Acquisition Of Wh-questions Research Articles

The acquisition of wh-questions: Beyond structural economy and input frequency

ABSTRACT We present in this article corpus analyses, two experiments, and a preliminary English-French comparison on children’s acquisition of wh-in-situ. Our examination of 10,000 wh-questions from CHILDES reveals that the reported empirical picture of wh-question acquisition in English is incomplete: A type of wh-in-situ, probe questions (PQs), has been left out from most discussions despite its presence in child-directed speech. Unlike wh-in-situ echo questions (EQs), PQs are used to request new information, and parents frequently use PQs and fronted information-seeking questions in alternation. The fact that PQs share the pragmatic space with fronted wh-questions while involving fewer syntactic operations and exhibiting lower input frequency allows us to test both structure-based and frequency-based theories of syntax acquisition. Our comprehension task with 3;06–5;06-year-olds confirms that children accept and understand PQs as information seeking. On the other hand, results from a production task show a strong avoidance of wh-in-situ, which is in line with reported elicited data from French-speaking children. We reason that a structural economy-based approach alone is not sufficient to account for children’s disfavor of wh-in-situ. Depending on the input frequency and consistency, as well as the number of variants licensed by the grammar of a given language, children may treat part of the input as uninformative and initially only learn from higher-frequent, more regularized input. Their intake is thus selective.

ACQUISITION OF WH-QUESTIONS BY SECOND LANGUAGE SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH IN PAKISTAN

Purpose of the study: The purpose of the current study is to investigate the acquisition of Wh-questions of English by Urdu L1 speakers in Pakistan. Acquisition of different syntactic structures has been an attractive area of interest for the scholars working in the area of second language acquisition. The study draws on approaches of Universal Grammar (UG) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA). The researchers aim at finding out whether the second language is acquired in the same way as the first language or not. Both Urdu and English allow Wh-questions formation but the placement of the Wh-word is completely at a different position. Urdu is an in-situ language that does not allow Movement of the Wh-word, and English allows the Movement of the Wh-word. So, this study highlights whether speakers of Urdu can acquire the structures of Wh-questions or not.
 Methodology: The study uses a mixed-method research design, and the data was collected from the speakers of Urdu who speak it as their native language in order to draw the findings. The current research employs a questionnaire that is divided into two parts: elicitation task and grammatical judgement task. For the elicitation task, the students were provided with the statements with the underlined words of which they had to form Wh-questions and for the second, a task was designed on the basis of the lickert scale and it was designed to judge the grammar of the students. The population of this study is limited to speakers of Urdu who speak English as their second language and the sample was selected from the vicinity of Sargodha city of Pakistan.
 Main Findings: The results of this mixed-method study reveal that students face problems while forming and identifying Wh-questions, despite compulsory education in English. The findings of the current study supported the partial access hypothesis.
 Applications of this study: The study is very important in the area of second language acquisition and informs how the speakers of the English language as a second language acquire the Wh-question structure. The study can be applied in designing teaching materials for the learners of English as a second language besides informing the language software modulation in order to ease the language learning process.

Acquiring Syntactic Variability: The Production of Wh-Questions in Children and Adults Speaking Akan

This paper investigates the predictions of the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis by studying the acquisition of wh-questions in 4- and 5-year-old Akan-speaking children in an experimental approach using an elicited production and an elicited imitation task. Akan has two types of wh-question structures (wh-in-situ and wh-ex-situ questions), which allows an investigation of children’s acquisition of these two question structures and their preferences for one or the other. Our results show that adults prefer to use wh-ex-situ questions over wh-in-situ questions. The results from the children show that both age groups have the two question structures in their linguistic repertoire. However, they differ in their preferences in usage in the elicited production task: while the 5-year-olds preferred the wh-in-situ structure over the wh-ex-situ structure, the 4-year-olds showed a selective preference for the wh-in-situ structure in who-questions. These findings suggest a developmental change in wh-question preferences in Akan-learning children between 4 and 5 years of age with a so far unobserved u-shaped developmental pattern. In the elicited imitation task, all groups showed a strong tendency to maintain the structure of in-situ and ex-situ questions in repeating grammatical questions. When repairing ungrammatical ex-situ questions, structural changes to grammatical in-situ questions were hardly observed but the insertion of missing morphemes while keeping the ex-situ structure. Together, our findings provide only partial support for the Derivational Complexity Hypothesis.

