Acquisition Of Syntax Research Articles

Child Second Language Acquisition of Syntax

Recent advances in linguistic theory within the principles and parameters framework have exerted considerable influence on the field of second language acquisition. SLA researchers working within this framework of syntactic theory have investigated the extent to which developing second language grammars are constrained by principles of Universal Grammar (UG). Much of the UG-based SLA research in the 1980s focused on adult L2 acquisition, but the role of UG principles in child L2 acquisition remained largely unexplored. More recently, however, this state of affairs has begun to change as SLA researchers are becoming more and more interested in child second language syntactic development. In this paper, I review recent and current developments in UG-based child SLA research, and I argue that child SLA has a valuable role to play in enabling us to arrive at a better understanding of the role of biological factors in language acquisition and in strengthening the links between SLA and linguistic theory. Specifically, I discuss the findings of child SLA studies with respect to the following issues: the role of UG parameters in child SLA, the status of functional categories and their projections in child SLA, and the nature of the evidence available to and used by child L2 learners. The overall picture emerging from these studies suggests that child L2 developing grammars are indeed constrained by Universal Grammar. While it is not fully clear at the present time whether the child L2 learners& knowledge is a result of direct access to UG or indirect access to UG (i.e., through the mediation of the L1), the evidence indicates that L1 transfer (at least in certain syntactic domains) cannot be entirely ruled out.

On positive evidence and ultimate attainment in L2 phonology

Since the early 1970s, L2 syntax researchers have seriously challenged the applicability of a critical period to the acquisition of L2 syntax, reformulating this challenge in the 1990s in terms of whether postpuberty learners retain access to the principles and parameters of Universal Grammar (UG). While it seems much more likely that a critical period applies to the postpuberty acquisition of a second phonology, research in the last several decades indi cates that adult learners do have access to the phonological principles and parameters of UG. Recent work on the nature of the input required to accomplish the setting of parameters in syntax offers one possible explana tion for lack of native-like attainment in L2 phonology.

The acquisition of English syntax by a Japanese- speaking child: the sibilant-sound attachments as an influence of Japanese

The acquisition of English syntax by a Japanese- speaking child: the sibilant-sound attachments as an influence of Japanese

Examining the facilitation of the acquisition of syntax with cross-sentential cues to phrase structure: questioning the applicability of a miniature language methodology in studying first language acquisition

Examining the facilitation of the acquisition of syntax with cross-sentential cues to phrase structure: questioning the applicability of a miniature language methodology in studying first language acquisition

A. Radford, Syntactic theory and the acquisition of English syntax: the nature of early child grammars of English. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. vii + 311.1

A. Radford, Syntactic theory and the acquisition of English syntax: the nature of early child grammars of English. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Pp. vii + 311.1

Possible names: The role of syntax-semantics mappings in the acquisition of nominals

Many scholars have posited constraints on how children construe the meaning of new words. These include the restriction that new words refer to kinds of whole objects (Markman and Hutchinson 1984), that words describing solid objects refer to individual objects while words describing non-solid substances refer to portions of substance (Soja et al. 1991), and that count nouns that name objects are generalized on the basis of shape (Landau et al. 1988). There are theoretical and empirical problems with these proposals, however. Most importantly, they fail to explain the fact that children rapidly acquire words that violate these contraints, such as pronouns and proper names, names for substances, and names for non-material entities. The theory defended here is that children and adults possess mappings from grammatical categories (‘count noun’, ‘mass noun’, and ‘noun phrase’) to abstract semantic categories; these mappings serve to constrain inferences about word meaning. Evidence from developmental psychology and linguistic theory is presented that suggests that even very young children possess such mappings and use them in the course of lexical development. Further issues — such as the possibility of developmental change, the precise nature of these semantic categories, and how children learn words prior to the acquisition of syntax — are also discussed. It is concluded that although these syntax-semantics mappings are not by themselves sufficient to explain children's success at word learning, they play a crucial role in lexical development. As such, only a theory that posits a deep relationship between syntax and semantics can explain the acquisition and representation of word meanings.

When prosody fails to cue syntactic structure: 9-month-olds' sensitivity to phonological versus syntactic phrases

According to prosodic bootstrapping accounts of syntax acquisition, language learners use the correlation between syntactic boundaries and prosodic changes (e.g., pausing, vowel lengthening, large increases or decreases in fundamental frequency) to cue the presence and arrangement of syntactic constituents. However, recent linguistic accounts suggest that prosody does not directly reflect syntactic structure but rather is governed by independent prosodic units such as phonological phrases. To examine the implications of this view for the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis, infants in Experiment 1 were presented with sentences in which pauses were inserted either between the subject noun phrase (NP) and verb or after the verb. Half of the infants heard sentences with lexical NP subjects, in which prosodic structure is consistent with syntactic structure. The other half heard sentences with pronoun subjects, in which prosodic structure does not mirror syntactic structure. In a preferential listening paradigm, infants in the lexical NP condition listened longer to materials containing pauses between the subject and verb, the main syntactic constituents. However, in the pronoun NP conditio, infants showed no difference in listening times for the two pause locations. To determine of other sentence types containing pronoun subjects potentially provide information about the syntactic constituency of these elements, infants in Experiment 2 heard yes-no questions with pronoun subjects, in which the prosodic structure reflects the constituency of the subject. Infants listened longer when pauses were inserted between the subject and verb than after the verb. Taken together, our results suggest that the prosodic information in an individual sentence is not always sufficient to assign a syntactic structure. Rather, learners must engage in active inferential processes, using cross-sentence comparisons and other types of information to arrive at the correct syntactic representation.

