friedemann/Rizzi 2000). Im Rahmen dieser Modelle versucht man, sowohl den Anforderungen an linguistische Beschreibungen natürlicher Sprachen als auch den Anforderungen an realistische Modelle des Spracherwerbs gerecht zu werden. Da jede der beteiligten Disziplinen dabei ihre eigenen Erkenntnisinteressen, Fragestellungen, Methoden und Erklärungskonzepte in die Diskussion einbringt, stellt sich zum einen die Frage, welche dieser Konzepte dem Untersuchungsgegenstand selbst am besten gerecht werden können; zum anderen muß man sich mit den Implikationen dieser Konzepte für die Interaktionsmöglichkeiten von Spracherwerbsforschung und theoretischer Linguistik befassen. Hierzu soll die vorliegende Arbeit einen Beitrag leisten. Im Mittelpunkt steht die konzeptuelle Weiterentwicklung und empirische Überprüfung der Idee des merkmalsbasierten Strukturaufbaus. Diese beruht (i) auf der Hypothese, daß sich die Eigenschaften natürlicher Sprachen allein aus der Interaktion von Grammatikarchitektur, generellen formalen Prinzipien und den einzelsprachlichen Merkmalsspezifikationen ergeben, und (ii) auf der Annahme, daß der Grammatikerwerb durch die Interaktion von Input, Grammatikarchitektur, angeborenen formalen Prinzipien und angeborenen Prädispositionen für die Instantiierung von Merkmalen gesteuert wird. Die empirische Basis für die Überprüfung dieser Annahmen bilden umfangreiche quantitative Analysen des Nominalphrasenerwerbs in sieben Korpora von monolingualen deutschen Kindern (1;11 bis 3;6). Ergänzend werden vorliegende Studien zum Erwerb einer Reihe von typologisch zum Teil sehr unterschiedlichen Sprachen herangezogen. Die bei diesen Untersuchungen erzielten empirischen Befunde zur Nominalphrasenentwicklung zeigen die Fruchtbarkeit der Idee des merkmalsbasierten Strukturaufbaus. Sie sprechen nämlich zusammengenommen dafür, daß der Hypothesenraum spracherwerbender Kinder durch angeborene formale, aber nicht domänenspezifische Metaprinzipien und angeborene Kategorisierungsprädispositionen begrenzt ist und durch Implikationsbeziehungen zwischen Merkmalsinstantiierungsprozessen sowie durch die Zugänglichkeit von Auslöserdaten intern strukturiert wird. Zugleich liefern die Befunde zum Nominalphrasenerwerb Evidenz für die Annahme, daß die grammatischen Repräsentationen, die Kinder im Verlauf ihrer sprachlichen Entwicklung aufbauen, zwar von Anfang an durch die angenommenen formalen Universalien beschränkt sind, aber anfangs noch nicht den zielsprachlichen Repräsentationen entsprechen. Dabei scheint der Aufbau zielsprachlicher Repräsentationen durch einen form- und merkmalsbasierten Erwerbsmechanismus gesteuert zu sein und auf dem Aufbau von Lexikoneinträgen für funktionale Elemente und der Integration von Merkmalsspezifikationen in diese Lexikoneinträge zu beruhen. Ausgehend von den empirischen Befunden werden die möglichen Implikationen der Idee des merkmalsbasierten Strukturaufbaus für die Interaktion von Spracherwerbsforschung und theoretischer Linguistik diskutiert. Insbesondere wird dargelegt, daß die Bedeutung der Grammatiktheorie für die Erwerbsforschung maximal ist, wenn für sprachliche Wissenssysteme von Anfang an dieselben formalen Prinzipien gelten wie für Erwachsenensprachen und man Beschränkungen des Hypothesenraums spracherwerbender Kinder auf diese Prinzipien zurückführen kann. Umgekehrt sind Spracherwerbsbefunde gerade dann besonders interessant für die linguistische Theoriebildung sein, wenn die strukturellen Repräsentationen, die Kinder im Verlauf ihrer sprachlichen Entwicklung erzeugen, noch nicht denen der Erwachsenensprache entsprechen. Dann könnten Kindersprachdaten nämlich einen Typ von Evidenz liefern, den die entsprechende Zielsprache nicht bereitstellt. Wenn die in der vorliegenden Arbeit diskutierte Idee des merkmalsbasierten Strukturaufbaus auf zutreffenden Annahmen basiert, sollte dies der Fall sein.
