The emergence of maximality in French children

Abstract

Misuse of definite determiners in child language may be due either to difficulties with uniqueness/maximality presuppositions (Wexler, 2011) or with the pragmatics of domain restriction (Munn et al. 2006). For definite plurals, previous work is inconsistent, showing either that maximality is encoded early on plurals but not singulars (between 3;0 and 5;5; Munn et al. 2006), or later in plurals but early on singulars (after age 6; Caponigro et al. 2012). We replicated the former study with French-speaking children and adults. We hypothesized that if children have difficulties with maximality they should show low scores on both singular and plural comprehension, while difficulties with implicit domain restrictions should affect singular definite comprehension only. We tested whether definiteness abilities were linked to age and also whether child language behaviour was different from that of adults.

Full text

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Figure 3. Classification tree created by binary recursive portioning for effects of
DET(erminer) and Age on maximality responses (max(imal) vs. non-max). Indefinite
targets become less maximal with age. Random effects are not accounted for.
MAX.
NON-
MAX.
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Royle, Valois, Fromont, & Drury, BUCLD November 4, 2016
Introduction
Misuse of definite determiners in child language may be due
either to difficulties with uniqueness/maximality
presuppositions (Wexler, 2011) or with the pragmatics of
domain restriction (Munn et al. 2006). For definite plurals,
previous work is inconsistent, showing either that
maximality is encoded early on plurals but not singulars
(between 3;0 and 5;5; Munn et al. 2006), or later in plurals
but early on singulars (after age 6; Caponigro et al. 2012).
We replicated the former study with French-speaking
children and adults. We hypothesized that if children have
difficulties with maximality they should show low scores on
both singular and plural comprehension, while difficulties
with implicit domain restrictions should affect singular
definite comprehension only. We tested whether definiteness
abilities were linked to age and also whether child language
behaviour was different from that of adults.
The emergence of maximality in French children
Phaedra Royle1,2, Daniel Valois1, Lauren Fromont1,2, John E Drury3
1 University of Montreal, 2 CRBLM, 3 Stony Brook University
Method
Participants:
52 monolingual French-speaking normally developing
children aged 4;6–8;09 (27 girls), Recruited at daycare
centres and schools in Montreal.
• 8 rejected for non-mastery of plural (≤ 50% correct)
12 adult controls ages 21-27 (7 women).
Experiment:
Act out task: Participants were required to retrieve 1-3 items
(out of three) when prompted with 4 items and 5 conditions
Donne moi DP qui est/sont à côté de la grange’
‘Give me DP that is/are beside the barn’
Conditions:
- Singular/plural definite (maximal): la/les vaches(s) ‘the
cow(s)’
- Singular/plural indefinite: une/des vache(s) ‘a/some cows’
- Explicitly maximal: toutes les vaches ‘all the cows’
Figure 1. Schema of experimental display. Animals are numbered
starting from the closest to the barn and were coded this way for
responses.
Discussion
Results
Caponigro, I., Pearl, L., Brooks, N., & Barner, D. (2012). Acquiring the meaning of free
relative clauses and plural definite descriptions. Journal of Semantics, 29, 261-293.
doi:doi:10.1093/jos/ffr014
Munn, A., Miller, K., & Schmitt, C. (2006). Maximality and Plurality in Children's
Interpretation of Definiteness. In D. Bamman, T. Magnitskaia & C. Zaller (Eds.),
BUCLD 30: Proceedings of of the 30th Annual Boston University Conference on
Language Development (Vol. 2, pp. 377-387). Boston, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Wexler, K. (2011). Cues don’t explain learning: Maximal trouble in the determiner
system, in E. Gibson and N. Pearlmutter (Eds.), The Processing and Acquisition of
Reference (pp. 15-42) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press].
References
Funding
SSHRC funding to Royle, Valois, Stemmer, Steinhauer, Drury, & Jutras, 2009-2012
(410-2009-0256); Paula Menyuk travel award to L. Fromont (2016).
1. SINGULAR DEFINITES > PLURAL DEFINITES
2. AGE is not a significant factor for definiteness mastery
• Once children with plural difficulties were excluded
3. Evidence for maximality was obtained for children aged five
or more when definite/indefinite plurals could be reliably
distinguished.
a) Our results contradict the DOMAIN RESTRICTION HYPOTHESIS
(Munn et al., 2006), as non-maximal responses were mostly found
for plural (les) but not singular (le/la) definite determiners.
• Furthermore, we observe that some children (n = 8) have
difficulties understanding plural determiners (independently
of definiteness) but not singular ones.
b) Similar to Caponigro et al (2012), all our participants interpreted
maximality in the singular significantly better than in the plural.
• However, we find that adults provide the same type of
responses as children do, and roughly within the same
proportions.
• We suggest that the absence of an AGE effect in our study
can be explained by the implementation of this factor as a
continuous variable, as well as the inclusion of random factors
such as PARTICIPANT and ITEM.
• Language typology might also be a factor
Further studies with bilingual English-French children might help us
disentangle definiteness effects from language-specific morphological
and semantic expression of these features, as difficulties can be
observed in different items in English (singular definites) and French
(both definite and indefinite plurals).
Table 1. Effects for factors Definite/Indefinite Plurals x Age
Estimate
Std.
Error
z
Pr (> |z|)
(Intercept)
6.790
1.868
3.635
0.000
DEF (les)
0.654
0.858
0.763
0.446
AGE
-0.195
0.109
-1.785
0.074
DEF (les):AGE
0.126
0.070
1.795
0.073
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