Child Grammar Research Articles

On the Representation of Implicit Arguments in Child Grammar: Short Passives in Mandarin and English

On the Representation of Implicit Arguments in Child Grammar: Short Passives in Mandarin and English

The knowledge of binding principles in early child grammar: Experimental evidence from 30-month-old toddlers

ABSTRACT We investigated toddlers’ understanding of the hierarchical syntactic configurations that constrain the referential meanings of reflexives and pronouns. In particular, reflexives must co-refer with the c-commanding antecedent within the local domain (Principle A) (e.g., Hei washes himselfi. Johni knows that Billj likes himselfj.), and pronoun reference must be disjoint from its local c-commanding antecedent (Principle B) (e.g., Hei washes himj. Johni knows that Billj likes himi.). French-learning 30-month-olds participated in an eye-tracker task. In Experiment 1 each trial presented a simple sentence containing a reflexive or a pronoun and a target verb (e.g., Il i se i/le j lave. “hei washes himselfi/himj”), while displaying side-by-side pictures depicting self- directed versus other-directed actions of the target verb. Experiment 2 tested the locality conditions of the principles using complex sentences, with the target verb and the reflexive/pronoun appearing in the embedded clause (e.g., Le bébé i voit que le papa j se j /le i lave. “The babyi sees that the dadj washes himselfj/himi”); the pictures were those of Experiment 1, with the patient of the verb being the local antecedent in the embedded clause versus the non-local antecedent in the matrix-clause. Experiment 3 tested the c-commanding requirements of the principles with sentences containing a complex subject, a reflexive/pronoun and a target verb (e.g., Le bébé i du papa j se i /le j lave. “The babyi of the dadj washes himselfi/himj”). In the pictures the patient was the linearly farther versus closer antecedent. Eye-gazes to action images showed adult-like interpretations across sentential structures, demonstrating that binding principles are in child grammar during age two.

Longitudinal profiles of late phonological development in children with Williams syndrome

Williams syndrome (WS) is a genetic neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by language skills above what is expected considering non-verbal intelligence. Research on phonological development is scarce, with many studies focusing on grammar in children and adolescents. In one of our previous studies transversally explored the profiles of late phonological development in Spanish-speaking WS children, adolescents, and adults, while our objective is to longitudinally determine these profiles for WS children based on present error indexes in spontaneous speech. Participants were seven WS children (aged 3;7–8;2), engaging in two spontaneous conversations within a 6-month interval. They were compared cross-sectionally with 240 typically developing (TD) children aged 3–6 years, divided into six groups. All speech samples were transcribed and analyzed with the CLAN software package of the CHILDES Project. Phonological profiles were established on the basis of phonological error indexes obtained dividing absolute frequency of errors by the total number of words produced. WS children showed a mean reduction of more than 25% in the absolute frequency of phonological errors after 6 months. As for the comparison with the normative groups, their error index was consistent with the stage of expansion in TD, however, after 6 months, this was consistent with the stage of stabilization. This atypical acceleration in phonological development could be related to lexical growth in the context of relative preservation of phonological memory. Furthermore, the trajectories of late phonological development in WS children might not be linear, as postulated by neuroconstructivist models, suggesting the need for intervention approaches specifically adapted to the phonological profiles of WS children.

On Realizing External Arguments: A Syntactic and Implicature Theory of the Disjointness Effect for Passives in Adult and Child Grammar

We present an account of why disjoint reference effects obtain in verbal but not in adjectival passives. Passives in child language are independently argued to always be adjectival, which allows us to use a natural experiment in child grammar that is not available in the adult grammar: predicting the lack of a disjoint reference effect in even those passives that prima facie seem verbal. We conduct our discussion against the background of the difference between adjectival and verbal passives in general. Our account is based on (grammatical) Implicature Theory. Since the initiator in the semantic representation of adjectival passives stays at a kind level, it cannot introduce a discourse referent, hence cannot trigger a disjointness implicature, unlike the initiator in verbal passives (Gehrke 2013, 2015). We show in two experiments that children’s passives do not exhibit disjoint reference, unlike adults’ verbal passives, even though children have no trouble computing disjointness implicatures elsewhere. Our contribution thus confirms with a novel kind of evidence the syntactic nature of young children’s difficulty with verbal passives. It offers a new perspective on the external argument difference between verbal and adjectival passives based on Reinhart’s (2016) Theta System, while also offering additional evidence for a grammatical, rather than general pragmatic, theory of implicatures.

