Child Grammar Research Articles

Maternal control strategies, maternal language usage and children's language usage at two years

The present study determined whether parenting style, defined by control strategies varying in power-assertion mediated the established relation between maternal language usage (grammar and semantics) and child language (grammar, semantics and pragmatics) during toddlerhood (n=60). Based upon their use of control strategies mothers were categorized into continuum-of-control groups (i.e., high guidance (HG), high control (HC) or high negative control (HNC)). Mothers in the high negative control group, who characteristically used high levels of prohibitions and commands, had children who performed relatively poorly overall on the language measures (i.e., MLU, number of bound morphemes, number of different words and use of language functions). In contrast, children of mothers in the HG and HC groups exhibited more advanced language usage overall. The relation between maternal and child language usage was mediated by parenting style for child pragmatics and partially for child grammar.

Using Relational Frame Theory to build grammar in children with Autistic Spectrum Conditions.

Introduction Autistic Spectrum Conditions (ASC) comprise a complex and diffuse set of behaviors which are essential for diagnosis, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical manual (DSM IV). Before the age of three years, the child will show delayed, or abnormal, functioning in social interaction, in language used in social communication, and in imaginative or symbolic play. The current article focuses mainly on the second of these deficits, that is an impairment in communication, although, of necessity, such an impairment will also involve the first of these problems (i.e. abnormal social interaction), as it is difficult to conceive of a problem in one of these areas that does not impact on the other. Moreover, the two processes, language and social interaction are intimately related to one another. In terms of impaired communication in those with ASC, this is indicated by one or more of the following behaviors (see DSM IV): (a) delayed or absent development of spoken language for which the patient doesn't try to compensate with gestures; (b) in person's who can speak, inadequate attempts to begin or sustain a conversation; (c) language that is repetitive, stereotyped or idiosyncratic; and (d) appropriate to developmental stage, absence of social imitative play or spontaneous, make believe play. A few children with ASC do not acquire speech at all. By the age of one year, most children can use simple one-syllable words, but about 50% of children with ASC cannot (Seligman et al., 2001). Those children with ASC who do acquire spoken language, often use language in unusual ways, for example, they may not combine words into meaningful sentences (Yapko, 2003), they may make high pitched sounds, or display echolalia, which is repeating a certain sentence, or word, over a period of time, is common in children with ASC (Yule & Rutter, 1987). For children with ASC who do acquire verbal skills, notably those who may display Asperger's syndrome, language can be 'overly' grammatical, and lacking in colloquialisms. For example, children with ASC tend to reverse the pronouns I and You, and tend to refer to themselves by their name (Lee, Hobson, & Chiat, 1994). While most normal children often misuse the 'ing' rule at an early stage in their language development, children with ASC continue to make this error, even when they are much older (Wing, 1976). Some children with ASC who are only mildly affected may exhibit slight delays in language, but still have great difficulty sustaining a conversation. The 'give and take' of normal conversations is hard for them, although they often carry out a monologue on a favorite subject, giving no one else the opportunity to comment, to a greater extent than do typically developing children (National Institute of Mental Health, 2004). There have been many notable advances in the development in language using Applied Behavior Analytic (ABA) techniques. These have been documented in many places previously (see Greer & Ross, 2007), and now form the basis of many ABA approaches to the treatment of ASC (e.g., Greer & Ross 2007). Such approaches have shown tremendous improvements in the ability of children with ASC to use words, to tact and mand, and to understand those words that are employed by adults and their peers. In recent review of the literature Makrygianni and Reed (2008) found an average effect size of approaching 1.0 in studies that have examined the impact of ABA programs on the receptive and expressive verbal ability of children with ASC. This suggests an average improvement of around 15 points on a standardized measure of linguistic ability, often over a period of around one to two years. Given the previous pessimistic prognosis for language use in such children, this improvement is highly impressive, and cause for optimism. However, while these studies may often show an improvement in the use of functional language, they do not necessarily show an improvement in the ability of the children with ASC to use language in a 'typical' manner - that is to say grammatically. …

