Pub Date : 2020-12-28DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1862660
E. Davis, B. Landau
ABSTRACT Perception verbs and mental verbs have significant overlap in their syntax and semantics; both reference mental representations when taking embedded clauses, as in I see that Maria was here and I think that Maria was here. Some have suggested that perception is more accessible for young children than mental states, raising the question of whether perception verbs could serve as a semantic model for the acquisition of mental verbs via their shared syntax. Since embedded clauses are key to referencing mental states for both verb classes, we examine the developmental trajectory of perception vs. mental verbs in these constructions and others. Using a sample of 5,884 child-produced utterances and 8,313 parent-produced utterances from the Brown and Gleason corpora of CHILDES, we analyze children’s production of perception and mental verbs in their syntactic frames, as well as that of their parents. We find that children begin to produce embedded frames for both perception and mental verbs around the same time, but produce embedded frames with mental verbs more often, especially as they get older, despite greater use of perception verbs overall. These patterns do not reflect parental input: parents produce both verb types with similar frequency and use embedded frames more often than their children. These findings suggest that perception verbs are unlikely to serve as a model for mental verbs, and instead that mental verbs and their regular occurrence with embedded frames may provide a model for perception verbs when the latter reference mental states. We propose a semantic updating account for children’s acquisition of perception verbs, arguing that children’s early knowledge of perception verbs may not include mental state representations as a component of their meaning, and that this may only develop later as children learn the propositional syntax that is shared by and regularly occurs with mental verbs.
{"title":"Seeing and Believing: The Relationship between Perception and Mental Verbs in Acquisition","authors":"E. Davis, B. Landau","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2020.1862660","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2020.1862660","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Perception verbs and mental verbs have significant overlap in their syntax and semantics; both reference mental representations when taking embedded clauses, as in I see that Maria was here and I think that Maria was here. Some have suggested that perception is more accessible for young children than mental states, raising the question of whether perception verbs could serve as a semantic model for the acquisition of mental verbs via their shared syntax. Since embedded clauses are key to referencing mental states for both verb classes, we examine the developmental trajectory of perception vs. mental verbs in these constructions and others. Using a sample of 5,884 child-produced utterances and 8,313 parent-produced utterances from the Brown and Gleason corpora of CHILDES, we analyze children’s production of perception and mental verbs in their syntactic frames, as well as that of their parents. We find that children begin to produce embedded frames for both perception and mental verbs around the same time, but produce embedded frames with mental verbs more often, especially as they get older, despite greater use of perception verbs overall. These patterns do not reflect parental input: parents produce both verb types with similar frequency and use embedded frames more often than their children. These findings suggest that perception verbs are unlikely to serve as a model for mental verbs, and instead that mental verbs and their regular occurrence with embedded frames may provide a model for perception verbs when the latter reference mental states. We propose a semantic updating account for children’s acquisition of perception verbs, arguing that children’s early knowledge of perception verbs may not include mental state representations as a component of their meaning, and that this may only develop later as children learn the propositional syntax that is shared by and regularly occurs with mental verbs.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"40 1","pages":"26 - 47"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91020453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-13DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1820338
J. de Villiers
ABSTRACT Does language have a role to play in conceptual development, and if so, what is that role? Understanding the contents of another person’s mind parallels the development in early childhood of mental state language. Does the conceptual understanding get reflected in and drive the language development, or does the language allow the representation of propositional attitudes like belief? The paper reviews the evidence and sets up the terms of the debate, focusing on the syntax for mental states. It also asks whether syntax development could serve as a scaffold for other concepts that are described by propositions rather than labels. Finally, it reviews experimentation on the syntax of embedded clauses, where subtle phenomena are acquired for which it is impossible to imagine nonverbal counterparts: here, language is human thinking.
