Grammatical Markers Research Articles

SLI: What We Know and Why It Matters

SLI: What We Know and Why It Matters

The grammatical marking of conceptual integration: From syntax to morphology

The grammatical marking of conceptual integration: From syntax to morphology

Learning proper nouns and common nouns without clues from syntax.

Syntax has been noted to play an important role in word learning in English; it distinguishes the fundamental conceptual difference between individuals (coded as proper nouns), nonindividuals (coded as mass nouns), and classes of individuals (coded as count nouns). The Japanese language does not have grammatical markers flagging the distinctions between count nouns and mass nouns, between proper nouns and common nouns, or between singulars and plurals. How Japanese 2- and 4-year-olds assign meaning to novel nouns associated with familiar and unfamiliar animals and inanimate objects was studied in the research reported here. When a novel label was given to an unfamiliar object, children assumed it to be a name for a basic-level object category whether the referent was an animal or an inanimate object. If the named object already had an established name, and if the object was an inanimate object, the children mapped the noun to a subordinate category. When the named object was an animal, however, they tended to interpret the label as a proper name. These results demonstrated that in the absence of useful information from syntax, 2-year-old Japanese children are able to fast map a noun to its meaning by elegantly coordinating word-learning biases and other available sources of information.

The mirative and evidentiality

Evidentiality refers to the grammatical marking of the source of evidence for a proposition; mirativity refers to the marking of a proposition as representing information which is new to the speaker. Mirativity has sometimes been thought of as part of the larger category of evidentiality. Based on evidence from Tibetan, Hare, and other languages, it is argued here that mirativity must be recognized as a distinct semantic and grammatical category. The existence in many languages of a form which combines mirative and inferential readings can be explained in terms of the interaction of mirativity and aspect: The combination of mirative marking and perfective aspect will naturally tend to be interpreted as inferential, since an event in the past will ordinarily be new information to the speaker only if his or her knowledge of it derives from secondary evidence rather than from direct perception.

Relative clause sentence production using augmentative and alternative communication systems

Complex syntactic structures may be difficult to recognize when produced using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems that do not contain grammatical markers. The present study investigated adult English speakers' production of Subject and Object relative clause sentences using a picture/symbol-based AAC system with speech output. Most participants avoided the potential ambiguity that resulted from the absence of grammatical markers. They followed spoken English word order when encoding Object relative clause sentences, but altered this order for Subject relative clause sentences. Most participants used constituent proximity to maintain the distinction between Subject and Object relative clause sentences. Results indicate the combined effects of underlying syntactic knowledge and pragmatic variables on the AAC constituent order patterns observed.

Lexical diversity and productivity in Cantonese-speaking children with specific language impairment.

Recent studies of lexical diversity in English-speaking children with specific language impairment (ESLI) have produced conflicting results. Differences between SLI and age-matched (AM) groups on verb types, and overall types have been reported, as have differences between SLI and language-matched (LM) groups on verb types and/or verb tokens, and noun types and noun tokens. At the same time there have been other claims that there is no difference between SLI and LM groups in terms of lexical diversity. This comparison of the lexical diversity of Cantonese-speaking children with SLI (CSLI) and their language-matched peers controlled the length of the samples and the number of tokens as the basis for comparison. There was no difference between the groups in use of verb tokens or types, but there were significant differences in noun tokens and types and 'other' open class tokens and types. Although there was no difference between the groups in the use of a specific grammatical marker (aspect markers), the way in which the CSLI children deployed these markers was severely restricted in comparison with their LM peers. A limited capacity model of language production is invoked to explain the findings.

Emergence of morphographical markers in written French: what children following a special education programme say about plurals

Research conducted with average apprentice writers demonstrated that the main difficulty they are facing in the acquisition of written French is the acquisition of the morphology of the writing system, hence studies with slow writers show that morphological traces are late to emerge and often fail to meet the grammatical demands of French. This exploratory research conducted with slow mono- and multilingual learners attempts to identify the qualitative aspects of the emergence of morphological traces, which in the written French system are most often mute. The linguistic concept of the plural was therefore chosen not simply to observe the appearance of plural grammatical markers in productions, but also in order to stimulate apprentice writers to give so-called ‘metagraphical explanations’ in other words, they were asked to explain verbally their own written productions. We observed the written productions and the metagraphical explanations of the participants irrespective of whether these were standard or non-standard written productions. The results show that the verbal explanations, rather than being related to the grammatical case of plural, for the participants frequently refer to their concrete knowledge of number. The fact that these slow learners possess general cognitive abilities which are substantially more developed than their linguistic abilities suggests that the processes used to acquire the linguistic notion of plural in French are based on structures established by analogy, taking their roots in a cognitive notion of number which seems common to all apprentice writers.