Animacy and child grammar: An OT account

In this paper we report the results of an elicited imitation task on dative case marking in non-canonical double object constructions with 22 German children (3;9–6;8). The aim was to test the proficiency of the children's grammar and to see which strategies they use to produce ditransitive sentences in which the direct object precedes the indirect object. The analysis of the children's utterances/imitations shows that the animacy of the direct object affects the overt dative case marking of the indirect object. Children made more errors repeating dative case marking when the direct object was inanimate, i.e., they produced the accusative case on the indirect object (non-adult-like). When both objects were animate, children correctly produced the dative case on the indirect object. We describe and account for these performance strategies of the children in the framework of Optimality Theory. Assuming that the same universal constraints are at work as in the adult grammar, the difference between adults and children lies in the constraint ranking. We focus on a prominent pattern found in children's performance, which is absent (or rather oppressed) in the corresponding adult performance, and show that one and the same grammar accounts for both (in the sense of “strong continuity”).

Theoretical Implications of Object Clitic Omission in Early French: Spontaneous vs. Elicited Production

This article examines the phenomenon of object clitic omission in French. Previous research contains contradictory results depending on the source of the data: it seems that in spontaneous production children prefer DPs while in elicited production they prefer omissions. It is proposed that a common methodology be used across different modalities in measuring the rate of omissions, and that the notion of «illicit object omission» be dispensed with. The analysis of the proposed «clitic-contexts» reveals that the strategy favoured by children is omission of all kinds of lexical material in both spontaneous and elicited production. Moreover, it is shown that child behaviour is quantitatively different from the adult one. These findings have consequences on the status of null objects in child grammar: child grammar allows optional object deletion without clitic recoverability, as opposed to adult grammar. Several theoretical approaches are evaluated in the light of the new findings.

Merge and binding in child relative clauses: the case of Irish

This study investigates whether children learning Irish as a first language show a preference for one or other of the two mechanisms for relative clause formation used in the adult language (movement and binding), and what details of the grammar of Irish relative clauses children are sensitive to. Our results suggest that Irish-speaking children have acquired both a movement and a binding mechanism for relativization by age five, and that they additionally have a non-movement mechanism for forming subject relatives, one that is not licensed in adult Irish. The data is discussed in the context of other studies of relativization in child language, cross-linguistic evidence and the computation of binding structures in language production and processing.

Young Children's Understandingof Present and Past Tense

Three age groups were tested for their understanding of present and past tense in the auxiliaries will and did, copula be, and progressive be. Children saw scenarios or pictures and responded to an experimenter's "show-me" requests based on the tense-non-past or past-of the verb in the request. For two groups (sixty-four 2- and sixty-four 3-year-olds), some children also heard temporal adverbs. The 2-year-olds successfully distinguished auxiliaries will/did and copula is/was, performing marginally on the progressive; adverbs produced no additional benefit. The 3-year-olds successfully distinguished all contrasts and showed more benefit of adverbs. The nine 4-year-olds performed at ceiling on all contrasts. The results suggest that knowledge of tense is neither localized to special lexical elements nor semantically based. From the beginning of combinatorial speech, children's grammars include a syntactic tense marker that is independent from aspect and include the syntactic category verb.

Development of vocabulary and grammar in young German-speaking children assessed with a German language development inventory

Using a parent report instrument, the development of vocabulary and grammar was examined in 333 German-speaking children aged between 1;6 and 2;6. Grammar scales measured sentence complexity and inflectional morphology. Results indicate that vocabulary increased faster than sentence complexity and inflectional morphology. Within inflectional paradigms, noun plural and gender marking were acquired faster than case marking and verb inflections. Modals and copula were acquired most slowly. There was extensive variability on all language scales. The different language skills were strongly related, with grammatical development increasing non-linearly in dependence on vocabulary. There was a mild effect of gender favouring girls. The results converge with results of studies in other languages using a parent report instrument. There is some evidence for concurrent validity for the present questionnaire.

Aquisição de sentenças matrizes infinitivas no Português Brasileiro em uma criança de 20-24 meses

Neste estudo, fazemos a análise das sentenças matrizes infinitivas do PB em uma criança no período de 20-24 meses. Levantamos como hipótese que, nesta fase, a gramática infantil tem as categorias funcionais, conforme aponta a corrente continuísta. Porém, Agr não foi acionado ainda com todos os traços relevantes. Consideramos que no PB infantil, ele é fraco, como proposto por Galves (1993).