Gegenstand des Aufsatzes ist der Erwerb komplexer Satzstrukturen des Deutschen im Kindesalter. Es wird gezeigt, daß das Ausmaß interindividueller und intraindividueller Variation größer ist, als in der Spracherwerbsforschung bisher angenommen wurde. Auf der Grundlage jüngerer Entwicklungen in der Syntaxtheorie werden einige einfache Prinzipien identifiziert, die für diese Variation und die jeweiligen Erwerbsverläufe verantwortlich gemacht werden können. Dabei wird versucht, eine Perspektive zu entwickeln, innerhalb derer linguistische Theorie und Spracherwerbsforschung empirisch relevant aufeinander bezogen werden können. Ja da bügelbrett war da gestanden und da hab ich runter des geschmeißt da war hoffentlich kein ding da drauf wo tut man bügeln und is nich kaputtgegang. (Benny 3;9.12: Schilderung eines komplexen Tathergangs).
Recent research on the acquistion of subordination in German, Swiss German, and French has shown that there exists an early stage where children systematically do not use conjunctional (i.e. complementizer-introduced) subordinate clauses. However, one interesting observation is that children at a very early age (around the age of 2;0,0)2 make productive use of what we will refer to as preconjunctional subordinate clauses, that is, clauses that lack the target complementizer. Interestingly enough, some children mark subordination by verb placement, or they use dummy place holders in positions where a complementizer would otherwise be placed. Dummy place holders are undifferentiated items like schwa and nasals or forms that have a correspondence in the target system. These observations indicate that the underlying syntactic structure of preconjunctional subordinate clauses does not involve truncation. In the present paper we will argue that child grammar is a complete licensing system at any stage of development. One factor determining the licensing system of early subordinate clauses is that the acquisition of subordination involves language- and item-specific components that are beyond the capacity of early syntactic bootstrapping and thus inaccessible for the child at the early stage. This gives rise to a drastically reduced licensing system for Comp. We will argue that the obligatory rule of complementizer insertion is applied by the child only after the feature content of the syntactic position Comp is fully specified (the language-specific feature content of Comp with regard to Infl).
We argue that young German children have the major functional sentential heads, in particular the inflectional and complementizer systems. The major empirical basis is natural production data from a 25-month-old child. We perform quantitative analyses which show that the full complement of functional categories is available to the child, and that what crucially distinguishes the child's grammar from the adult's is the use of infinitives in matrix clauses. The evidence we consider includes the child's knowledge of finiteness and verb placement, agreement, head movement, and permissible word-order variations. We examine several accounts which presuppose a degenerate grammar or which deviate from the standard analysis of German and conclude that they provide a less adequate explanation of the acquisition facts.
Learners’ overgeneralization of lexical rules has been a longstanding puzzle in language-acquisition research since it poses the problem of ' ‘retreat'. How do learners, without the benefit of negative evidence, find out that a rule they have formulated is overly general; and once they do, how can they be sure to reformulate it correctly? The first problem is addressed by the catapult hypothesis, which proposes that each overgeneralization is resolved by a catapult: a combination of a principle If A then not B, and information A. The outcome, not B, tells learners that their assumption that B was part of the language is incorrect, leading them to tighten their early overgeneraliz-ations. Catapults have the property that the principles they use are assumed to be a part of the grammar, independently required. This obviates the need for external counting mechanisms, or other grammar-external machinery often proposed in order to deal with this acquisitional puzzle. The second problem, how the learner manages to reformulate the generalization correctly, is also considered. Having overshot the correct generalization in one direction, the retreating learner can overshoot it in the other direction and retreat too far. To avoid a pendulum problem, perpetually swinging between competing overgeneralizations and never settling on a rule of the right size, we propose a domain condition. Like the principles used in catapults, the domain condition is part of the grammar: the domains into which the grammar is divided—lexicon, syntax, and so on — provide lines inside which generalizations may fall. Learners revise their grammars accordingly, and (as with the catapult) without additional learning machinery.