Reduced Relatives and Apposition

This paper examines McCawley's recent account (1998: 467–478) of the distinction between reduced relative clauses and several appositive structures. One of McCawley's main goals is to show that structures which are commonly ‘lumped together’ under the name apposition can be subdivided into two different things: namely -structures, which are canonical appositions, and reduced relatives, which, in his account, are only anaphorically linked to their hosts. Yet it is shown here, first, that McCawley's formulation of that distinction is inaccurate, since it is based on a flawed application of the criteria he himself proposes. Second, and equally importantly, it is also argued that McCawley's study fails to address a number of problems raised by his own account. Two such issues are the role of grammatical markers of apposition and the analysis of ‘detached NPs’.

Verb Aspect and Situation Models

The role of verb aspect in the construction of situation models was examined in this study. Participants read stories that contained a sentence that described an activity that either was completed (i.e., perfective aspect) or was in progress (i.e., imperfective aspect), and three subsequent sentences that could be interpreted as either subsequent to or concurrent with the target sentence activity. Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that in-progress activities had a higher likelihood of being perceived as ongoing in the subsequent context than did completed activities. Furthermore, verb aspect and world knowledge have an interactive impact in understanding the duration of narrative events. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the activation of in-progress activities decayed at a slower rate than completed activities. The results of this study support the claim that grammatical markers provide processing instructions for situation model construction and the maintenance of information in working memory.

The Pragmatic Nature of the So-Called Subject Marker Ga in Japanese: Evidence from Conversation

Since the inception of modern approaches to grammar, Japanese ga has been treated as a marker indicating the grammatical relation `subject.' If this is an accurate characterization of ga, then we would expect ga to occur to mark a grammatical category consisting of `A' (transitive subject) and `S' (intransitive subject) (Comrie, 1978; Dixon, 1979). Our examination of the contexts in which ga is actually used in everyday Japanese conversations shows that this expectation is not borne out. Our findings suggest that it is not appropriate to describe ga in terms of a grammatical relation such as `subject', and that ga may be much less a grammatical marker than a discourse-pragmatic one.

The relevance of extravagance: a reply to Bart Geurts

At least since Georg von der Gabelentz’s (1901) famous passage (cf.Haspelmath 1999: 1051), grammaticalization processes have been con-ceived of as cyclic: a grammatical marker that expresses a certain functiongets reduced, fuses with a content item, and is replaced (‘‘renewed’’) bya new periphrastic construction. This can be illustrated by the history ofthe dative marker from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) to colloquialPortuguese, where we can observe or infer three cycles of this process.Each time, an allative or benefactive adposition becomes a dative marker.In pre-Proto-Indo-European, there must have been a postposition similarto *

The grammaticization of going to in (African American) English

Focusing on the process of grammaticization, whereby items with lexical meaning evolve into grammatical markers, this article examines the future temporal reference sectors of three diaspora varieties of African American English which have evolved in linguistic isolates and compares them with those of British-origin rural and mainstream varieties of English. With one exception, the same constraint hierarchies condition the selection of going to across the board, indicating that their future temporal reference systems are descended from a common source. All other distinctions among the varieties result from their differential positioning on the cline of ongoing grammaticization of going to as a future marker. Operationalization of constraints representing different stages of the development of going to and comparison of their probability values across communities confirm that the enclave and the rural varieties retain conservative traits, visible here in the form of variable conditioning, in contrast to mainstream English, which is innovating. We suggest that the major determinant of variability in the expression of the future is the fact that the speech of isolated speakers, whether of African or British origin, instantiates constraints that were operative at an earlier stage of the English language and that are now receding from mainstream varieties.