Case Before Gender in the Acquisition of German

The paper discusses the acquisition of pronominal forms in German-speaking children. Main emphasis lies on the development of the form paradigms of definite pronouns and articles which are formally identical in German (except of the genitive forms which are not acquired in the early phase) and the functional content of the contrasting definite forms in early child grammar. On the base of an analysis of various types of overgeneralizations, it is argued here that children first acquire the lexico-semantic content related to definiteness, then functional features related to case distinctions and only later on functional features related to gender distinctions. On the contrary to previous investigations, the derived hypothesis is that a uniform case paradigm is the starting point in the acquisition of the paradigmatic relations. Gender, as a productive component of paradigm structure is realized by the child only later on. In general, the observed developments confirm assumptions of Natural Morphology and other functional theoretical concepts on the principles of paradigm organization.

Towards a lexically specific grammar of children’s question constructions

Abstract This paper examines early syntactic development from a usage-based perspective, using transcripts of the spontaneous speech of two Englishspeaking children recorded at relatively dense intervals at ages 2;0 and 3;0. We focus primarily on the children’s question constructions, in an effort to determine (i) what kinds of units they initially extract from the input (their size and degree of specificity / abstractness); (ii) what operations they must perform in order to construct novel utterances using these units; and (iii) how the units and the operations change between the ages of two and three. In contrast to nativist theories of language development which suggest that children are working with abstract syntactic categories from an early point in development, we suggest that the data are better accounted for by the proposal that children begin with lexically specific phrases and gradually build up a repertoire of increasingly abstract constructions.

Codeswitching at the interface of language-specific lexicons and the computational system

It has been noted by many researchers that young bilingual children pass through a stage of early mixing which extends approximately until the age of 2;6 and ends abruptly. Research on bilingual first language acquisition has clearly excluded the possibility to explain mixed utterances as the result of a fused lexical or grammatical system. However, the actual debate on the reasons for early mixing still continues. Two main approaches have dominated the field of language mixing in adults: One assumes that adult's codeswitching is constrained by grammatical principles, suggesting that a third grammar is responsible for the grammaticality of mixed utterances (e.g., the Equivalence Constraint formulated by Poplack (1980), or the Functional Head Constraint formulated by Belazi, Rubin & Toribio (1994) among others). Since child grammar is supposed to be organized differently from adult grammar, the grammatical “ingredients” of the principles which constrain codeswitching are absent in early child language (Köppe & Meisel, 1995). It therefore follows that early mixing in young bilingual children is not to be considered as constrained by any grammatical principles. The other approach argues that codeswitching in adults is not regulated by external grammatical principles, but that the only constraints which govern codeswitching are those required by the two languages involved (MacSwan, 2000). We will show that this assumption holds for child language as well. Our analysis of mixing opens the perspective that child grammar can be considered to be organized in the same way as adult grammar. Furthermore, we will argue that early mixing is related to developing performance abilities, in the present paper to the readiness on the bilingual child's part to speak the language(s).

The role of illocutionary operators in the emerging grammars of bilingual children

In this paper, we bring together recent discussions about the role of function words in emerging monolingual grammars with the discussion about role of these words in mixed utterances in emerging bilingual grammars. Recently several linguists have addressed the question of determining the organizing principles of early syntax in developing grammars of monolingual children. Van Kampen (this volume), Tracy (2002), among others, note that in early two-word utterances certain “function” words occur very frequently and play a special role: they appear as illocutionary operators and seem to have a bootstrapping function with respect to the development of syntactic structure. In this article, we consider spontaneous production data from three bilingual Dutch/French children and seek to answer the question whether the role of “function” words is the same in these bilingual developing grammars as in monolingual grammars. We show that this indeed appears to be the case. We then examine the claim by Deuchar and Quay (2000) that “function words” are mixed more readily than other words. We argue that our data do not present convincing arguments in favor of such a hypothesis.