{"title":"With Language in Mind","authors":"J. de Villiers","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2020.1820338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2020.1820338","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Does language have a role to play in conceptual development, and if so, what is that role? Understanding the contents of another person’s mind parallels the development in early childhood of mental state language. Does the conceptual understanding get reflected in and drive the language development, or does the language allow the representation of propositional attitudes like belief? The paper reviews the evidence and sets up the terms of the debate, focusing on the syntax for mental states. It also asks whether syntax development could serve as a scaffold for other concepts that are described by propositions rather than labels. Finally, it reviews experimentation on the syntax of embedded clauses, where subtle phenomena are acquired for which it is impossible to imagine nonverbal counterparts: here, language is human thinking.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"24 1","pages":"71 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74859799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1820339
R. Bettle, A. Rosati
ABSTRACT The ability to understand the mental states of other individuals is central to human social behavior, yet some theory of mind capacities are shared with other species. Comparisons of theory of mind skills across humans and other primates can provide a critical test of the cognitive prerequisites necessary for different theory of mind skills to emerge. A fundamental difference between humans and non-humans is language: while language may scaffold some developing theory of mind skills in humans, other species do not have similar capacities for or immersion in language. Comparative work can therefore provide a new line of evidence to test the role of language in the emergence of complex social cognition. Here we first provide an overview of the evidence for shared aspects of theory of mind in other primates, and then examine the evidence for apparently human-unique aspects of theory of mind that may be linked to language. We finally contrast different evolutionary processes, such as competition and cooperation, that may have been important for primate social cognition versus human-specific forms of theory of mind. We argue that this evolutionary perspective can help adjudicate between different proposals on the link between human-specific forms of social cognition and language.
{"title":"The Primate Origins of Human Social Cognition","authors":"R. Bettle, A. Rosati","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2020.1820339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2020.1820339","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The ability to understand the mental states of other individuals is central to human social behavior, yet some theory of mind capacities are shared with other species. Comparisons of theory of mind skills across humans and other primates can provide a critical test of the cognitive prerequisites necessary for different theory of mind skills to emerge. A fundamental difference between humans and non-humans is language: while language may scaffold some developing theory of mind skills in humans, other species do not have similar capacities for or immersion in language. Comparative work can therefore provide a new line of evidence to test the role of language in the emergence of complex social cognition. Here we first provide an overview of the evidence for shared aspects of theory of mind in other primates, and then examine the evidence for apparently human-unique aspects of theory of mind that may be linked to language. We finally contrast different evolutionary processes, such as competition and cooperation, that may have been important for primate social cognition versus human-specific forms of theory of mind. We argue that this evolutionary perspective can help adjudicate between different proposals on the link between human-specific forms of social cognition and language.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"14 1","pages":"96 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74735671","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1831502
A. Papafragou
Human beings spend vast amounts of time thinking about what other people believe, want, hope, and fear. Understanding other minds is part of our social nature and forms the basis of the social fabric of our communities and our world. For the past 35 years, a large research field has explored the inner workings of mental state reasoning, broadly known as Theory of Mind (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). At the core of this field lies the question of how Theory of Mind develops – namely, how children come to understand that other people have beliefs, desires, intentions, and other mental states that can be used to explain or predict behavior. Many studies have focused specifically on how children develop the understanding that access to information and the resulting beliefs in other people’s