Cognitive Prerequisites for the Acquisition of Grammar in Children Based on the Materials of the MacArthur-Bates CDI and Case Study

This article considers the phenomena preceding the development of grammar acquisition in young children. The study is based on the analysis of questionnaires completed by parents (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories). Estimates from 1037 questionnaires on children aged 18–36 months (550 girls, 487 boys) were entered into the database. Additional data were also obtained from a case study. The results of our analysis support the view on the priority of the cognitive component over the linguistic one in young children. At first, they develop the intention to convey certain ideas (about the missing owner of an object, as well as about the future and past) and then learn to express these ideas with specific linguistic means. The hierarchy of mastering utterances by children is determined by cognitive rather than linguistic factors. Most children find it easiest to name the adult who is not there at the moment when they see that adult’s things, and the ability to produce utterances about the objects they do not see or about the near future develops later. The utterances about the past are the most difficult because they are less important to children at an early age. Therefore, the non-morphological ways of expressing the meanings are gradually replaced by the morphological ones as children grow older.

Relationship between lexicon and grammar in children and youth who use augmentative and alternative communication

The present study investigated the relationship between lexicon and grammar in individuals who use graphic symbol-based aided augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Data came from 60 transcripts of generalization sessions that were part of two previous intervention studies, aimed at improving the expressive vocabulary and grammar of 12 children and youth who used graphic symbol-based AAC. The specific aims of the current study were to (a) describe vocabulary composition across different levels of expressive vocabulary and (b) analyze the relationship between global measures of expressive vocabulary and the use of grammar in individuals who use aided AAC. A series of multiple linear mixed effect regression analyses showed a positive predictive association between overall vocabulary size and the use of closed-class words, and a positive relationship between the use of verbs and the use of closed-class words. Additionally, the use of verbs had a significant positive association with the use of inflectional morphology, while the use of nouns did not. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Not all complementisers are late

This paper analyses the emergence of illocutionary complementisers (in the sense of Corr 2016, 2022) through a corpus study with Catalan and Spanish children. The production of illocutionary complementisers by ten Catalan- and Spanish-speaking children in the CHILDES database is quantified and compared to the production of finite embedding complementisers. The results indicate that illocutionary complementisers emerge early in the child production data, often well before embedding complementisers first appear. These preliminary findings, which illustrate important developmental differences between kinds of complementisers, are hard to account for in approaches that take functional categories to mature bottom-up, with left-peripheral knowledge developing last. I argue, instead, that the early emergence of illocutionary complementisers favours a view which takes the C-domain to be present early on in child grammars. I finish by considering the development of Italo-Romance complementisers as a future direction, suggesting that a deeper analysis of child ‘errors’ or input-divergent utterances may provide significant insights into the theoretical questions presented, as much as grammatical ones.

Innovative Family-Based Genetically Informed Series of Analyses of Whole-Exome Data Supports Likely Inheritance for Grammar in Children with Specific Language Impairment.

Individuals with specific language impairment (SLI) struggle with language acquisition despite average non-verbal intelligence and otherwise typical development. One SLI account focuses on grammar acquisition delay. The current study aimed to detect novel rare genetic variants associated with performance on a grammar assessment, the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI), in English-speaking children. The TEGI was selected due to its sensitivity and specificity, consistently high heritability estimates, and its absence from all but one molecular genetic study. We performed whole exome sequencing (WES) in eight families with SLI (n = 74 total) and follow-up Sanger sequencing in additional unrelated probands (n = 146). We prioritized rare exonic variants shared by individuals with low TEGI performance (n = 34) from at least two families under two filtering workflows: (1) novel and (2) previously reported candidate genes. Candidate variants were observed on six new genes (PDHA2, PCDHB3, FURIN, NOL6, IQGAP3, and BAHCC1), and two genes previously reported for overall language ability (GLI3 and FLNB). We specifically suggest PCDHB3, a protocadherin gene, and NOL6 are critical for ribosome synthesis, as they are important targets of SLI investigation. The proposed SLI candidate genes associated with TEGI performance emphasize the utility of precise phenotyping and family-based genetic study.