Young Children′s Representation of Prosodic Phonology: Evidence From English-Speakers′ Weak Syllable Productions

How can children use prosodic information such as pausing and pitch resetting to infer syntactic structure? This work considers the possibility that they do so by first constructing a prosodic representation similar to ones suggested by recent linguistic theory (e.g., Hayes, 1989; Nespor & Vogel, 1986; Selkirk, 1981). The research examines 2-year-olds′ sensitivity to prosodic structure by comparing their weak syllable preservation patterns in comparably stressed multisyllabic words and sentences. Consistent with previous research, the results suggest a speech production model in which children apply to their multisyllabic words a series of strong-(weak) metrical templates (Allen & Hawkins, 1980; Demuth, 1992, in press; Gerken, 1990, 1991, in press b; Gerken, Landau, & Remez, 1990; Wijnen, Krikaar, & den Os, in press). The new finding added by the current research is that children organize their intended sentences into phonological phrases and apply metrical templates within these prosodic units. Implications of children′s sensitivity to prosodic structure for syntax acquisition are discussed.

Developmental sequences in L1 (normal and impaired) and L2 acquisition of Swedish syntax

This article presents data from an on‐going project comparing L1 and L2 acquisition of Swedish syntax. Within the L1 group, normal as well as specifically language impaired (SLI) children are included; the L2 group consists of pre‐school immigrant children. The analyses of the data are made within a second language acquisition perspective with a focus on word order. One basic issue within second language acquisition research is the question of natural developmental sequences, i.e. do all learners follow the same development? Another important issue is whether the development in L2 acquisition is the same as or different from L1 acquisition. Both issues are addressed in the study. The results show interesting similarities between the SLI group and the L2 group. The L1 group differed from the other two groups in important ways. The findings suggest that there is no fundamental difference between L1 and L2 acquisition of syntax, as has been claimed.

Language acquisition in the absence of experience

AbstractA 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.

On the acquisition of syntax in Tamil: a comment on Garman (1974)

Garman (1974), reporting on twenty Tamil children aged three to five, postulated a linguistic strategy and two prelinguistic strategies to explain the results of a question-picture choice task involving sentences with embedded and subordinate clauses. In a reanalysis of his data, we identify four processing strategies and show that some of Garman's findings are better explained not as the outcome of prelinguistic strategies but as an artefact of the experimental design. In fact the data provide evidence of a grammatical sensitivity which is consonant with a sensitivity--demonstrated in recent language--acquisition studies-to the branching direction of the language being acquired.

Exploring language acquisition in children with a miniature artificial language: Effects of item and pattern frequency, arbitrary subclasses, and correction

Very little of the artificial language experimentation in the literature has been done with children, although children are the primary target population to which experimenters wish to generalize. For this reason, we used children (7–10 years old) to explore the acquisition of a miniature artificial language with rules, patterns, subpatterns, and exceptions that are quite like those found in inflectional systems of natural languages. The first goal of the study was to explore two aspects of linguistic input—how frequency of presentation affects the relative roles of rote and rule or pattern learning, and the learnability of arbitrary subclasses. A second goal was to determine the effects of immediate corrective feedback on acquisition; and a third goal was to examine adult-child differences in learning. Overwhelmingly, the children learned via rules rather than by rote, but failed to distinguish the arbitrary subclasses. Frequency of presentation had specific effects on the acquisition of items and patterns. The immediacy of feedback had no significant effect on learning. Although there was a small (though significant) difference between the performance of the children and that of some adult subjects, overall, the results support the existence of a class of pattern learning skills that is common to children and adults and includes some aspects of syntax acquisition.

Out of the hands of babes: On a possible sign advantage in language acquisition

Recent research has examined the early stages of language development in signed and spoken language. In this paper we discuss claims that, in the timing of early language milestones, there is an advantage for the acquisition of signed languages. In particular, we will review the evidence that the emergence of the first signs and of the first twosign combinations is precocious in signing children as compared to the appearance of the first words and of the first two-word strings in speaking children. We conclude that the evidence for early emergence of the first signs deserves continued attention, but that the evidence for early syntax in signing children is not at all compelling. Finally, we discuss the import of a short-lived sign advantage in early language acquisition, in terms of understanding maturational timing mechanisms more generally. Specifically, we address the question of whether or not a single timing mechanism underlies early milestones in the acquisition of both vocabulary and syntax.

