Syntactic Representations Are Both Abstract and Semantically Constrained: Evidence From Children's and Adults' Comprehension and Production/Priming of the English Passive.

Amy Bidgood,Caroline F Rowland,Julian M Pine,Ben Ambridge

doi:10.1111/cogs.12892

Amy Bidgood, Caroline F Rowland + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12892

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Abstract

All accounts of language acquisition agree that, by around age 4, children's knowledge of grammatical constructions is abstract, rather than tied solely to individual lexical items. The aim of the present research was to investigate, focusing on the passive, whether children's and adults' performance is additionally semantically constrained, varying according to the distance between the semantics of the verb and those of the construction. In a forced-choice pointing study (Experiment 1), both 4- to 6-year olds (N=60) and adults (N=60) showed support for the prediction of this semantic construction prototype account of an interaction such that the observed disadvantage for passives as compared to actives (i.e., fewer correct points/longer reaction time) was greater for experiencer-theme verbs than for agent-patient and theme-experiencer verbs (e.g., Bob was seen/hit/frightened by Wendy). Similarly, in a production/priming study (Experiment 2), both 4- to 6-year olds (N=60) and adults (N=60) produced fewer passives for experiencer-theme verbs than for agent-patient/theme-experiencer verbs. We conclude that these findings are difficult to explain under accounts based on the notion of A(rgument) movement or of a monostratal, semantics-free, level of syntax, and instead necessitate some form of semantic construction prototype account.

Highlights

The passive occupies a special place in investigations of children’s language acquisition, across languages as varied as Sesostho (Demuth, 1989) and Spanish (Pierce, 1992), Inuktitut (Allen & Crago, 1996), Indonesian (Aryawibawa & Ambridge, 2018), German (Abbot-Smith & Behrens, 2006), and Greek (Tsimpli, 2006)
The reason for the passive’s status as something of a test-bed for theories of acquisition research is that, due to its low frequency in many languages and noncanonical ordering of semantic roles, the passive is one of very few sentence-level constructions for which children make errors, in both comprehension and production (e.g., Fox & Grodzinsky, 1998; Gordon & Chafetz, 1990; Hirsch & Wexler, 2006; Maratsos, Fox, Becker, & Chalkey, 1985; Meints, 1999; Pinker, Lebeaux, & Frost, 1987; Sudhalter & Braine, 1985), a finding that holds across languages including Catalan, Cypriot Greek, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Lithuanian, and Polish (ArmonLotem et al, 2016)
Adults—whose knowledge is certainly abstract in this sense—showed a similar pattern of results to children. These results are difficult to reconcile with the view that adults’ and children’s knowledge of the passive is ONLY abstract, in the sense that it does not include a semantic affectedness constraint

Summary

Introduction

The passive occupies a special place in investigations of children’s language acquisition, across languages as varied as Sesostho (Demuth, 1989) and Spanish (Pierce, 1992), Inuktitut (Allen & Crago, 1996), Indonesian (Aryawibawa & Ambridge, 2018), German (Abbot-Smith & Behrens, 2006), and Greek (Tsimpli, 2006). We adopt a working definition that is designed to cover most, if not all, theoretical bases: A child’s knowledge of the passive construction (or any construction) is “abstract” if she can use and comprehend in that construction a verb that she has not heard used in that construction This abstract view contrasts with an older view (Maratsos et al, 1985; Pinker et al, 1987; Sudhalter & Braine, 1985) under which children’s knowledge of the passive is semantically constrained by an affectedness constraint such that [B] (mapped onto the surface subject [of a passive]) is in a state or circumstance characterized by [A] (mapped onto the by-object or an understood argument) having acted upon it. This abstract view contrasts with an older view (Maratsos et al, 1985; Pinker et al, 1987; Sudhalter & Braine, 1985) under which children’s knowledge of the passive is semantically constrained by an affectedness constraint such that [B] (mapped onto the surface subject [of a passive]) is in a state or circumstance characterized by [A] (mapped onto the by-object or an understood argument) having acted upon it. (Pinker et al, 1987, p.249)

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