Emergence and Development of Wh-questions in Jordanian Arabic-speaking Children: A Longitudinal Study

The main objective of this paper is to examine the emergence and development of wh-questions in two Jordanian Arabic-speaking pre-school children. Specifically, it investigates (1) how these children interact with wh-questions; which questions they find easier and thus earlier to acquire and why, and finally (2) what symptoms one can identify as characteristics of the intra-stage development of such questions. The data of the study are a subset of a large body of a longitudinal audio-taped corpus collected by the principal author, who happened to be a psycholinguist and the children’s grandparent, on the basis of three-day, weekly sessions over a period of five years. The recordings were made in the family home environment during routine activities, mainly after dinner, and mostly in the presence of family members. The findings reveal the acquisition of wh-questions is a complex process that supports a general cognitive maturity model interpretation. The acquisition of wh-questions that ask about concrete objects/entities, that is mi:n ‘who’, we:n ‘where’ and ʔe:ʃ/ʃu: ‘what’ are produced and developed at an earlier stage than those questions which ask about abstract objects/entities, that is le:ʃ ‘why’, ke:f ‘how’, ɡadde:ʃ/kam ‘how many/much’ and wakte:ʃ/ʔe:mta ‘when’. However, the subjects do not find the questions within each of the two sets equally easy/difficult. Put differently, in the first category, mi:n ranked first on the easy/difficult scale while ʔe:ʃ/ʃu: ranked third. Moreover, the order of acquisition in the second category suggested that it is easier for Jordanian Arabic-speaking children to ask about reason (le:ʃ-why) than about time (wakte:ʃ-when) and that to ask about quantity (ɡadde:ʃ/kam-how many/much) is more difficult than to ask about manner (ke:f-how). The study argues that the emergence of wh-words does not mark but the onset of an accumulative process which includes a host of symptoms on the way to adult-like acquisition.

Pedagogical grammar as the framework of tefl research. Part 8. Foreign language syntax acquisition: wh-questions

The paper presents the results of the experimental data analysis concerning the said issue. Within a long observation period, the author researched three groups of subjects of various ages and backgrounds, using varied types of elicitation procedures (scrambled sentence technique, question reconstruction, oral interviews and translation). It was established that at the initial stage of foreign language acquisition (FLA), adults progress faster than children in the native language acquisition (NLA), which the author explains by their larger intellectual resources. In relation to wh-questions, the procedures common to both the NLA and FLA include the use of formulaic expressions, overgeneralization, archi-forms, and alternating forms (be instead of do, do / does / did instead of be, does instead of did, did instead of do, mixed use of several operators together), double auxiliary marking, double marking (mostly with irregular verbs in the Past Simple and considered a lexical retrieval error rather than reflecting any underlying grammar rule). Basing upon a high degree of the data resemblance in both the NLA and FLA, the author concludes that the wh-questions acquisition is a rule-governed procedure having a substantial degree of similarity in the said processes, irrespective of the fact, whether English is learned as a native or a foreign language. The difference between the NLA and FLA seems to be in the acquisition of there is / are structures. They have never been reported as a separate acquisition problem in the NLA. However, they seem to present a special difficulty in the FLA. It was found that such structures might be a problem even after the learners had mastered the do-inversion, which is considered the final stage in the NLA. In the FLA, however, the learners continued to use the first-stage structures even at the do-stage of wh-question acquisition. That might be explained by the learners’ intuitive unwillingness to accept there as the subject of the sentence, which results in their frequent omission of it during the wh-movement.

Different Behaviors of Wh-words in Chinese Wh-question Acquisition by Deaf Students

Chinese acquisition by deaf students is a crucial and tough problem. In this study, we have chosen wh-question as a target structure and examined the behaviors of wh-words in Chinese wh-quesition acquisition by fifty-eight deaf students. The main findings of this study are displayed as follows. The overall performance wh-question acquisition by deaf students is poor. Based on the behaviors of wh-words, it is quite obvious that the acquisition order of the wh-words is as follows:What>>who>where>when>>how. The pedagogical implications for the teachers and learners are to pay attention to their Chinese wh-question teaching and learning.