minds may be different from their own, and that sometimes other people can hold beliefs that are false (e.g., Scott & Baillargeon, 2017; Wellman, 2014). From the perspective of language acquisition, the ability to entertain thoughts about other minds can help explain how children acquire language so rapidly and without overt instruction. Most obviously, perhaps, Theory of Mind mechanisms can contribute to the discovery of semantic meaning; for instance, children can infer the meaning of a novel word by consulting the speaker’s eye gaze or mental state (Baldwin, 1991; Bloom, 2000). Furthermore, understanding other minds allows learners to bridge the gap between what words and sentences mean and what a speaker intends to communicate by uttering them in a specific context – for instance, whether the speaker is being literal or ironic (Grice, 1975; Sperber & Wilson, 1986). Thus, from the perspective of the young learner, the ability to think about other minds can be used both to constrain hypotheses about what a novel word means and to contextually enrich the meaning of known words and structures. However, the nature of mindreading abilities, their availability and growth in both humans and other animals, and their specific contribution to language learning are all still a matter of debate. With these issues in mind, the present author and the leadership of the Society for Language Development organized a symposium on the topic of “Understanding other minds” on November 12, 2018, at Boston University. The invited speakers were Gyorgi Gergely, Alexandra Rosati, and Jill deVilliers. The goal of the symposium was to highlight classic and more recent findings and theorizing in this rapidly changing field, and to promote discussion of where the field should go next. The three speakers were later invited to prepare articles for a special section of Language Learning and Development dedicated to the same topic. One of them, Gyorgi Gergely, was not able to contribute a paper within the timeframe of the volume. The present special section represents two important perspectives on how we understand others, how this understanding relates to language, and how thoughts about others mig
人类花了大量的时间去思考别人相信什么、想要什么、希望什么和害怕什么。理解他人的思想是我们社会天性的一部分，也是我们社区和世界社会结构的基础。在过去的35年里，一个大型的研究领域探索了精神状态推理的内部运作，这被广泛地称为心理理论(Baron-Cohen et al.， 1985)。这个领域的核心问题是心理理论是如何发展的——也就是说，孩子们是如何理解别人有信仰、欲望、意图和其他可以用来解释或预测行为的心理状态的。许多研究专门关注儿童如何发展理解，即获取信息的途径和他人心中由此产生的信念可能与自己的不同，有时其他人可能持有错误的信念(例如，Scott & Baillargeon, 2017;Wellman, 2014)。从语言习得的角度来看，思考他人思想的能力可以帮助解释为什么孩子在没有明显指导的情况下如此迅速地习得语言。最明显的可能是，心智理论机制有助于发现语义;例如，儿童可以通过参考说话人的目光或心理状态来推断一个新单词的意思(Baldwin, 1991;布鲁姆,2000)。此外，理解他人的想法可以让学习者在单词和句子的意思和说话者在特定的语境中想要表达的意思之间架起桥梁——例如，说话者是在字面上还是在讽刺(Grice, 1975;Sperber & Wilson, 1986)。因此，从年轻学习者的角度来看，思考他人想法的能力既可以用来限制对新单词含义的假设，也可以在上下文中丰富已知单词和结构的含义。然而，读心术的本质，它在人类和其他动物中的可用性和发展，以及它对语言学习的具体贡献，都仍然是一个有争议的问题。考虑到这些问题，本文作者和语言发展学会(Society for Language Development)的领导于2018年11月12日在波士顿大学组织了一场题为“理解其他思想”的研讨会。受邀的演讲者是Gyorgi Gergely, Alexandra Rosati和Jill deVilliers。研讨会的目的是强调在这个快速变化的领域中经典的和最新的发现和理论，并促进对该领域下一步发展方向的讨论。这三位发言者后来应邀为《语言学习与发展》专门讨论同一主题的一个栏目编写文章。其中一位，Gyorgi Gergely，未能在该卷的时间框架内提交一篇论文。本节特别介绍了两个重要的观点，即我们如何理解他人，这种理解如何与语言联系起来，以及关于他人的想法如何起源于我们的灵长类亲戚。Jill deVilliers在她的文章中阐述了心理状态语言和对命题态度的理解是如何相互关联的问题。这篇论文提出了一种可能性，即自然语言的特性可能会促进——而不仅仅是反映——读心术的能力。具体来说，deVilliers推测一些命题态度意义是通过自然语言的语法产生的，并考虑了几种可能产生这一结果的机制。一种可能性是，语言可以提供表征和/或计算资源，以方便
{"title":"Understanding Other Minds","authors":"A. Papafragou","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2020.1831502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2020.1831502","url":null,"abstract":"Human beings spend vast amounts of time thinking about what other people believe, want, hope, and fear. Understanding other minds is part of our social nature and forms the basis of the social fabric of our communities and our world. For the past 35 years, a large research field has explored the inner workings of mental state reasoning, broadly known as Theory of Mind (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). At the core of this field lies the question of how Theory of Mind develops – namely, how children come to understand that other people have beliefs, desires, intentions, and other mental states that can be used to explain or predict behavior. Many studies have focused specifically on how children develop the understanding that access to information and the resulting beliefs in other people’s minds may be different from their own, and that sometimes other people can hold beliefs that are false (e.g., Scott & Baillargeon, 2017; Wellman, 2014). From the perspective of language acquisition, the ability to entertain thoughts about other minds can help explain how children acquire language so rapidly and without overt instruction. Most obviously, perhaps, Theory of Mind mechanisms can contribute to the discovery of semantic meaning; for instance, children can infer the meaning of a novel word by consulting the speaker’s eye gaze or mental state (Baldwin, 1991; Bloom, 2000). Furthermore, understanding other minds allows learners to bridge the gap between what words and sentences mean and what a speaker intends to communicate by uttering them in a specific context – for