This book deals with the question of how children exposed to two languages simultaneously from birth learn to speak those two languages. After a critical and comprehensive survey of most of the literature on the subject, the author concludes that empirically well-documented knowledge in this area is very scant indeed. The core of the book concerns a naturalistic study of a Dutch-English bilingual girl around the age of three. The study's main aim is to explore the nature of early bilingual morphosyntactic development. Detailed analyses of most aspects of this development show that a child who hears two separate languages spoken to her reflects this distinctness in the utterances she produces: each language is handled as a system in its own right. Furthermore, the young bilingual three-year-old greatly resembles her monolingual peers in either language. Both these findings, the author concludes, highlight the language-specific nature of the morphosyntactic development process. This book will interest linguists, psycholinguists, developmental psychologists and child language specialists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Much research on bilingual first language acquisition has stressed the role of the dominant or preferred language when the two languages have some influence on one another. The present paper tries to look at transfer or interference from the perspective of the input the child is exposed to. Transfer will be argued to occur in those domains of the grammar where the language learner is confronted with ambiguous input. The bilingual child may, as a relief strategy, use parts of the analysis of one language in order to cope with ambiguous properties of the other. Ambiguity of input is crucial and will be evaluated through a comparison with monolingual language acquisition: if monolingual children have problems with the language material in question, it may be suggested that the input contains evidence for more than only one grammatical analysis. A quantitative difference between monolingual and bilingual language acquisition will be interpreted as evidence in favor of cross-linguistic influence in bilingual language development. The paper reviews longitudinal studies on the acquisition of word order in German subordinate clauses.
Lexically linked domains in language allow a speaker to formulate incompatible rules. How should they be represented theoretically? We argue that a speaker has a set of mini-grammars for different domains so that, in effect, every speaker is bilingual. It is argued that Tense or Agreement Checking, V-2 for quotation, and resumptive pronouns, all lead to bilingual representations. In addition, this perspective on Theoretical Bilingualism suggests that optionality and stages in the acquisition of an initial grammar should also be characterized as a form of bilingualism.
Recent developments in syntactic theory suggest that phrase structure is crosslinguistically more uniform than assumed so far, and that the order spec-headcomplement may be the only permissible one. The present article takes issue with this view, showing that the derivation of final complementizers from initial ones by means of IP-raising faces serious difficulties. The discussion focuses on Bengali and similar languages which may be called 'hybrid' because both orders, IP-C as well as C-IP, are attested. Five arguments are raised which indicate that these orders are not derivationally connected. The discussion bears results which may also be of interest for linguistic typology, language change and acquisition.
1. Linguistic Theory and Syntactic Development.- 1. Introduction.- 2. A Parameterized Theory of UG.- 3. An Overview.- 3.1 A Note on Methodology.- 4. The Theory of Grammar.- Notes.- 2. The Null Subject Phenomenon.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The Structure of INFL.- 2.1 Rule R.- 3. Null Subjects and the Identity of AG.- 3.1 The Properties of PRO.- 3.1.1 Control of AG/PRO.- 3.1.2 Arbitrary Reference of AG/PRO.- 3.1.3 The Auxiliary Systems of Italian and English.- 4. Summary.- Notes.- 3. The AG/PRO Parameter in Early Grammars.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Null Subjects in Early Language.- 2.1 The Avoid Pronoun Principle.- 3. The Early Grammar of English (G1).- 3.1 The Auxiliaries in Early English.- 3.2 The Filtering Effect of Child Grammars.- 3.2.1 The Semi-Auxiliaries.- 3.2.2 Can't and Don't.- 3.3 G1 and the Syntax of Be.- 4. The Restructuring of G1.- 4.1 The Triggering Data.- 4.2 The Avoid Pronoun Principle in Child Language.- 5. Summary.- Notes.- 4. Some Comparative Data.- 1. Introduction.- 2. The Early Grammars of English and Italian: A Comparison.- 2.1 Postverbal Subjects.- 2.2 Modals in Early Italian.- 2.3 Italian Be.- 3. Early German.- Notes.- 5. Discontinuous Models of Linguistic Development.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Semantically-Based Child Grammars.- 3. Semantically-Based Grammars: Some Empirical Inadequacies.- 3.1 Evidence from Polish and Hebrew.- Notes.- 6. Further Issues in Acquisition Theory.- 1. Summary.- 2. The Initial State.- 2.1 The Subset Principle.- 2.2 The Theory of Markedness.- 2.3 The Isomorphism Principle.- 3. Instantaneous vs. Non-Instantaneous Acquisition 168 Notes.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.