The multilingual potential in emerging grammars

Our contribution deals with the nature of children's earliest word combinations. Based on data from monolingual (German) and bilingual (German/English) children we argue that there is no pregrammatical stage once children move beyond single-word utterances. As soon as words combine, basic organizational principles, such as the binary distinction between head and non-head, are activated and enter into coalitions with other (semantic, pragmatic) levels of representation. In addition we claim that monolinguals behave very much like bilinguals in that initially all children create coexisting grammars. Various types of evidence in favor of this proposal are considered. Convergence comes about when children (assisted by universal grammar) reconstruct derivational relationships linking hitherto independent systems. The overall process is slow, making it possible for us to detect transitional problems. Bilingual language mixing yields important insights into children's early awareness of cross-linguistic equivalence and contrasts and can be related to specific properties of a child's grammars at different developmental stages.

Language specific bootstraps for UG categories

This paper argues that the universal categories N/V are not applied to content words before the grammatical markings for reference D(eterminers) and predication I(nflection) have been acquired (van Kampen, 1997, contra Pinker, 1984). Child grammar starts as proto-grammar with language-specific operators and category-neutral content words Xo. The first content words are used as proper names with topic-intention and as brand names with characterizing-intention. The language-specificity of early operators may be illustrated by the use of wh-pronouns (what/where?) in English versus the use of illocution particles ( nou/denn?) in Dutch/German child language. Subsequently, deictic operators for topic are regularized as Do and deictic operators for comment as Io. These functional categories are the bootstraps for category assignment <+V> and <+N>, as a subdivision of the lexicon. The generalized conclusion is that language-specific systems are not acquired due to a common UG entrance. They rather are highly frequent language-specific bootstraps that coax the child into an adult system that eventually fits UG principles. The operators in proto-grammar are situation-related, whereas the functional categories Io/D o are highly sensitive to syntactic context. This explains why, in a bilingual situation, a language switch in the context-free operators will be relatively easy. A language switch in functional categories, by contrast, will have a reflex on the syntactic context and be less easy.

Extrasyllabicity, transparency and prosodic constituency in the acquisition of Polish

This paper investigates the acquisition of extrasyllabic consonants in Polish on the basis of the body of longitudinal data from a Polish speaking child, 3;8–5;1. The data reveal several strategies adopted by the child to deal with the problematic consonants: deletion, vowel insertion and adjunction, each characterising a different stage of development. Shifting from one strategy to another seems to reflect a slow and gradual process of learning the intricate relationship between extrasyllabicity, prosodic affiliation and transparency vis-à-vis voicing processes found in adult Polish. The discernible reorganisation in the child's grammar seems to affect both underlying representations and phonological processes. The child's underlying representations are argued to be essentially adult-like in the sense that they are based on alternations rather than directly on adult surface forms. The shift in the processing strategies, analysed within Optimality Theory [henceforth, OT; Prince, A.S., Smolensky, P., 1993. Optimality Theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. Unpublished manuscript, University of Rutgers, Rutgers, University of Colorado, Boulder; McCarthy, J., Prince, A.S., 1995. Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Rutgers University, Rutgers], is argued to be best motivated by developing units of prosodic organisation. The claim is that at the stages of development under discussion, the prosodic hierarchy is not fully activated in the child's output structure. Specifically, the child's outputs are organised into syllables but not into prosodic words. This explains not only why, in contradistinction to adult Polish, extrasyllabic segments exhibit no transparency effects at the adjunction stage but also why extrasyllabicity is initially resolved by deletion.

The relationship between vocabulary, grammar, and false belief task performance in children with autistic spectrum disorders and children with moderate learning difficulties

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between language and theory of mind in children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and children with moderate learning difficulties (MLD). Previous studies have found a strong association between language and theory of mind in a range of groups, but mostly have not included measures of both grammar and vocabulary; including these enables us to speculate about the causal direction of the relationship. Fifty-eight children with ASD and 118 children with MLD were given standardised assessments of vocabulary and grammar, along with standard theory of mind tasks. The relationship between language and theory of mind was more evident in children with ASD than in those with MLD, and grammar was a particularly strong predictor of theory of mind performance in children with ASD. Children with MLD performed better on false belief (FB) tasks than did children with ASD, and their performance was more predictable across the different theory of mind tasks. Language, in particular grammar, and theory of mind appear to be more strongly related in children with ASD than in those with MLD. We speculate that this relationship may be causal, with some grammatical understanding being a precursor of theory of mind. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to possible routes for compensatory strategies for mentalising in children with ASD.