The role of person in subject auxiliary inversion in English wh-questions: Evidence from Korean-English bilingual children

Aims: The present study investigates whether Korean-English (K-E) bilingual children develop subject auxiliary inversion (SAI) in English wh-questions differently from monolingual English (M-E) speaking children. Specifically, an experimental study was designed to determine whether there is an effect of subject person in their acquisition of SAI in English wh-questions, a factor that had been suggested but not tested as a contributing factor in SAI in a previous study. Design: Twenty-six K-E bilingual and 20 M-E preschool-aged children were recruited for an elicitation study testing the effect of person on the use of SAI in wh-questions in English. The experiment consisted of having children interact with puppets in a guessing game that elicited first, second, and third person object- what questions in English. Data and analysis: Data from the experiment were analyzed through a binomial logistic regression, which accounts for the binary nature of the data (auxiliary inversion: present or absent) and identified which variables contribute significantly to the presence and absence of SAI. Findings/conclusions: Results indicated a significant difference between K-E and M-E groups and a significant main effect for person on SAI for the K-E group. The paper proposes that the [prs] feature is part of the bundle of features that drives the movement of the features in T to C. Originality: The paper contributes evidence for a link between the person feature and SAI, a link that has not been seen before for wh-question research. Significance/implications: The new evidence of a possible link between subject person and auxiliary inversion may open a window to new avenues for wh-question acquisition research.

On the Acquisition of Wh-Questions and Its Theoretical Implication in English Education1

On the Acquisition of Wh-Questions and Its Theoretical Implication in English Education1

"Which mouse kissed the frog?" Effects of age of onset, length of exposure, and knowledge of case marking on the comprehension of wh-questions in German-speaking simultaneous and early sequential bilingual children.

Studies examining age of onset (AoO) effects in childhood bilingualism have provided mixed results as to whether early sequential bilingual children (eL2) differ from simultaneous bilingual children (2L1) and L2 children on the acquisition of morphosyntax. Differences between the three groups have been attributed to other factors such as length of exposure (LoE), language abilities, and the phenomenon to be acquired. The present study investigates whether four- to five-year-old German-speaking eL2 children differ from 2L1 children on the acquisition of wh-questions, and whether these differences can be explained by AoO, LoE, and/or knowledge of case marking. The 2L1 children outperformed the eL2 children in terms of accuracy; however, both bilingual groups exhibited similar error patterns. This suggests that 2L1 and eL2 bilingual children are sensitive to the same morphosyntactic cues, when comprehending wh-questions. Finally, children's performance on the different types of wh-questions was explained by a combination of knowledge of case marking, LoE, and AoO.

The acquisition of WH-questions: A simple case in Indonesian children

In the first stage of language acquisition, children do not give any question word markers to their utterances. The questions without an interrogative word can be thought of yes/no– nucleus, where the yes/no marker is expressed as rising intonation. The most common wh question forms in children are some version of What’s that? and Where Nounphrase (go)? and What Nounphrase doing? This study discusses the typical forms of WH-question construction in Bahasa Indonesia acquired by Indonesian children in the early stage of their language development.

Acquisition of Wh-questions in English by Persian Monolinguals and Iranian Arab Bilinguals

This study intended to incorporate some insights to the newly-explored field of third language acquisition. To this end, it investigated the acquisition of wh-questions movements in English by 2nd and 3rd language learners within Universal Grammar (UG) structure. After taking the Nelson Proficiency Test, 102 Persian mono-lingual and Arabic-Persian bilingual learners of English were assigned to two proficiency groups. A Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) was administered to measure the subjects' performance on English difference types of wh-questions. In spite of the fact that the structure of wh-questions was similar ‎in Arabic and English, but different in Persian, the results showed no significant difference between the performance of monolinguals and bilinguals, but significant differences were found between the elementary and intermediate learners on various types of wh-questions in English. That is to say, the findings of the study regarding language transfer in 3rd language acquisition lead to the conclusion that the source of cross-linguistic effect in 3rd language acquisition is probably more of the learners' 2nd language than their 1st language.

Usage-based vs. rule-based learning: the acquisition of word order inwh-questions in English and Norwegian

This paper discusses different approaches to language acquisition in relation to children's acquisition of word order in wh-questions in English and Norwegian. While generative models assert that children set major word order parameters and thus acquire a rule of subject-auxiliary inversion or generalized verb second (V2) at an early stage, some constructivist work argues that English-speaking children are simply reproducing frequent wh-word+auxiliary combinations in the input. The paper questions both approaches, re-evaluates some previous work, and provides some further data, concluding that the acquisition of wh-questions must be the result of a rule-based process. Based on variation in adult grammars, a cue-based model to language acquisition is presented, according to which children are sensitive to minor cues in the input, called micro-cues. V2 is not considered to be one major parameter, but several smaller-scale cues, which are responsible for children's lack of syntactic (over-)generalization in the acquisition process.