Supporting second language acquisition of bilingual preschool children through professionalization of caregivers in specialized preschool programs.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of a training program on language support strategies and dialogic reading for caregivers working in specialized preschool programs. These programs serve children without a regular childcare place who grow up with one or more languages other than German as the environmental language. Recent studies investigating the development of children attending these programs found only moderate improvements in German receptive language skills, while language support quality of the programs was rated as average. We assessed receptive second language competencies in vocabulary and grammar of n = 48 children and language support competencies of n = 15 caregivers using an interventional pre-posttest design. Receptive vocabulary skills of children supported by trained caregivers (intervention group) were compared to children supported by untrained caregivers (control group, n = 43). We found that both children's and caregivers' competencies increased from pre- to posttest, whereas the control group's receptive vocabulary skills did not increase noticeably. The caregivers' language support competencies influenced the increase of children's receptive grammar but not vocabulary skills. The comparison between the intervention group and control group consistently showed no effect of group membership on children's receptive vocabulary acquisition over time. Since the control group data came from a secondary analysis, only receptive vocabulary skills could be compared. The preliminary results of our study suggest that a caregivers' training on language support strategies and dialogic reading in everyday educational situations support bilingual children's grammar acquisition.

Morphosyntactic development in German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome-longitudinal data.

The present study provides longitudinal data on the development of receptive and expressive grammar in children and adolescents with Down syndrome and addresses the role of nonverbal cognitive abilities and verbal short-term memory for morphosyntactic development. Seventeen German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome (aged 4;6-17;1 years at first testing (T1)) were assessed twice, 4;4-6;6 years apart. For a subset of five participants, there was also a third assessment 2 years after the second. Receptive grammar, nonverbal cognition, and verbal short-term memory were tested using standardized measures. For expressive grammar, elicitation tasks were used to assess the production of subject-verb agreement and of wh-questions. At group level, the participants showed a significant increase in grammar comprehension from T1 to T2. However, progress diminished with increasing chronological age. Notable growth could not be observed beyond the age of 10 years.With respect to expressive grammatical abilities, progress was limited to those participants who had mastered verbal agreement inflection around age 10 years. Individuals who did not master verbal agreement by late childhood achieved no progress in producing wh-questions, either.There was an increase in nonverbal cognitive abilities in the majority of participants. Results for verbal short-term memory followed a similar pattern as those for grammar comprehension. Finally, neither nonverbal cognition nor verbal short-term memory were related to changes in receptive or expressive grammar. The results point to a slowdown in the acquisition of receptive grammar which starts before the teenage years. For expressive grammar, improvement in wh-question production only occurred in individuals with good performance in subject-verb agreement marking, which suggests that the latter might have a trigger function for further grammatical development in German-speaking individuals with Down syndrome. The study provides no indication that nonverbal cognitive abilities or verbal short-term memory performance determined the receptive or expressive development. The results lead to clinical implications for language therapy.

Mapping Commission Errors to Grammatical Development: A Case Study of Malayalam

Young children learning Malayalam use morphological categories and inflections quite productively and accurately in general. However, their utterances sometimes show the use of extra morphological material (or commission errors), revealing mismatches between adult and child grammars. In this paper, we present a survey of such errors that are observed in longitudinally collected, spontaneous speech production data of monolingual Malayalam and bilingual Malayalam–English acquiring children in order to identify both the range of commission errors and the underlying grammatical features that may have triggered them. A close analysis of the data shows us that such errors are restricted to a few grammatical loci and shed light on the specific challenges that some grammatical constraints pose for developing grammars.

Anaphoric reference in a German-Polish bilingual child

Abstract The study examines the use of referring expressions in anaphoric contexts in a German-Polish bilingual child between age 2;0 to 4;0. The longitudinal corpus consists of 160 video recordings of spontaneous speech in both languages. There are fundamental differences in the way anaphoric reference is expressed in German and Polish. Speakers of German refer to discourse-given referents either with a definite NP, a personal or a demonstrative pronoun. Speakers of Polish – a pro drop language without articles – mostly use bare nouns or null pronouns. Overt pronouns and demonstrative determiners are restricted to specific information structure conditions. We found an overuse of overt pronouns and demonstrative determiners in Polish in comparison to a monolingual Polish child of the same age and also qualitative differences in the use of the relevant expressions. Despite the fact that the earliest child grammar in both languages rather resembles the Polish target (no articles, no pronouns), the reliable markers of discourse-givenness encountered in the German input are rapidly acquired and overextended to Polish, before the more implicit Polish system is in place.