The Co-Influence of Grammatical Markers and Comprehender Goals on the Memory for Short Discourse

The co-influence of grammatical markers (connectives) and comprehender goals (directed forgetting cues) on the memory for sentences was examined in three experiments. Participants read statement pairs which were linked by a connective (e.g., because) or stood alone as separate sentences. After each statement, a cue to remember or to forget the preceding statement was presented. In Experiment 1, participants had more difficulty forgetting the second clause in the presence of the connective because than in its absence when statement 1 was to be remembered. In Experiment 2, the pattern of directed forgetting was similar for the connectives because and and, suggesting that one reason why directed forgetting was reduced for the second statement in Experiment 1 was that it merely continued a linguistic structure rather than increasing causal-based inferences. In Experiment 3, the connective was placed after the cue for statement 1, making it more difficult for readers to incorporate the second clause to the first. Under these conditions, the connective did not reduce intentional forgetting. The pattern of results indicates that the goal to forget a phrase has a smaller impact on forgetting when an incoming representation can be readily attached to a TBR representation in working memory as directed by a grammatical marker.

Constraint on word‐learning constraints

Many researchers have agreed that word learning in young children is guided by so‐called “word‐learning principles.” However, these principles may make it difficult to learn a substantial part of the lexicon unless they are appropriately controlled. To learn proper names, the taxonomic assumption and/or the shape bias must be overridden; to learn names for substances, withdrawal of the whole‐object assumption and/or the shape bias is required; and to learn lexical hierarchies, the mutual exclusivity assumption must be suspended. In certain languages, syntax can provide useful information in this situation. For example, if a novel noun is given to an object for which the name is known in the syntactic frame “This is X,” English‐speaking children may assume the noun to be a proper noun, and this will help them override the taxonomic assumption. However, this information is not available to Japanese children, since the Japanese language does not have grammatical markers to flag the distinction between count nouns and mass nouns, or the distinction between proper nouns and common nouns. In this paper, I discuss how Japanese children get around this problem.

Auxiliaires, langues romanes et grammaticalisation

The aim of the paper is to compare the class of auxiliary verbs in three Romance languages, French, Spanish and Italian, in the framework of grammaticalization theory. Grammaticalization is defined as the process by which lexical items are gradually converted into grammatical markers, i.e. a dynamic operation by which elements can move over time from one linguistic component to another (from the lexicon to the grammar and eventually, to the morphological component). Auxiliaries are defined both on a syntactic and a semantic basis : formally, they are verbs followed by a non finite verb form (only infinitives are considered here) and semantically, they express one of three notional concepts : time, aspect or modality. The major claim of the paper is that French is the most grammaticalized of the three languages, and Spanish the least. The empirical evidence that supports this hypothesis relates to three kinds of data : the number of verbs that can be analyzed as members of the category AUX, the selectional properties concerning the subject NP (± human NP) and the possible alternation of the infinitival complement with NP complements.

The morphosyntax of demonstratives in synchrony and diachrony

This study investigates the morphosyntactic properties of demonstratives and their development into grammatical markers. It is based on a representative sample of eighty-five languages. The first part argues that demonstratives occur in four different syntactic contexts and that languages differ as to whether they employ demonstratives of the same or of different grammatical categories in these contexts. The second part shows that demonstratives are a common historical source for a wide variety of grammatical items and that the grammaticalization path of a demonstrative is crucially determined by the syntactic context in which it occurs.

L'orthographe en questions au 3615 ORTHOTEL ou « Est-ce que le participe passé dans les gâteaux sont fai- s'accorde ?

Jacqueline Bllliez, Vincent Lucci, Agnès Millet. L'orthographe en questions au 3615 ORTHOTEL ou « Est-ce que le participe passé dans les gâteaux sont fai- s'accorde ? » This study analyses a corpus of 1 000 questions addressed to the ORTHOTEL service between January and August 1995. Accessible via the Minitel, this service provides assistance in helping ordinary writers resolve their spelling difficulties. The analysis yields two major results : on the one hand it shows accrued interest in grammatical markers and in particular those of the plural. It also allows for the description of highly differentiated normative attitudes linked in interpretation to real or supposed competencies. The observation of these questions which precede the act of writing suggest furthermore that the areas of spelling insecurity are not necessarily directly related to social distinction.