Reading this paper might depress you. Although it is certainly not my intention to write a depressing paper, the fact is that language acquisition research faces a major conceptual problem. The present paper cannot resolve it either. It is known as the ‘developmental problem of language acquisition’.
The embedded sentence is nowadays generally considered to be the maximal projection of the complementiser C (Pesetsky 1982; Chomsky 1986). Correspondingly, sentences are analysed as CP’s. Spec-Head agreement and X’-theory interact to allow not only for a head position but also for a Spec position. This neatly accounts for examples like the following:
Bilingualism Across the Lifespan examines the dynamics of bilingual language processing over time from the perspectives of neurolinguistics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. This multidisciplinary approach is fundamental to an understanding of how the bilingual's two (or more) language systems interact with each other and with other higher cognitive systems, neurological substrates, and social systems - a central theme of this volume. Contributors examine the nature of bilingualism during various phases of the lifecycle - childhood, adulthood, and old age - and in various health/pathology conditions. Topics range from code separation in the young bilingual child, across various types of language pathologies in adult bilinguals, to language choice problems in dementia. The volume thus offers a broad overview of current theoretical and empirical approaches to the study of bilingualism. It will interest and stimulate researchers and graduate students in the fields of linguistics, neuropsychology, and developmental psychology, as well as in foreign language teaching, speech pathology, educational psychology, and special education.
A fundamental goal of linguistic theory is to explain how natural languages are acquired. This paper describes some recent findings on how learners acquire syntactic knowledge for which there is little, if any, decisive evidence from the environment. The first section presents several general observations about language acquisition that linguistic theory has tried to explain and discusses the thesis that certain linguistic properties are innate because they appear universally and in the absence of corresponding experience. A third diagnostic for innateness, early emergence, is the focus of the second section of the paper, in which linguistic theory is tested against recent experimental evidence on children's acquisition of syntax.
Language mixing in young bilingual children is usually put down to language fusion or, on the assumption that they have available two linguistic systems, to insufficient pragmatic control and/or lack of code-switching constraints. It is rarely seen as a sign of what the child CAN do. In this paper we explore the linguistic knowledge that goes into the language mixing of young English/German bilinguals. It is shown that their language mixing helps them bridge not just lexical but also structural gaps. In particular, we suggest a connection between children's language mixing and the types of syntactic bootstrapping discussed in monolingual acquisition, where the child can use his or her expertise in one domain to solve problems in another. In a general sense, then, our bootstrapping metaphor avoids the negative connotations often associated with terms like interference or transfer and underscores the resourcefulness of the bilingual child.
A variety of positions have been proposed to explain the ontological development of functional categories. These positions follow either a Maturation or Continuity perspective. We examined the acquisition of inflectional phrase and determiner phrase in children acquiring French and English simultaneously in order to evaluate the descriptive adequacy of the two perspectives. Crosslinguistic comparisons are essential to testing Maturation versus Continuity, and bilingual children are excellent participants in crosslinguistic research because the two languages reside within one individual. We collected naturalistic production data from two bilingual children ages 1;9 to 2;11 and 1;11 to 3;0 who were at Brown's Stage I (mean length of utterance < 2.00). Our analyses indicate that the use of function morphemes associated with Inflection Oat) appeared at different times in the children's languages, whereas the use of determiners appeared at the same time. The between-language discrepancy in the emergence of Infl-associated items demonstrates the influence of external factors, such as specific language input, on the acquisition of functional categories. Thus, we argue that our results are most consistent with a Continuity perspective.