Explaining errors in children’s questions

The ability to explain the occurrence of errors in children’s speech is an essential component of successful theories of language acquisition. The present study tested some generativist and constructivist predictions about error on the questions produced by ten English-learning children between 2 and 5 years of age. The analyses demonstrated that, as predicted by some generativist theories [e.g. Santelmann, L., Berk, S., Austin, J., Somashekar, S. & Lust. B. (2002). Continuity and development in the acquisition of inversion in yes/no questions: dissociating movement and inflection, Journal of Child Language, 29, 813–842], questions with auxiliary DO attracted higher error rates than those with modal auxiliaries. However, in wh-questions, questions with modals and DO attracted equally high error rates, and these findings could not be explained in terms of problems forming questions with why or negated auxiliaries. It was concluded that the data might be better explained in terms of a constructivist account that suggests that entrenched item-based constructions may be protected from error in children’s speech, and that errors occur when children resort to other operations to produce questions [e.g. Dąbrowska, E. (2000). From formula to schema: the acquisition of English questions. Cognitive Liguistics, 11, 83–102; Rowland, C. F. & Pine, J. M. (2000). Subject-auxiliary inversion errors and wh-question acquisition: What children do know? Journal of Child Language, 27, 157–181; Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press]. However, further work on constructivist theory development is required to allow researchers to make predictions about the nature of these operations.

The acquisition of wh-questions in Russian

In this paper, I study the acquisition of wh-questions in Russian by one Russian-speaking child from an early stage of syntactic development. For my analysis, I follow Plunkett (1992:73) in adopting a weak version of the Continuity Hypothesis where all the principles of UG are available from the outset of the acquisition process, but the structure of the functional template must be built up before parameter setting can begin. I adopt this hypothesis due to its compatibility with my finding that in the acquisition of Russian wh-questions, the functional projection CP appears at a later stage of syntactic development than other functional projections. Following Plunkett, I assume that in the beginning, the landing site for the wh-word is [Spec,TP] and later, for the valuation of other features (such as finiteness), the child is forced to acquire another functional projection (CP) in order to create a landing site for the wh-word. <p> The analysis shows that the first wh-questions acquired by the child are wh-complement questions. The child starts to produce subject wh-questions when the CP projection is acquired, and by the age of 2;4.14, the child’s structure of wh-questions is close to that of adult speech.

Determinants of acquisition order in wh-questions: re-evaluating the role of caregiver speech

Accounts that specify semantic and/or syntactic complexity as the primary determinant of the order in which children acquire particular words or grammatical constructions have been highly influential in the literature on question acquisition. One explanation of wh-question acquisition in particular suggests that the order in which English speaking children acquire wh-questions is determined by two interlocking linguistic factors; the syntactic function of the wh-word that heads the question and the semantic generality (or 'lightness') of the main verb (Bloom, Merkin & Wootten, 1982; Bloom, 1991). Another more recent view, however, is that acquisition is influenced by the relative frequency with which children hear particular wh-words and verbs in their input (e.g. Rowland & Pine, 2000). In the present study over 300 hours of naturalistic data from twelve two- to three-year-old children and their mothers were analysed in order to assess the relative contribution of complexity and input frequency to wh-question acquisition. The analyses revealed, first, that the acquisition order of wh-questions could be predicted successfully from the frequency with which particular wh-words and verbs occurred in the children's input and, second, that syntactic and semantic complexity did not reliably predict acquisition once input frequency was taken into account. These results suggest that the relationship between acquisition and complexity may be a by-product of the high correlation between complexity and the frequency with which mothers use particular wh-words and verbs. We interpret the results in terms of a constructivist view of language acquisition.

The Signs of Language Revisited: An Anthology to Honor Ursula Bellugi and Edward Klima (review)