instance, whether the speaker is being literal or ironic (Grice, 1975; Sperber & Wilson, 1986). Thus, from the perspective of the young learner, the ability to think about other minds can be used both to constrain hypotheses about what a novel word means and to contextually enrich the meaning of known words and structures. However, the nature of mindreading abilities, their availability and growth in both humans and other animals, and their specific contribution to language learning are all still a matter of debate. With these issues in mind, the present author and the leadership of the Society for Language Development organized a symposium on the topic of “Understanding other minds” on November 12, 2018, at Boston University. The invited speakers were Gyorgi Gergely, Alexandra Rosati, and Jill deVilliers. The goal of the symposium was to highlight classic and more recent findings and theorizing in this rapidly changing field, and to promote discussion of where the field should go next. The three speakers were later invited to prepare articles for a special section of Language Learning and Development dedicated to the same topic. One of them, Gyorgi Gergely, was not able to contribute a paper within the timeframe of the volume. The present special section represents two important perspectives on how we understand others, how this understanding relates to language, and how thoughts about others mig","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"55 1","pages":"69 - 70"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85653980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-30DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1802279
Katya Pertsova, Misha Becker
ABSTRACT This paper explores the hypothesis that children pay more attention to phonological cues than semantic cues when acquiring grammatical patterns. In a series of artificial allomorphy learning experiments with adults and children we find support for this hypothesis but only for those learners who do not show clear signs of explicit learning. In particular, learners who cannot verbalize a correct rule after the experiment nevertheless perform above chance on phonological patterns, but not the semantic ones. On the other hand, learners, particularly adults, are more likely to (explicitly) discover and successfully verbalize a rule based on a salient feature of animacy compared to a phonological feature based on the number of syllables. We discuss implications of these results in the context of a distinction between explicit and implicit learning mechanisms and how this distinction relates to the study of phonological bias.
{"title":"In Support of Phonological Bias in Implicit Learning","authors":"Katya Pertsova, Misha Becker","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2020.1802279","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2020.1802279","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper explores the hypothesis that children pay more attention to phonological cues than semantic cues when acquiring grammatical patterns. In a series of artificial allomorphy learning experiments with adults and children we find support for this hypothesis but only for those learners who do not show clear signs of explicit learning. In particular, learners who cannot verbalize a correct rule after the experiment nevertheless perform above chance on phonological patterns, but not the semantic ones. On the other hand, learners, particularly adults, are more likely to (explicitly) discover and successfully verbalize a rule based on a salient feature of animacy compared to a phonological feature based on the number of syllables. We discuss implications of these results in the context of a distinction between explicit and implicit learning mechanisms and how this distinction relates to the study of phonological bias.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"443 1","pages":"128 - 157"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82886441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-23DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1823846
D. Z. Karadöller, Beyza Sümer, A. Özyürek
ABSTRACT Late exposure to the first language, as in the case of deaf children with hearing parents, hinders the production of linguistic expressions, even in adulthood. Less is known about the development of language soon after language exposure and if late exposure hinders all domains of language in children and adults. We compared late signing adults and children (MAge = 8;5) 2 years after exposure to sign language, to their age-matched native signing peers in expressions of two types of locative relations that are acquired in certain cognitive-developmental order: view-independent (IN-ON-UNDER) and view-dependent (LEFT-RIGHT). Late signing children and adults differed from native signers in their use of linguistic devices for view-dependent relations but not for view-independent relations. These effects were also modulated by the morphological complexity. Hindering effects of late language exposure on the development of language in children and adults are not absolute but are modulated by cognitive and linguistic complexity.