Information structure development: Evidence from the acquisition of word order in Russian and English

The present paper aims at shedding some light onto the nature of the early child grammar. It is claimed that children do not operate with pure syntactic structures but also have access to pragmatics. On the basis of word order acquisition in Russian and English it is shown that from early on children resort to various strategies to encode information structure. Children acquiring Russian, a language that allows for structural encoding of Topic and Focus, make wide use of pragmatically marked word orders. Speakers of English, a highly configurational language, find other ways to mark information status of constituents, e.g. by means of Topic drop. <p> The results of the study suggest that different grammatical modules, syntax and pragmatics in the particular case, are acquired in a parallel rather than consecutive fashion.

Bezitsconstructies Bij Ééntalige En Tweetalige Kinderen

Possessive constructions in French, Italian and Dutch are similar. Acquisition of these constructions therefore largely follows the same course. The differences between the languages lead to some cross-linguistic phenomena in bilingual first language acquisition. To a large extent, the stages in the acquisition can be explained by the Structure Building Hypothesis. This theory claims that the acquisition of a construction follows the structural expansion of the child's grammar. However, the data shows much variability in the children's' utterances, which does not seem to fit this framework. Part of the variability may be explained by hypothesizing an intermediate stage in which the children experiment with the morphological elaboration of the DP. However, the co-occurrence of utterances from clearly different stages in the acquisition for a long period cannot be explained in this way. A possible solution would be to assume that this type of variation is the outcome of co-existing parallel grammars, which continue to be activated until the child chooses definitely for the standard adult system. Further research is needed to find firm corroboration of this hypothesis.

Binding principles and ACD constructions in child grammars

. Antecedent-contained deletion (ACD) constructions have been the focus of much recent literature in linguistic theory. These constructions have been instrumental in arguments against dispensing with the operation of Quantifier Raising (QR) and a level of Logical Form (LF) (e.g., May 1985; Fiengo & May 1994; Fox 1999, 2000). In fact, it has been argued that in ACD constructions, the binding principles apply at LF (e.g., Fiengo & May 1994). The present paper assesses 4- and 5-year-old children's knowledge of ACD constructions in which principles B and C are relevant. The empirical findings show that children interpret these ACD structures like adults, suggesting that they invoke the binding principles at LF, and target vP, rather than IP as the landing site for QR, as claimed for adults by Fox (2000) and others. These central properties of ACD constructions in child grammars present a challenge to learning-based theories of language development, because the input to children cannot inform them how to interpret the ellipsis site of ACD structures or which binding principle is in effect. Nevertheless, preschool children are found to have adultlike interpretations of the structures investigated here. The data are taken to provide support for the view that binding principles are part of our innate human endowment for language.

<I>El porqué de las cosas</I>. A propósito de la adquisición de la gramática <BR></BR>The reason for it all: About the acquisition of grammar

This paper focuses on the debate between theory and data in the field of language acquisition research. The discussion departs from the Principles and Parameters framework, considering its later evolution. The suggestion is that what guides data analysis is the idealistic aim of reaching the explanatory adequacy advocated by this theory. In order to undertake the study of child grammar, an effective use can be made of the same tools used to explain adult language. The paper deals with one of the most recent aspects proposed by this theory ‐the morphological or formal features‐, and explains how these features can be helpful in the search, selection and interpretation of language acquisition data. Moreover, a difference arises between spontaneous and experimental data. The former accounts for linguistic production and the latter for linguistic knowledge. I take for granted that spontaneous data can lead to experimental designs; however, experimental data reach finer results. In relation with spontaneous production data, some methodological aspects are discussed: productivity rates (its virtues and defects), error assessment, etc. It is noted that researchers have to be cautious when working with this kind of data.