Диссоциация развития синтаксиса и лексики у младших школьников с разным нейропсихологическим профилем

This study aims to examine the features of text construction in terms of vocabulary and grammar in children with a weakness in the auditory verbal information processing (AV-group) and with a weakness in executive functions (programming and control of voluntary activity, EF-group). The participants were 71 second grade children from Moscow schools (mean age 8.8 years old, SD 0.29 years; 36 girls, 35 boys). Four groups were selected: children with good and weak development of AV and children with good and weak development of EF. The main hypothesis of the study, following A.R. Luria, was that in children with the weakness of AV, first of all, the paradigmatic mechanisms of word choice will suffer, and in children with the weakness of EF, the syntagmatic mechanisms for constructing a phrase and text. The use of non-parametric statistical analysis (Mann-Whitney test) showed the validity of the hypothesis and revealed the main errors in the narrative construction by children with both the weakness of AV and EF. The discussion of the results included consideration of the arguments in favor of a single or dual mechanism for the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar in children.

Real everyday grammar of children's speech: a corpus study

Real everyday grammar of children's speech: a corpus study

Relations between phonological production, grammar and the lexicon in bilingual French-English children.

Aims and objectives:This study examines multiple associations between language domains in bilingual children with a focus on phonology. Previous studies indicate within- but not cross-language associations between vocabulary and grammar in bilingual children. We investigate whether the relation between phonology and other language domains differs from the one reported between vocabulary and grammar.Methodology:Canadian French-English bilingual children (n = 31), aged 31 months, participated in 2 free-play sessions, from which lexical, grammatical and phonological information was extracted. The children’s parents completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventories and its Canadian French adaptation providing additional information on vocabulary and grammar in each of the children’s languages. They also completed a questionnaire on their children’s exposure to French and English.Data analysis:Within and cross-language relations between phonology, vocabulary and grammar were investigated using correlational analyses and mixed logistic regression.Findings:Correlational analyses did not reveal significant cross-language relations between phonology, vocabulary and grammar. However, mixed logistic regression, which controlled for language exposure effects, indicated that phonology was influenced by vocabulary and grammar both within and across languages.Originality:This study is one of the first to study cross-domain relations involving phonology in young bilingual children.Implications:Overall, the findings suggest that phonology displays a pattern of relations that is different from other language domains engendering between-language effects due to a language-general component.

Prosodic skills of Spanish-speaking children with developmental language disorder.

Phonological difficulties in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are well documented. However, abilities regarding prosody, the rhythmic and melodic characteristics of language, have been less widely studied, particularly in Spanish. Moreover, the scant research findings that have been reported are contradictory. These considerations justify our new research into the question, focusing on Spanish-speaking children with DLD. To examine a wide range of prosodic skills among Spanish-speaking children with DLD. To analyse the relationships between prosody and other language measurements. Prosodic skills were assessed through the Spanish version of the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) battery. The performance of 19 children aged 5-11 years with DLD was compared with that of a chronological age-matched control group of 19 typically developing children. Language skills were also assessed. There were significant differences between the group with DLD and the control group in terms of skills involving prosody functions and forms: turn-end and chunking signalling, contrastive focus and affect expression and understanding, discriminating and the imitation of prosodic patterns in both words and phrases. Spanish-speaking children with DLD present impairments not only when prosody interacts with language but also in the processing of prosody alone. The study results suggest that prosody is related to lexicon and grammar in children with DLD. The prosodic impairments of Spanish-speaking children with DLD could produce a negative impact on their language functioning and could also relate to their emotional and social difficulties. Consideration should therefore be given to focusing future interventions on prosodic skills in Spanish-speaking children with DLD. What is already known on the subject Although deficits in segmental phonology have been extensively studied in DLD, relatively little research has been conducted into supra-segmental phonology, especially among speakers of Spanish. To our knowledge, only one previous study has analysed the prosodic skills of Spanish-speaking children with DLD, and this only focused on prosody while reading. No analysis was made of the use of prosody in language comprehension and expression. What this study adds to existing knowledge This is the first study to analyse competence in a wide range of prosodic skills among Spanish-speaking children with DLD by using the PEPS-C battery. Spanish-speaking children with DLD present impairments in prosody functions and forms, which are related to other language skills. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? Prosodic impairments among Spanish-speaking children with DLD could contribute to explaining both their language difficulties and their socio-emotional problems. The results obtained suggest that Spanish-speaking children with DLD could benefit from interventions focused on prosody.

The Layered Syntactic Structure of the Complementizer System: Functional Heads and Multiple Movements in the Early Left-Periphery. A Corpus Study on Italian.