在父母听力正常的聋儿中，较晚接触第一语言会阻碍语言表达的产生，甚至在成年后也是如此。人们对语言接触后不久的语言发展以及语言接触后期是否会阻碍儿童和成人所有语言领域的发展知之甚少。我们比较了在接触手语后2年的晚期手语成人和儿童(MAge = 8;5)与同龄的母语手语同龄人在特定认知发展顺序下获得的两种类型的位置关系的表达:视图独立(in - on - under)和视图依赖(左-右)。晚期手语儿童和成人在视觉依赖关系的语言手段使用上与母语手语者不同，但在视觉独立关系的语言手段使用上没有差异。这些效应也受到形态复杂性的调节。晚期语言暴露对儿童和成人语言发展的阻碍作用不是绝对的，而是受认知和语言复杂性的调节。
{"title":"Effects and Non-Effects of Late Language Exposure on Spatial Language Development: Evidence from Deaf Adults and Children","authors":"D. Z. Karadöller, Beyza Sümer, A. Özyürek","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2020.1823846","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2020.1823846","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Late exposure to the first language, as in the case of deaf children with hearing parents, hinders the production of linguistic expressions, even in adulthood. Less is known about the development of language soon after language exposure and if late exposure hinders all domains of language in children and adults. We compared late signing adults and children (MAge = 8;5) 2 years after exposure to sign language, to their age-matched native signing peers in expressions of two types of locative relations that are acquired in certain cognitive-developmental order: view-independent (IN-ON-UNDER) and view-dependent (LEFT-RIGHT). Late signing children and adults differed from native signers in their use of linguistic devices for view-dependent relations but not for view-independent relations. These effects were also modulated by the morphological complexity. Hindering effects of late language exposure on the development of language in children and adults are not absolute but are modulated by cognitive and linguistic complexity.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"3 1","pages":"1 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88888561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-28DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1814781
Lyle Lustigman, R. Berman
ABSTRACT The study examines phases in developing specification of grammatical marking of emergent clause-combining (CC) as indicative of children’s growing ability to integrate two or more independent predications. To this end, both intra- and inter-clausal analyses were applied to all CC utterances produced by three Hebrew-acquiring children aged 2;0–3;0, covering both child autonomous productions and adult-child co-constructed CC. Based on four phases in CC construction shared by the three children, the following developmental trends were identified for both coordination and subordination in our database. First, children start combining two predications with lexical verbs early on, but these are confined to non-marked or adult-supported constructions. Second, early connective-marked CC involves mainly verbless copular or existential clauses. And autonomously produced lexical-verb combinations marked by connectives emerge several months later. This initial “trade-off” and gradual progression in grammatical specificity to full-fledged, lexically marked CC is interpreted as reflecting the developmental route of children’s early clause integration in interactive discourse.
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Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1806847
E. Shetreet, Rama Novogrodsky
ABSTRACT Universal quantifiers, which refer to groups of individuals or events, can express a subtle distinction between collective (unified or simultaneous) and distributive (individuated and separate) events. Indeed, English uses different quantifiers for this distinction (“all” and “each”, respectively). Hebrew, however, has a single universal quantifier. Thus, the collective/distributive distinction associated with the universal quantifier is represented morphosyntactically. This study examined whether Hebrew-speaking children (4–6 year olds) detect the collective/distributive distinction based on morphosyntactic cues alone and whether they show similar performance pattern as adults. Using a novel drawing task, instructions were given in either a collective-preferred form or a distributive form, asking participants to add drawings to pictures of multiple items. Within-subjects (Experiment 1) and between-subjects designs (Experiment 2) were used. Overall, children distinguished between the forms, indicating that they attended the specific morphosyntic cues of these two forms. They produced distributive drawings following the distributive form, similarly to adults. However, they alternated between distributive and collective drawings following the collective-preferred form, unlike adults who mostly gave collective responses. We discuss a possibility for the interplay between the meaning of the universal quantifier and the morphosyntactic cues in children’s performance. This study provides insights into the acquisition of meaning that depends on morphosyntax.
