Acquisition Path Research Articles

Cross-linguistic differences and similarities in the acquisition of relative clauses: Evidence from Greek and Italian

This study addresses the question of how the cross-linguistic differences between Greek and Italian impact the comprehension of relative clauses by typically developing children. Specifically, we tested the effect of overt morphological case marking on the comprehension of subject and object relative clauses by children in Greek and in Italian in a crosslinguistic perspective. We did this by carrying out two comprehension experiments. In the first, we compared the comprehension of relative clauses in Greek and Italian. To obtain comparable data, we neutralized case marking in Greek DPs, and we achieved the distinction between subject and object relatives through number agreement on the embedded verb in both languages. In the second experiment, performed only with Greek children, we employed overt case marking on DPs. The results indicate that in the absence of morphological cues the Greek children performed like the Italian ones; the effect of overt case marking contributed significantly to the increase of the Greek children's performance on object relatives. We propose an account in terms of intervention on the dependency between the relative head and its copy (as in Friedmann et al., 2009), and of intervention on the AGREE relation between the agreement node and the subject in the thematic position. This double violation is responsible for the different acquisition path of different types of object relative clauses.

Investigating L2 Acquisition of Spanish Vocalic Sequences

Abstract While previous studies have investigated the acquisition of Spanish vowels by English speakers, none has examined how sequences of vowels are acquired. This study considers the developmental path of acquisition of diphthongs and hiatus by English-speaking learners of Spanish. Previous studies have found that duration is a robust acoustic cue to the difference between a diphthong and a hiatus (Face & Alvord 2004, Hualde & Prieto 2002). This study investigates how the durational difference is manifest in the speech of L2 learners of Spanish and how its realization changes as a function of proficiency in Spanish. In addition, transfer of a phonological constraint in English barring homorganic consonant-glide (CG) onset clusters (Davis & Hammond 1995, Ohala & Kawasaki-Fukumori 1997) and phonetic transfer of the relative intensity values of English glides, which have been found to be lower in English (MacLeod 2008), onto production of Spanish glides are also investigated. A delayed-repetition task with English and Spanish tokens tested 4 groups of speakers: beginning learners, intermediate learners, native Spanish speakers, and native English speakers. The results show that the learners produce a durational difference similar to the native speakers (in that hiatus were, on average, longer than diphthongs), but that the duration of the individual vowels was longer in the speech of the learners as compared to the native speakers. Transfer of the phonological constraint against homorganic CG clusters was found to some extent since glides in homorganic CG clusters were marginally statistically significantly longer than those in non-homorganic clusters in the speech of the beginning learners, but not for native Spanish speakers. In contrast, phonetic transfer of the relative intensity norms of English onto Spanish was not found since the learners produced Spanish glides with a higher relative intensity than the native Spanish speakers. The salience of duration and intensity for English speakers are discussed in concert with general articulatory concerns, both of the vocalic sequences themselves and in terms of the surrounding consonants.

New Data Collection Subsystem for Powder Neutron Diffractometer with Position Sensitive Detectors

Project INDECS (Integrated Neutron Diffraction Experiment Control System) is a newly developed software system created for the purpose of data acquisition from, and controlling of the upgraded version of the KSN-2 powder neutron diffractometer equipped with Position Sensitive Detectors. The KSN-2 neutron diffractometer (belonging to LND, DSSE, FNSPE, CTU in Prague, CZ, placed at the NRI, Řež near Prague, CZ) was recently upgraded with the possibility to contain up to three parallel linear PSDs which can be mounted on the detector arm instead of the original single counter detector. That was the motivation for the project INDECS to be started. For the actual data acquisition and initial data analysis of the raw sampled signals within the project INDECS a special modular structure called the PSD Acquisition Path (or PSDAP) was designed. Raw sampled signals from either end of the PSD are taken as the main input to the subsystem. The signals are then split into multiple events, analyzed for the position of the obtained events on the PSD, and a histogram of the diffraction events is created as the main output of this subsystem. Moreover, the PSDAP is capable of storing the raw signals either before event splitting or after, so that later the whole process of acquisition can be replayed in software, perhaps with different settings of the processing parameters or perhaps even algorithms. It can also be switched into a mode where under special conditions a correction curve specific for the given PSD can be constructed and later in normal operation it can be used to do the corrections of detected event positions to enhance the results on that particular PSD. This whole subsystem then acts as a single modular command unit (External Execution Module or EEM) within the entire system of project INDECS.

