Word order

Question 1

Within the VP

Answer 1

The S (subject) V (verb) O (object) order within the VP varies between languages. Mostly SVO and SOV (42-45%) and some rare others

Question 2

The ‘hard’ question

Answer 2

How do infants acquire rules of syntax (there’s not 1 theory)

And how/when do infants start putting words together

Question 3

Morphology

Answer 3

Internal structure of words. A morpheme is the smallest meaning-bearing unit

Cannot be broken down further without losing meaning.

Question 4

The WUG test

Answer 4

5mo - 7yo

Image of novel creature, asked to respond to prompt that requires morphological change.

Most kids succeed, indicating an internalised rule

Question 5

Transitivity

Answer 5

The amount of arguments the underlying concept of a verb needs. Eg the word running typically needs 1, .. Runs .. is running. (RUN(X)) = intransitive verb

The word pushing needs two, relation between pusher and pushee (PUSH(x,y))
These are Transitive verbs. One is the subject, the other the object
* common to transitives; they are causative. someone doing something to someone else

Question 6

Syntactic bootstrapping

Answer 6

Idea that infants use knowledge of syntax to help them learn the meaning of words. Eg in the Zarking study (two videos, find zarking)

They use the bootstrapping to discover that zakring is transitive (requires two persons) by using the number of NPs.

Infants uncover the underlying syntactic rules fairly quick, especially the dominant word order (SVO)