Seeking new bases for SLA research: Looking to cognitive science

In this paper I suggest that cognitive science, a multi-disciplinary field which draws on research in linguistics, psychology, anthropology, and computer science, might provide us with better explanations of student behavior in the classroom than mainstream SLA (second language acquisition) research. I begin with a brief criticism of mainstream SLA research and argue that it is too bound to studies of morphology and syntax acquisition and the supposed existence of a LAD¦(language¦acquisition¦device) to help us understand what is going on in EFL students' minds. I then proceed to examine classroom situations and attempt to show how research from cognitive science might offer explanations for what is taking place.

Facilitating the acquisition of syntax with cross-sentential cues to phrase structure

Several previous studies using miniature language methodology have shown that the acquisition of syntax is facilitated by language input that incorporates cues to sentence phrase structure. These studies have examined effects of LOCAL cues, such as prosody or function words, which are physically identifiable aspects of input and which directly indicate the phrase bracketing of individual input strings. In the present study, we examine the effects of CROSS-SENTENTIAL cues to phrase structure—cues that lack overt manifestations in individual strings, arise solely as consequences of the rule system underlying the input language, and must be extracted from input through comparisons of semantically and syntactically related strings. Grammars incorporating rules of pronominalization and permutation were used to generate input with cross-sentential cues. Subjects exposed to such input were completely successful in learning syntax, whereas subjects exposed to input generated by a simpler grammar (and lacking either local or cross-sentential cues) failed to learn complex aspects of syntax. Natural languages regularly include the types of rules that give rise to cross-sentential cues and also regularly possess multiple local cues to phrase structure. These patterns of universality, coupled with the consistent facilitative effects of structural cues on learning, suggest that such cues may constitute a necessary component of language input.

Animacy Constraints on Preschool Children's Acquisition of Syntax

LEMPERT, HENRIETrA. Animacy Constraints on Preschool Children's Acquisition of Syntax. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1989, 60, 237-245. In passive sentences such as The cake is being eaten by the clown, the first noun (cake) names the patient (acted-upon) and functions as the subject of the sentence. The present study used passive sentence training to investigate whether patient animacy affects acquisition of the passive construction. In the teaching phase, 32 children ranging in age from 2-6 to 5-3 (mean, 3-8) imitated passive sentence descriptions of pictures and tried to use the form when describing pictures (probes). One group received Animate (A) patient + animate agent passives (The baby is being touched by the frog). A second group received Static Inanimate (SI) patient + animate agent passives (The drum is being touched by the frog). A-patient children produced more passives in the training phase than SI-patient children. In posttraining tests, the former produced more passives to animate patients than the latter and as many passives to inanimate patients as SI-patient children. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the concept of subject is a category that includes animacy as a component.

Animacy Constraints on Preschool Children's Acquisition of Syntax

Animacy Constraints on Preschool Children's Acquisition of Syntax

How the prosodic cues in motherese might assist language learning.

The function of motherese has become a pivotal issue in the language-learning literature. The current research takes the approach of asking whether the prosodic characteristics that are distinctive to motherese could play a special role in facilitating the acquisition of syntax. Hirsh-Pasek, Kemler Nelson, Jusczyk, Cassidy, Druss & Kennedy (1987) showed that infants aged 0;7-0;10 are sensitive to prosodic cues that would help them segment the speech stream into perceptual units that correspond to clauses. The present study shows that infants' sensitivity to segment-marking cues in ongoing speech holds for motherese but not for adult-directed speech. The finding is that, for motherese only, infants orient longer to speech that has been interrupted at clausal boundaries than to matched speech that has been interrupted at within-clause locations. This selective preference indicates that the prosodic qualities of motherese provide infants with cues to units of speech that correspond to grammatical units of language-a potentially fundamental contribution of motherese to the learning of syntax.

Origins of Complex Syntax in Interlanguage Development

This study examines the emergence of complex syntax in interlanguage (IL) development through a functionalist analysis of longitudinal, conversational IL data from two Vietnamese learners of English. The study focuses on discourse-pragmatic factors in the learners′ production and acquisition of complex syntax, specifically on their reliance on collaboration by interlocutors in the production of complex syntactic structures. Its findings offer a test of the utility of Givón's functionalist approach in SLA studies, and of claims by Hatch and others to the effect that “syntax develops out of conversation.” The interdependence of different linguistic levels in IL development is demonstrated, and the use of a variety of analytical units is shown to be critical in characterizing prepositional encoding in IL speech.

Acquisition of Morphology and Syntax

The early development of second language acquisition [SLA] research in the area of morphology and syntax can be traced in some excellent publications both exemplifying and evaluating the state of the art in this area (e.g., Anderson 1981, Davies, Criper, and Howatt 1984, Hatch 1983, Wode 1981b). The research questions identified and pursued at that time have continued to occupy researchers. (The ones which are the most important and relevant for the discussion here are as follows: 1 the problem of regularity in interlanguage [IL] morphology and syntax; 2) the contribution of Universal Grammar to SLA, and 3) variability in IL performance. The problems enumerated above will provide a framework for the discussion of the acquisition of morphology and syntax. Some additional comments on other, related issues will be included.