Study on Learner Modeling in Adaptive Learning System

In light of the present situation researches on learner model in Adaptive Learning System at home and abroad, analyze the design principles and characteristics of Adaptive Learning System. Based on these, this paper summarizes the main problems of learner model from dimension of attention, representation method and acquisition path. It puts forward a new learner model called Advanced Learner Model (ALM for short), which includes three characteristic items such as knowledge level, cognitive ability and preferences. We respectively give the representation of them based on set and tuple. And give the acquisition of characteristic value for prior information and dynamic information. After that, propose a new Adaptive Learning System based on ALM as a case to show the application of this model.

Non-Finiteness in Early Hebrew Verbs

The study investigates the gradual development of morphological specification, as reflected in use of early non-finite verb forms in the speech of three Hebrew-acquiring children (mean age range 1;4–2;2). Children acquiring different languages have been shown to make use of non-finite forms in their initial verb usage. Use of uninflected verbs in matrix clauses has been attributed to the Root or Optional Infinitives phenomenon in generative frameworks, or to the generally stepwise path of acquisition in developmental approaches. Analyses of the longitudinal data presented here suggest that Hebrew-acquiring children do not use infinitival forms before they begin to master inflections productively. Instead, they rely, for several months, on non-affixed “bare stems” as their initial verb forms. Prefix-marked “full” infinitives occur later, typically in well-formed syntactic contexts, alongside productive use of affixed Present-tense (benoni) participial forms. Hebrew-acquiring children thus appear to make selective use of different types of nonfinite forms (initial bare stems followed by Infinitives and benoni), each representing different levels of inflectional knowledge. It is therefore argued here that non-finiteness in early child language is in itself a developmental concept consisting of several sub-phases each of which demonstrates a particular level of linguistic knowledge, motivated by typological features of the ambient language.

Target Selection in Error Selective Learning

SR shows a typical acquisition pattern of first avoiding marked structures, then repairing them, then producing them faithfully. I propose a method for diagnosing and quantifying avoidance, and then analyze the avoidance using the null parse approach. I offer a computationally implemented Tessier 2007, 2008, 2009, Becker and Tessier 2012), modeling the avoidance of marked structure as selection of the null parse. The model predicts a realistic acquisition path using a persistent M > F > MParse bias and the relativization of MParse to markedness constraints.

The Acquisition of Recursion: How Formalism Articulates the Child’s Path

We distinguish three kinds of recursion: Direct Recursion (which delivers a ‘conjunction’ reading), Indirect Recursion, and Generalized Transformations. The essential argument is that Direct Recursion captures the first stage of each recursive structure. Acquisition evidence will then be provided from both naturalistic data and experimentation that adjectives, possessives, verbal compounds, and sentence complements all point to con-junction as the first stage. Then it will be argued that Indirect Recursion captures the Strong Minimalist Thesis, which allows periodic Transfer and interpretation. Why is recursion delayed and not immediate? It is argued that an interpretation of Generalized Transformations in the spirit of Tree Adjoining Grammar offers a route to explanation. A labeling algorithm combines with Generalized Transformations to provide different labels for recursive structures projection. Recursion is then achieved by substitution of a recursive node for a simple node. One simple case is to substitute a Maximal Projection for a simple non-branching lexical node. A more complex case — essential to acquisition — is to substitute a category for a lexical string. Consequently, a computational ‘psychological reality’ can be attributed to explain why recursion requires an extra step for the addition of each recursive construction on the acquisition path.

