Syntax Flashcards
Syntactic bootstrapping
Exploiting the semantic properties of argument structure to narrow down the meaning of verbs
Holophrastic (One Word) Stage
One word utterances that parents often interpret as meaning more than the word itself
E.g. “milk” for “I want milk”
Children at the holophrastic stage (first stage) are sensitive to _____ and ______ positions
Heads and complements
Head
Determines the category of a phrase (e.g., verb)
Complement
Phrase that is needed to complete the meaning of the head (complements are often arguments that are needed to complete the meaning of a verb, i.e. direct and indirect objects)
Head directionality parameter:
Languages are either:
o Head-initial: the head of a phrase precedes its complements (like V head, NP complement in English); or
o Head-final: the head of a phrase follows its complements
Children understand head directionality at the ____ _____ stage
One word (holophrastic)
The holophrastic stage ends at age ___
~1;6
Behaviors that indicate transition to the telegraphic stage
(a) Chained one-word utterances
E.g. “mommy door”
- to describe something in the environment
(b) Repetition of the same word several times
- to obtain a particular result
Telegraphic (Two Word) Stage
- mostly lexical/content words;
- Few grammatical morphemes (inflectional morphemes & function words) ; at least in English with no case marking
crosslinguistic differences during the telegraphic stage
Inflection is absent at higher rates in English (impoverished inflectional system) than in languages like Italian or Hungarian (richer inflectional system)
Is the word order target-like during the telegraphic stage ?
Yes
Semantic bootstrapping
Children can pick out what is going on (event) and who is doing what, through experience with the real world: children can then map semantic categories onto syntactic categories relatively easily
What does semantic bootstrapping assume that children must know in advance, through their
experience with the real world?
- able to distinguish objects from events.
-able to distinguish agents (something animate that volitionally causes an event or change of state) and themes (something, animate or inanimate, that is acted upon).
-know the names and meanings of some nouns
What does semantic bootstrapping allows ?
Once children have associated agents with subjects and themes with objects, they can determine the basic word order in their language (e.g., that English is head-initial (VO) and that subjects precede predicates (SVO)).
Structure-dependent distributional learning
Children use the rules of the mini grammar they have built to determine the structure of semantically non-transparent sentences.
Mini grammar
o nouns can be preceded by determiners, like the and a;
o when an event is complete, it is marked by -ed.
o subject is always before the word that is marked for tense
This helps children understand complex sentences like “the decision evoked a harsh response”
- They will know that “decision” is a noun because it follows a determiner, and “evoked” a verb because it has a past tense marker
- They will know that “decision” is the subject because it precedes the word that is marked with tense
Lexical categories
- nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions
- introduce lexical roots that carry information about meaning
Functional categories
enter into relations with other (lexical) categories:
o play a key role in syntax, e.g. in determining word order.
o involved in morphological dependencies, e.g. case marking.
Functional categories can be expressed as … or …
Free morphemes (function words) or bound morphemes (inflectional morphology)
Functional category words
Complementizer : that, because, whether, if, since
Conjunction : and, but, or, nor
Wh-words : why, how
Auxiliary verbs : is, has, does
Modal auxiliaries : can, may, will, might
Negation : not, no
Tense : -ed
Agreement -s (in present tense only)
Determiners the, a, that, these, some
*NOT English -ing
We encode the abstract functional syntactic organization of a sentence with…
functional phrases like IP (Inflectional Phrase)
IP
contains the inflectional head (I), which houses the tense morpheme that is ultimately suffixed to the verb.
Below IP is the Verb Phrase (VP), which contains the ____ and ____.
Verb and object
True or false : tense is not part of the argument structure of the verb
True (why I is above the VP)
Most sentences are during the telegraphic stage are …
Non-finite (they lack inflection and auxiliary verbs : cannot be situated in time)
Finite clauses
Auxiliary verbs and tense marking on verbs express finiteness.
* A sentence is finite if it is marked for grammatical tense, which locates the event in time
Non-finite clauses
Cannot be located in time.