In this paper we document the developmental trajectory of the complementizer system (CP-system) in Italian by looking at the earliest spontaneous production of eleven young children, whose transcriptions are available on CHILDES. We conducted a novel corpus analysis, tracking down a number of constructions in which the clausal left-periphery is activated. First, we considered the appearance of the different complementizer particles in the CP-system, which overtly realize the three distinct functional projections ForceP, IntP, and FinP. The analysis revealed that children acquiring Italian correctly use these complementizer particles already in the third year of life. Second, we looked for the simultaneous activation of different functional projections within the CP-system. We went through our corpus searching for complex sentences in which more than one constituent was moved to the left periphery. This option is allowed by the adult grammar of Italian and, as our search revealed, it is also attested in the grammar of young children. Soon after their second birthday, sequences in which a left-dislocated Topic and a Wh- element co-occur are attested, directly supporting the existence of a (high) Topic position above FocusP. Moreover, movement in general conforms to the constraints of the adult grammar, with no attested violation of obligatory inversion (a consequence of the Q-Criterion). Importantly, “why-questions” did not require inversion, much as in the adult grammar of Italian. Taken together, children's use of complementizer particles and their activation of multiple landing sites for movement show that 2-year-olds already possess a richly articulated functional structure of the CP-system, aligned to the layered adult structure. In concluding the paper, we also discuss some temporal differences between constructions activating high and low portions of the CP-system. In particular, we detect a temporal precedence for wh-questions over why-questions. Since the former activate a lower projection, this is consistent with the recently proposed Growing Trees hypothesis, according to which the development of the CP-system proceeds stepwise.

An Optimality Analysis of the Phonological Processes in the Speech of Autistic Algerian Children: A Case Study

The current paper scrutinizes the phonological processes used by an autistic child, in Standard Arabic, via the use of a constraint-based framework of optimality theory. The data of the present study were collected through a picture-naming test. To ensure that the pictures are representative of all standard Arabic phonemes, the researcher designed a test containing 84 pictures representing three intra-word positions (initial, medial, and final). The results reveal that the autistic child grammar is characterized, mainly, with seven phonological processes: sibilant dentalization, de-emphasization, gliding, stopping, nasality spreading, final consonant deletion, and fronting. Autistic children's phonological system is stigmatized by unmarked forms. In terms of optimality theory, treating the phonological problems of autistic children requires demoting the highly ranked unmarked constraints and promoting the lowest-ranked faithfulness constraint.

Les sujets disloqués et non-disloqués chez l’enfant français

The aim of the present paper is to identify the contexts in which French children produce dislocated and non-dislocated subjects. For that purpose, we carried out a corpus study for 21 children between age 2 and 5 from the TCOF corpus, and extracted a total of 370 dislocated and 1029 non-dislocated subjects. We will show that, in child language, dislocated subjects (i) always correspond to the topic of the utterance, (ii) can express a contrastive topic and (iii) are used for referents which are less accessible for the interlocutor than non-dislocated subject pronouns. Lexical non-dislocated subjects are extremely rare, as we found only 11 instances of such subjects. However, almost all of them appear in a very different context from dislocated subjects: they are typically produced in all-focus utterances. These results suggest that children master the functions of dislocation from the onset of the acquisition of the construction. This result puts in question former studies claiming that the clitic pronoun in child language is a morphological marker and hence a compulsory element in French child grammar.

Use of Imitation Training for Targeting Grammar: A Narrative Review.

Purpose The purpose of this narrative review was to examine the evidence for imitation training for targeting grammar in children with developmental language disorder. Method Studies investigating imitation training were compiled from two databases-PsycINFO and Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts-as well as from reference lists of several books and articles reviewing language therapy. Results Twenty-one studies were reviewed. We summarized the demographic and methodological characteristics of the included studies. We identified substantial differences in the implementation of imitation training across the studies and noted a lack of studies considering how those differences might affect therapy outcome. Studies showed a rapid increase in the production of grammatical targets during imitation training activities, higher performance relative to a control group that did not receive any therapy, and generalization to untrained exemplars. However, the studies did not unequivocally link the increased performance to the imitation training therapy. Studies also showed limited generalization to conversational speech. Conversationally based therapy resulted in faster or higher usage in conversational speech, while imitation training resulted in faster immediate gains in usage during therapy trials. Conclusion We believe that imitation training can continue to be a useful tool in a speech-language pathologist's toolbox, but with suggested modifications. Specifically, we suggest use of imitation training as a means for rapidly achieving production of previously absent grammatical targets. However, we do not recommend sole or long-term use of imitation training for working on grammar. Further research is needed to refine our use of the procedure.