Wh-questions: Moving beyond the first phase

The paper presents a feature-checking theory of wh-movement that attempts to accommodate both adult grammar and the path of acquisition by which children handle long distance movement, indirect questions and partial movement. Partial movement is not a grammatical option in English but it is adopted as an option in development. The account makes several predictions about the performance of children with specific language impairment (SLI), and also predicts a particular advantage for children who speak African American English (AAE) over those who speak Mainstream American English (MAE). The empirical data are taken from a study of 590 children, both typically developing and language-impaired, and both AAE and MAE speaking, aged four to nine years. The tasks involved answering wh-questions after stories as part of the field-testing of a new language assessment instrument. The questions included multi-clause questions with or without medial wh-complementizers. The predictions are borne out that children with language impairment have prolonged difficulty with real long distance movement and medial questions, and that children who speak AAE are at an advantage in avoiding certain errors (partial movement) because of the dialect's characteristic marking of indirect questions via inversion in the lower clause.

Identifying Critical Success Factors for Supply Chain Excellence

This paper presents a research framework for studying supply chain excellence, emphasizing two distinct paths of knowledge acquisition, that is qualitative inquiry through interviews with senior supply chain executives in Taiwan and quantitative inquiry through data collection from companies that operate in Taiwan. Four factors are considered as the antecedents of supply chain excellence, such as collaboration, organizational conditions, technology adoption, and operations. The authors use the grounded theory approach to further understand those four critical factors and relevant concepts. Organizational condition was ranked by our senior supply chain executives as the most important factor based on this qualitative investigation. The effect of four critical factors on organizational performance is also assessed through regression analyses, and the results help supply chain professionals in Taiwan determine which factors and concepts of supply chain management to focus on to improve business performance. Although these findings are situation-dependent, the proposed framework is different from existing literature and can be adopted in other international studies to enhance the body of knowledge on supply chain management.

Expertise.

The study of expertise is based on the premise that experts in different domains follow a similar path of acquisition and development. This article distinguishes two research approaches to the study of expertise. The traditional approach assumes a steady progression from novice to expert as a function of training as well as years of experience often without measures of reproducible skill. A second and more recent one focuses on the identification of individuals with reproducibly superior performance for representative tasks that capture expertise in the domain. The focus of this review is on the latter, namely the expert-performance approach. The article describes how superior performance can be captured by standardized tasks, and how analyses of that superior performance can identify superior abilities, cognitive mechanisms, and physiological adaptations. The last part of the article reviews how deliberate practice and training can lead to the acquisition of complex mechanisms and physiological adaptations, which in turn can explain the experts' attained superior performance. The review is concluded with a discussion of future directions of studies of expert performance and the challenges in understanding the development of general abilities and the motivation to engage in sustained daily deliberate practice. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

New data collection subsystem for the position sensitive detectors of the KSN-2 neutron diffractometer

Project INDECS (integrated neutron diffraction experiment control system) is a newly developed software system created for the purpose of data acquisition from, and controlling of, the KSN-2 neutron diffractometer equipped with PSDs. For the actual data acquisition and initial data analysis of the raw sampled signals a special modular structure called the PSD acquisition path (or PSDAP) was designed. PSDAP also allows to store the raw data, which can be later replayed without actually performing the experiment again.

Os estágios de aprendizagem da escritura pela criança: uma nova leitura para um antigo tema

RESUMO Este trabalho faz uma revisão dos estágios de aquisição da escrita à luz da Linguística Aplicada, e fornece uma alternativa diversa dos conhecidos estágios ferreirianos, muito utilizados pelo professor alfabetizador. Para tal, lanço mão de achados e conclusões fornecidos pelos estudos de aquisição da escrita, de orientação fonológica (ABAURRE, 1998, 1999; CAGLIARI, 1992a, 1992b, 1998), bem como de estudos de aquisição da linguagem que evidenciam o papel do molde silábico no processo aquisicional (McNEILAGE; DAVIS, 1990). São utilizados, como corpora, os registros da pesquisa de campo e experimental realizada ao longo do ano letivo de 2006, com 20 crianças de escolas públicas da cidade de Salvador, em cinco encontros periódicos individuais de produção escrita. Tais produções me permitem concluir que o percurso da aquisição da escrita inicia-se com a ausência de relação grafo-fônica, passando por uma série de etapas cíclicas de relações som/letra, até atingirem as relações ortográficas, cuja dependência som/grafia é superada.