* Non-finite clauses are ungrammatical in isolation; they must be embedded under a finite clause (which locates the event in time)
E.g. I want [Juan to help Susan] (infinitive), *Juan to help Susan
Type of verbs in English telegraphic speech
Bare verbs (e.g. Apple drop)
Bare participle (e.g. apple dropping)
Type of verbs in German, Dutch and French during the telegraphic stage
Infinitive verbs
E.g. Fermer yeux
But also finite verbs:
E.g. Elle roule
Word order in German
- Finite and non-finite verbs appear in different positions in the target grammar:
o finite verb occurs in second position;
o non-finite verb occurs at end of sentence.
Explanations for why English speaking children do not produce finite sentences as early as German speaking children
-English bare verbs have no visible infinitive morphology
-Present tense/Agreement is only marked in 3sg present in English
- The position of the verb in English does not change according to whether it is finite or non-finite
For every adult sentence, the top node of the syntactic tree is the …
Complementizer phrase (CP)
What categories require an IP structure ?
Tense inflection, modals and auxiliaries
What categories require a CP structure ?
Embedded clauses, yes/no questions and wh-questions
The (almost) full competence hypothesis
- Functional structure is present from onset of acquisition (at least up to IP).
- Other factors (e.g., cognitive load) account for absence of inflection in children’s productions.
Small clause hypothesis (Radford 1988, 1990)
- Functional structure is absent at onset of acquisition
- Learners gradually build up structure on basis of exposure to/understanding of input.
Small clause
any type of structure that lacks functional categories
If a structure projects only up to VP, the result will be …
non-finite – no tense marking, i.e. no IP
Bare verbs (tree (6b)) or bare participles (tree (6d)) are inside VP because…
They are infinitival : not situating the event in time.
Subjects in small VP clauses
If the top node of the tree is VP, then the grammatical subject position will not be available : it will appear in Specifier of VP (SpecVP)
* Subjects will be omitted from truncated structures more often than from non-truncated structures
This is a problem for the small clause hypothesis : At the point in development when children produce nonfinite sentences, they also produce…
finite sentences.
Problem for small clause hypothesis :at the ages/MLUs when children learning English are failing to produce agreement and tense, children learning languages with … show evidence of having acquired it (or of being in the process of acquiring it).
richer inflection
Optional infinitives
The same child can alternate between producing nonfinite and finite sentences.
How do we know a child has IP ?
When children produce finite forms :the IP is the functional structure necessary to express tense
Truncation hypothesis
Children have the root of the sentence as undefined
Root = XP
* For any given sentence the child produces, the structure above XP will be truncated (not projected) if XP is lower than CP (e.g., IP, VP);
True or false : the top XP root can change across utterances
True
If a structure projects only up to VP
the result will be NONFINITE (no tense marking – i.e. no IP, equivalent to a small clause).
If a structure projects up to IP
the result will be FINITE, i.e. tense marking is produced
If a structure is projected all the way up to CP
all nodes below CP (including IP) will be projected
- evidence : child produces e.g. question with tense marking
CP automatically means _____ is presently
Tense
According to the truncation hypothesis, children will only project CP in questions when they produce …
Inflection/auxiliaries
Problem for truncation hypothesis
Children do produce questions that do not contain inflection
Movement analysis solution to the truncation hypothesis problem
Wh-word moves to specifier position of CP (SpecCP), even in questions without overt evidence of I
* Maybe there is a null Spec C’ copula (be) in I
Children produce more subjects in _____finite/non finite sentences
Finite (because finite = IP = place for subject in specifier)
An OI (optional infinitive) will occur if the child specifies the root XP as anything below …
IP
A fully finite sentence only occurs when…
The child specifies the top node as IP or higher
Crisma’s effect
OIs seem to never occur with Wh-questions
Counter argument to Crisma’s effect
English children do produce questions with OI like: ‘What doggie eating?’
In spite of this, we will assume that questions like ‘What doggie eating?’ involve movement of the wh-word to SpecCP. Even though this type of question does not involve any evidence of IP, we will assume that IP has been projected, consistent with the following:
* If a structure is projected all the way up to CP: then all nodes below CP (including IP) will be projected.