The marking of grammatical relations in Swahili

This paper investigates the place of Swahili within a typological classification based on the morphological marking of grammatical relations as proposed by Nichols [1986]. Within Nichols' classification, Bantu languages are considered to be "split-marked" because the grammatical marking of a member of a clausal constituent is on the head while, in a phrase, the marking is on the dependent member. Although select clauses and phrases from Swahili support Nichols' claim, a closer examination of the data reveals an interesting variety of morphosyntactic marking in Swahili as well as in two other Bantu languages, Kikuyu and Chewa. Function words playa key role in marking genitive, instrumental, and locative relations in these languages. Function words also regularly occur as markers of object noun phrases with animate referents. Moreover, instrumental, locative, applicative, and some accusative relations in Swahili show considerable flexibility with respect to head- and non-head-marking.

In Search of a Grammatical Marker of Language Impairment in Children

No AccessPerspectives on Language Learning and EducationArticle1 May 1998In Search of a Grammatical Marker of Language Impairment in Children Mabel L. Rice Mabel L. Rice Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/lle5.1.3 SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In References Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program., Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Google Scholar Rice, M. L.,Haney, K. R., & Wexler, K. (in press). Family histories of children with SLI who show extended optional infinitives. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Google Scholar Rice, M. L., & Wexler, K. (1996). Toward tense as a clinical marker of specific language impairment in English-speaking children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 39, 1239–1257. LinkGoogle Scholar Rice, M. L.,Wexler, K., & Cleave, P. L. (1995). Specific language impairment as a period of extended optional infinitive., Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 38, 850–863. AbstractGoogle Scholar Rice, M. L.,Wexler, K., & Hershberger, S. (in press). Tense over time: The longitudinal course of tense acquisition in children with specific language impairment. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Google Scholar Additional Resources FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited ByJournal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research64:2 (593-612)17 Feb 2021Tense Marking in the Kindergarten Population: Testing the Bimodal Distribution HypothesisBrian Weiler and C. Melanie SchueleLanguage, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools49:2 (248-259)5 Apr 2018A Multiyear Population-Based Study of Kindergarten Language Screening Failure Rates Using the Rice Wexler Test of Early Grammatical ImpairmentBrian Weiler, C. Melanie Schuele, Jacob I. Feldman and Hannah KrimmJournal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research49:4 (749-770)1 Aug 2006Tense and Agreement Morphemes in the Speech of Children With Specific Language Impairment During Intervention: Phase 2Laurence B. Leonard, Stephen M. Camarata, Monika Pawłowska, Barbara Brown and Mary N. Camarata Volume 5Issue 1May 1998Pages: 3-7 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in issue: May 1, 1998 Metrics Downloaded 17 times Topicsasha-sigsasha-topicsleader-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & Permissions© 1998 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationLoading ...

Children’s first verbs in Tzeltal: evidence for an early verb category

A major finding in studies of early, vocabulary acquisition has been that children tend to learn a lot of nouns early but make do with relatively few verbs, among which semantically general-purpose verbs like do, make, get, have, give, come, go, and be play a prominent role. The preponderance of nouns is explained in terms of nouns labelling concrete objects being easier to learn than verbs, which label relational categories. Nouns label natural categories observable in the world, verbs label more linguistically and culturally specific categories of events linking objects belonging to such natural categories (Gentner 1978, 1982, Clark 1993). This view has been challenged recently by data from children learning certain non-Indo-European languages like Korean, where children have an early verb explosion and verbs dominate in early child utterances. Children learning the Mayan language Tzeltal also acquire verbs early, prior to any noun explosion as measured by production. Verb types are roughly equivalent to noun types in children's beginning production vocabulary and soon outnumber them. At the one-word stage children's verbs mostly have the form of a root stripped of affixes, correctly segmented despite structural difficulties. Quite early (before the mlu = 2.0 point) there is evidence of productivity of some grammatical markers (although they are not always present): the person-marking affixes cross-referencing core arguments, and the completive/incompletive aspectual distinctions. The Tzeltal facts argue against a natural-categories explanation for children's early vocabulary, in favor of a view emphasizing the early effects of language-specific properties of the input. They suggest that when and how a child acquires a verb category is centrally influenced by the structural properties of the input, and that the semantic structure of the language - where the referential load is concentrated - plays a fundamental role in addition to distributi