Feasibility of Whole-Body Functional Mouse Imaging Using Helical Pinhole SPECT

Detailed in vivo whole-body biodistributions of radiolabeled tracers may characterize the longitudinal progression of disease, and changes with therapeutic interventions. Small-animal imaging in mice is particularly attractive due to the wide array of well characterized genetically and surgically created models of disease. Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) imaging using pinhole collimation provides high resolution and sensitivity, but conventional methods using circular acquisitions result in severe image truncation and incomplete sampling of data, which prevent the accurate determination of whole-body radiotracer biodistributions. This study describes the feasibility of helical acquisition paths to mitigate these effects. Helical paths of pinhole apertures were implemented using an external robotic stage aligned with the axis of rotation (AOR) of the scanner. Phantom and mouse scans were performed using helical paths and either circular or bi-circular orbits at the same radius of rotation (ROR). The bi-circular orbits consisted of two 360-degree scans separated by an axial shift to increase the axial field of view (FOV) and to improve the complete-sampling properties. Reconstructions of phantoms and mice acquired with helical paths show good image quality and are visually free of both truncation and axial-blurring artifacts. Circular orbits yielded reconstructions with both artifacts and a limited effective FOV. The bi-circular scans enlarged the axial FOV, but still suffered from truncation and sampling artifacts. Helical paths can provide complete sampling data and large effective FOV, yielding 3D full-body in vivo biodistributions while still maintaining a small distance from the aperture to the object for good sensitivity and resolution.

FUNDAMENTAL AND GRADIENT DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

This article reexamines Bley-Vroman’s original (1990) and evolved (this issue) fundamental difference hypothesis that argues that differences in path and endstate of first language acquisition and adult foreign language learning result from differences in the acquisition procedure (i.e., language faculty and cognitive strategies, respectively). The evolved assessment of the theoretical and empirical developments of the past 20 years is taken into account with respect to Universal Grammar and parameters in generative theory and with respect to cognition and acquisition in data processing. This article supports the spirit of Bley-Vroman’s proposals in light of the discussion of three topics: pathway of acquisition, endstate age of acquisition effects, and language processing by monolinguals and bilinguals. I argue that the difference between child and adult language acquisition is, above all, quantitative not qualitative, a gradient continuum rather than a precipitous break.

Rethinking child difficulty: The effect of NP type on children's processing of relative clauses in Hebrew

Children find object relative clauses difficult. They show poor comprehension that lags behind production into their fifth year. This finding has shaped models of relative clause acquisition, with appeals to processing heuristics or syntactic preferences to explain why object relatives are more difficult than subject relatives. Two studies here suggest that children (age 4 ; 6) do not find all object relatives difficult: a corpus study shows that children most often hear and produce object relatives with pronominal subjects. But they are most often tested on ones with lexical-NP subjects (e.g. The nurse that the girl is drawing). When tested on object relatives with pronominal subjects (e.g. The nurse that I am drawing), similar to those they actually hear and produce, Hebrew speakers aged 4 ; 6 show good comprehension (85% accuracy) that matches their production ability. This suggests a different path of relative clause acquisition, one that is sensitive to fine-grained distributional information.

Constructing another Language--Usage-Based Linguistics in Second Language Acquisition

The general aim of this article is to discuss the application of Usage-Based Linguistics (UBL) to an investigation of developmental issues in second language acquisition (SLA). Particularly, the aim is to discuss the relevance for SLA of the UBL suggestion that language learning is item-based, going from formulas via low-scope patterns to fully abstract constructions. This paper examines how well this suggested path of acquisition serves ‘as a default in guiding the investigation of the ways in which exemplars and their type and token frequencies determine the second language acquisition of structure’ (N. Ellis 2002: 170). As such, it builds on and further discusses the findings in Bardovi-Harlig (2002) and Eskildsen and Cadierno (2007). The empirical point of departure is longitudinal oral second language classroom interaction and the focal point is the use of can by one student in the class in question. The data reveal the formulas, here operationalized as recurring multiword expressions, to be situated in recurring usage events, suggesting the need for a fine-tuning of the UBL theory for the purposes of SLA research towards a more locally contextualized theory of language acquisition and use. The data also suggest that semi-fixed linguistic patterns, here operationalized as utterance schemas, deserve a prominent place in L2 developmental research.