Contents: Preface. Part I: Reminiscences. L. Fant, Two Memorable Meals With Ursula and Ed. R.M. Battison, American Sign Language Linguistics 1970-1980: Memoir of a Renaissance. B. Bragg, A Fish Story for Ursula and Other Remembrances. Part II: Historical and Comparative Analyses of Sign Languages. J. Woodward, Sign Languages and Sign Language Families in Thailand and Vietnam. D. McKee, G. Kennedy, Lexical Comparisons of Signs From American, Australian, British, and New Zealand Sign Languages. H. Lane, R.C. Pillard, M. French, Origins of the American Deaf-World: Assimilating and Differentiating Societies and Their Relation to Genetic Patterning. Part III: Language in the Visual-Spatial Modality. E.L. Newport, T. Supalla, Sign Language Research at the Millennium. P. Siple, Attentional Resources and Working Memory: A New Framework for the Study of the Impact of Deafness on Cognition. M. Wilson, K. Emmorey, When Does Modality Matter? Evidence From ASL on the Nature of Working Memory. P.B. Braem, T. Bram, A Pilot Study of the Expressive Gestures Used by Classical Orchestra Conductors. N. Frishberg, An Interpreter Creates the Space. Part IV: Linguistic Analysis of Sign Languages. S.D. Fischer, More Than Just Handwaving: The Mutual Contributions of Sign Language and Linguistics. R.B. Wilbur, Phonological and Prosodic Layering of Nonmanuals in American Sign Language. R.C. Loew, C.T. Akamatsu, M. Lanaville, A Two-Handed Manual Alphabet in the United States. E. Pizzuto, V. Volterra, Iconicity and Transparency in Sign Languages: A Cross-Linguistic Cross-Cultural View. M. Kuntze, Codeswitching in ASL and Written English Language Contact. S.K. Liddell, Indicating Verbs and Pronouns: Pointing Away From Agreement. Part V: Language Acquisition. J.G. Bettger, Viewing Deaf Children in a New Way: Implications of Bellugi and Klima's Research for Education. R.P. Meier, Shared Motoric Factors in the Acquisition of Sign and Speech. A. Abrahamsen, Explorations of Enhanced Gestural Input to Children in the Bimodal Period. D. Lillo-Martin, Early and Late in Language Acquisition: Aspects of the Syntax and Acquisition of Wh-Questions in American Sign Language. J. Reilly, Bringing Affective Expression Into the Service of Language: Acquiring Perspective Marking in Narratives. C.A. Padden, V.L. Hanson, Search for the Missing Link: The Development of Skilled Reading in Deaf Children. L.A. Petitto, On the Biological Foundations of Human Language. Part VI: The Neural Organization of Sign Language. A.R. Damasio, H. Damasio, Language and the Brain. D.P. Corina, Some Observations Regarding Paraphasia in American Sign Language. H. Poizner, D. Brentari, M.E. Tyrone, J. Kegl, The Structure of Language as Motor Behavior: Clues From Signers With Parkinson's Disease. V.A. Fromkin, On the Uniqueness of Language.

Subject-auxiliary inversion errors and wh-question acquisition: 'what children do know'?

The present paper reports an analysis of correct wh-question production and subject-auxiliary inversion errors in one child's early wh-question data (age 2;3.4 to 4;10.23). It is argued that two current movement rule accounts (DeVilliers, 1991; Valian, Lasser & Mandelbaum, 1992) cannot explain the patterning of early wh-questions. However, the data can be explained in terms of the child's knowledge of particular lexically-specific wh-word + auxiliary combinations, and the pattern of inversion and uninversion predicted from the relative frequencies of these combinations in the mother's speech. The results support the claim that correctly inverted wh-questions can be produced without access to a subject-auxiliary inversion rule and are consistent with the constructivist claim that a distributional learning mechanism that learns and reproduces lexically-specific formulae heard in the input can explain much of the early multi-word speech data. The implications of these results for movement rule-based and constructivist theories of grammatical development are discussed.

Questions, Relatives, and Minimal Projection

This article examines the acquisition of wh-questions and relative clauses in Sesotho, a language with no. wh-movement in either questions or relatives, and in which wh-questioned subjects must be clefted. It shows that, even though children use and understand relative and cleft constructions between the ages of 2 and 3, relative complementizers are frequently missing or they surface in a form that is ambiguously either a subject agreement marker or a head-noun modifier. This raises the possibility that children are treating relative clauses as IP rather than CP structures until sufficient learning of lexical features has taken place. The article concludes with a discussion of Grimshaw's notion of extended projection and minimal projection, showing how it might be adapted to account for the Sesotho findings and extended to acquisition theory more generally.

Learning how to ask: patterns of inversion in yes-no and wh-questions.

ABSTRACTThis study attempts to determine whether subject–auxiliary inversion occurs in yes–no questions before wh-questions and whether non-inversion errors (when daddy will come home?) are a characteristic feature of the acquisition of wh-questions. The data consist of the yes–no and wh-questions of 18 children, aged 2;5 to 3;0 with an mlu range of 2.66–4.26. Findings do not support previous claims that inversion is acquired in yes–no questions before wh-questions. Rather, a significant number of children were found to use an optional inversion rule in both question types. This fact appears to account for the finding that non-inversion errors are a characteristic feature of the acquisition of wh-questions.

Can Syntax be Taught? A Study of the Effects of Formal Instruction on the Acquisition of WH Questions by Children

Can Syntax be Taught? A Study of the Effects of Formal Instruction on the Acquisition of WH Questions by Children