During the second year of his daughter's life, Michael Tomasello kept a detailed diary of her language, creating a rich database. He made a careful study of how she acquired her first verbs and analysed the role that verbs played in her early grammatical development. Using a Cognitive Linguistics framework, the author argues persuasively that the child's earliest grammatical organization is verb-specific (the Verb Island hypothesis). He argues further that early language is acquired by means of very general cognitive and social-cognitive processes, especially event structures and cultural learning. The richness of the database and the analytical tools used make First Verbs a particularly useful and important book for developmental psychologists, linguists, language development researchers and speech pathologists.
Over the past decade generative grammarians have viewed language acquisition as a process of fixing option points or parameters defined in Universal Grammar. Here David Lightfoot addresses the crucial question of what it takes to set a parameter, of what kind of experience is needed to trigger the emergence of a natural kind of grammar.
Lightfoot asserts that parameter setting is not sensitive to embedded material, and that it is triggered only by robust, structurally simple elements. He observes that morphological properties play a significant role in setting parameters that have widespread syntactic effects. Using data on diachronic changes and evidence from current work in syntactic theory, Lightfoot makes precise claims about the triggering experience that can explain a number of historical puzzles. He argues that the changes can have taken place in the way they did only if language acquisition proceeds on the basis of simple, unembedded experiences.
Along the way Lightfoot examines consequences of the loss of the rich Old English case system and of the breakdown of the verb classes and takes up particularly illuminating cases of obsolescent structures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this paper we want to compare the results from monolingual children with object omissions in bilingual children who have acquired two languages simultaneously. Our longitudinal studies of bilingual Dutch–French, German–French, and German–Italian children show that the bilingual children behave like monolingual children regarding the type of object omissions in the Romance languages. They differ from monolingual children with respect to the extent to which object drop is used. At the same time, the children differentiate the two systems they are using. We want to claim that the difference between monolingual and bilingual children concerning object omissions in the Romance languages is due to crosslinguistic influence in bilingual children: the Germanic language influences the Romance language. Crosslinguistic influence occurs once a syntactic construction in language A allows for more than one grammatical analysis from the perspective of child grammar and language B contains positive evidence for one of these possible analyses. The bilingual child is not able to map the universal strategies onto language-specific rules as quickly as the monolinguals, since s/he is confronted with a much wider range of language-specific syntactic possibilities. One of the possibilities seems to be compatible with a universal strategy. We would like to argue for the existence of crosslinguistic influence, induced by the mapping of universal principles onto language-specific principles – in particular, pragmatic onto syntactic principles. This influence will be defined as mapping
induced
influence. We will account for the object omissions by postulating an empty discourse-connected PRO in pre-S position (Müller, Crysmann, and Kaiser, 1996; Hulk, 1997). Like monolingual children, bilingual children use this possibility until they show evidence of the C-system (the full clause) in its target form.
This paper argues that the traditional view of experience-dependent properties (learned properties) of language as developing late and non-experience-dependent properties as developing early is in fact often wrong. Parameters are set correctly very early (Very Early Parameter-Setting) and properties of inflectional items are also learned very early. On the other hand, some universal properties of language emerge later, presumably under a genetically-driven maturational program. The Optional Infinitive(OI) Stage (Wexler, 1990, 1992, 1994) of grammatical development is explained by the AGR/TNS Omission Model (ATOM) of Schütze and Wexler, (1996). This paper derives this model via a new proposal for a developmental constraint: the Unique Checking Constraint (UCC), which prevents a D-feature on DP from checking more than one D-feature on functional categories, thus forcing either AGR or TNS to be omitted. The Minimalist framework of Chomsky 1995 is assumed — in particular the assumption that a D-feature and not a case feature is the driving force for the Extended Projection Principle. With AGR and TNS both having a D-feature, UCC predicts that finite sentences will not converge. The model also predicts that subjects of OI's will raise to a higher functional projection, even when case is not assigned by INFL, thus solving a traditional problem in the theory of OI's. With natural assumptions on the nature of null-subject languages, the Null-Subjection/Optional Infinitive Correlation of Wexler (1996) is derived from the UCC — that OI's exist in early child language if and only if the adult grammar is not an INFL-licensed null-subject language. Thus the UCC is seen as a fundamental explanatory force for a range of phenomena in early child grammar. Moreover the child data provide strong evidence for the claim that a D-feature motivates the raising of the subject in UG, thus unifying child and adult grammar and demonstrating the usefulness of the investigation of child grammar in the study of UG.