Factors of success and failure in the acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch

The goal of this article is to examine the factors that are proposed in the literature to explain the success—failure in the child L2 (second language) acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch definite determiners. Focusing on four different groups of bilingual children, we discuss four external success factors put forward in the literature: (1) early age of onset, (2) lengthy and intensive input, (3) the quality of the input and (4) the role of the other language. We argue that the first two factors may indeed contribute to explaining the differences in success between the less and more successful bilingual children. However, the influence of the quality of the input in (standard) Dutch appears to be inconclusive, whereas the (structural) similarity of the gender systems in the two languages may reinforce the children's awareness of the grammatical gender category. Moreover, it appears that individual bilingualism vs. societal bilingualism, that is the sociolinguistic context in which Dutch is acquired, is not a factor for failure or success with respect to the acquisition of grammatical gender. In the final part of this article, we hypothesize that the important role of the input is related to a language internal factor, which distinguishes the Dutch gender system of the definite determiner from that of other languages, resulting in different acquisition paths.

Acquiring perfectivity and telicity in Dutch, Italian and Polish

This paper presents a crosslinguistic study into the acquisition of form-to-meaning correspondences in the domain of aspect. How may form affect the acquisition process and how may meaning do so? The results from aspectual comprehension experiments with Dutch, Italian and Polish L1 learners reveal that both form and meaning properties affect the acquisition path and lead to developmentally different patterns across languages. The semantics of perfective aspect is acquired earlier than imperfective aspect. Moreover, there is a surprising discrepancy in the understanding of perfective aspect. Whereas Dutch and Polish children have acquired the completion entailment of their Present Perfect and perfective aspect respectively by the age of 3, Italian 3-year-olds perform at chance with their Present Perfect. These results do not support the hypothesis of Uniformity of Aspect Acquisition, which claims that certain aspectual notions (in particular, perfective aspect) are acquired around the same age independent of the language-specific encoding. Instead I put forward an acquisition theory of form-to-meaning correspondences that is sensitive both to form – Morphological Salience, namely, the idea that the semantics of morphologically salient paradigms is acquired early – and to meaning – Semantic Complexity, namely, the idea that the semantics of simple aspectual operations is acquired early.

The Acquisition Path for Tense-Aspect: Remote Past and Habitual in Child African American English

This article considers the comprehension of tense-aspect markers remote past BIN and habitual be by 3- to 5-year-old developing African American English (AAE)-speaking children and their Southwest Louisiana Vernacular English (SwLVE)-speaking peers. Overall both groups of children associated BIN with the distant past; however, the AAE-speaking children were twice as likely to give a distant past response on the BIN went task. These results are discussed in terms of event realization, the Aspect Hypothesis, and feature agreement. We delineate a path that uses the lexical part of the Aspect Hypothesis, the role of semantics in defining the end state of a refined aspectual system, and an interface between syntax and semantics to explain subtle steps involving agreement in the acquisition process. The AAE-speaking children scored significantly higher on the habitual be tasks than the SwLVE-speaking children, whose scores were not significantly different from chance. The results suggest that the AAE-speaking children have developing native knowledge of habitual be and are beginning to associate it with eventualities that recur.

SCHERING-PLOUGHSTEPS UP FOR ORGANON

SCHERING-PLOUGH has agreed to acquire Organon BioSciences, the human and animal health care businesses of Akzo Nobel, for $14.4 billion. The deal, which is expected to close this year, marks important milestones for both Schering-Plough and Akzo. It is the first major acquisition by Schering- Plough since CEO Fred Hassan took the helm in 2003 and began implementing a turnaround program for the troubled drug company. At the same time, the offer puts an end to Akzo's plan to spin off Organon as a separate company through a partial stock offering on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. Schering-Plough's offer exceeds both Akzo's $9 billion estimate of proceeds from a stock market launch and analysts' recent speculation that a buyer might pay about $10 billion for the business (C&EN, March 5, page 37). Industry watchers last week speculated that the sale may put Akzo on the acquisition path, perhaps targeting ICI and its coatings business ...