In this influential study, Steven Pinker develops a new approach to the problem of language learning. Now reprinted with new commentary by the author, this classic work continues to be an indispensable resource in developmental psycholinguistics.
Reviews of this book:
"The contribution of [Pinker's] book lies not just in its carefully argued section on learnability theory and acquisition, but in its detailed analysis of the empirical consequences of his assumptions." --Paul Fletcher, Times Higher Education Supplement
"One of those rare books which every serious worker in the field should read, both for its stock of particular hypotheses and analyses, and for the way it forces one to re-examine basic assumptions as to how one's work should be done. Its criticisms of other approaches to language acquisition...often go to the heart of the difficulties." --Michael Maratsos, Language
"[A] new edition, with a new preface from the author, of the influential monograph originally published in 1984 in which Pinker proposed one of the most detailed (and according to some, best) theories of language development based upon the sequential activation of different language-acquisition algorithms. In his new preface, the author reaches the not very modest conclusion that, despite the time elapsed, his continues to be the most complete theory of language development ever developed. A classic of the study of language acquisition, in any case." -- Infancia y Aprendizaje [Italy]
In this paper we given a modular account of the grammar of additive particles. In doing this we take issue with the standard descriptions of focus particles, which are based on just one possible pattern: the particle preceding the main stressed constituent it relates to (its RC). Additive particles, however, occur in a second, equally unmarked pattern: the RC preceding the main stressed particle. Former accounts do not only miss this complementary distribution as to position and stress pattern relative to the RC, but, as we demonstrate in detail, they misrepresent the relation between syntax, semantics and focus structure of these (and similar) particles in general. Using German Auch as our prime example, we argue in particular (i) that there is just one Auch underlying the ± stressed variants, and that the complementary distribution cannot be explained by a movement analysis; (ii) that the set of alternatives the Auch proposition p and some contextually given proposition q induced by Auch belong to, is not supplied by the focus structure of p but by comparing p and q ; (iii) that the syntactic scope of Auch is crucial for its semantics in that the adding operation applies to the material it contains, no matter whether it is the RC or predicative material common to p, q; (iv) that the complementary distribution of ± stressed Auch follows from the modular interaction of the syntax and semantics of Auch with focus structure; (v) that Auch gives rise to two utterance meanings, ‘in addition/furthermore’ and ‘likewise’, directly correlating with wheather or not the scope of Auch contains RC material. What we argue, in short, is that so-called ‘focus particles’ are in reality ‘scope particles’
Research on the learning of verb-forms in English has consistently reported the late acquisition of the PRESENT PERFECT. Explanations for this have been in terms of children's cognitive abilities. Difficulties are presented for such explanations by an apparent discrepancy between American English (AE) and British English (BE) acquisition data. This paper examines in detail the forms included in the PRESENT PERFECT paradigm, and the use of these and related forms by a sample of BE children aged 3; 3. While there is considerable variability across the sample, the results indicate that BE children at this age have not in any sense mastered the present perfect. The implications of this are discussed.
The simultaneous acquisition of two languages in early childhood presents an interesting test case for language acquisition theories. Children in bilingual environments receive input which could potentially lead to output systems different to those of monolingual children. The speech of three bilingual German-English children was recorded monthly between the ages of 2;0 and 5;0. The analysis of word order in the verb phrase shows that initial structural separation was followed by an extended period of non-target structures in German before the children eventually worked out which structures overlap and which structures differentiate the two languages. The bilingual data point towards language being acquired incrementally, on the basis of cue strength and cue cost. It is suggested that the partially overlapping structures in the input from German and English create structural saliencies for the child before they are functionally accessible. Functional identification eventually leads to structural separation.
Language acquisition as a maturational process
- Sascha Felix
Entwicklungsdysphasie: Kinder mit spezifischer Sprachst rung
- Hannelore Grimm
The acquisition of German
- Anne E Mills
In Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar. A Collection in Honor of Ken Wexler from the 1991 GLOW Workshop
- Zvi Penner
Knowledge of Language
- Noam Chomsky