{"title":"Morphosyntactic Cues for Quantifier Comprehension in Children","authors":"E. Shetreet, Rama Novogrodsky","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2020.1806847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2020.1806847","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Universal quantifiers, which refer to groups of individuals or events, can express a subtle distinction between collective (unified or simultaneous) and distributive (individuated and separate) events. Indeed, English uses different quantifiers for this distinction (“all” and “each”, respectively). Hebrew, however, has a single universal quantifier. Thus, the collective/distributive distinction associated with the universal quantifier is represented morphosyntactically. This study examined whether Hebrew-speaking children (4–6 year olds) detect the collective/distributive distinction based on morphosyntactic cues alone and whether they show similar performance pattern as adults. Using a novel drawing task, instructions were given in either a collective-preferred form or a distributive form, asking participants to add drawings to pictures of multiple items. Within-subjects (Experiment 1) and between-subjects designs (Experiment 2) were used. Overall, children distinguished between the forms, indicating that they attended the specific morphosyntic cues of these two forms. They produced distributive drawings following the distributive form, similarly to adults. However, they alternated between distributive and collective drawings following the collective-preferred form, unlike adults who mostly gave collective responses. We discuss a possibility for the interplay between the meaning of the universal quantifier and the morphosyntactic cues in children’s performance. This study provides insights into the acquisition of meaning that depends on morphosyntax.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"25 1","pages":"364 - 381"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80856911","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-29DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1814780
Rowena Garcia, E. Kidd
ABSTRACT We report on two experiments that investigated the acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system, a typologically rare feature of Western Austronesian languages in which there are more than one basic transitive construction and no preference for agents to be syntactic subjects. In the experiments, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old Tagalog-speaking children and adults completed a structural priming task that manipulated voice and word order, with the uniqueness of Tagalog allowing us to tease apart priming of thematic role order from that of syntactic roles. Participants heard a description of a picture showing a transitive action, and were then asked to complete a sentence of an unrelated picture using a voice-marked verb provided by the experimenter. Our results show that children gradually acquire an agent-before-patient preference, instead of having a default mapping of the agent to the first noun position. We also found an earlier mastery of the patient voice verbal and nominal marker configuration (patient is the subject), suggesting that children do not initially map the agent to the subject. Children were primed by thematic role but not syntactic role order, suggesting that they prioritize mapping of the thematic roles to sentence positions.
{"title":"The Acquisition of the Tagalog Symmetrical Voice System: Evidence from Structural Priming","authors":"Rowena Garcia, E. Kidd","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2020.1814780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2020.1814780","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT We report on two experiments that investigated the acquisition of the Tagalog symmetrical voice system, a typologically rare feature of Western Austronesian languages in which there are more than one basic transitive construction and no preference for agents to be syntactic subjects. In the experiments, 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old Tagalog-speaking children and adults completed a structural priming task that manipulated voice and word order, with the uniqueness of Tagalog allowing us to tease apart priming of thematic role order from that of syntactic roles. Participants heard a description of a picture showing a transitive action, and were then asked to complete a sentence of an unrelated picture using a voice-marked verb provided by the experimenter. Our results show that children gradually acquire an agent-before-patient preference, instead of having a default mapping of the agent to the first noun position. We also found an earlier mastery of the patient voice verbal and nominal marker configuration (patient is the subject), suggesting that children do not initially map the agent to the subject. Children were primed by thematic role but not syntactic role order, suggesting that they prioritize mapping of the thematic roles to sentence positions.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"92 1","pages":"399 - 425"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2020-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76985349","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-24DOI: 10.1080/15475441.2020.1820340
I. Lammertink, P. Boersma, F. Wijnen, J. Rispens
ABSTRACT Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have difficulties acquiring the grammatical rules of their native language. It has been proposed that children’s detection of sequential statistical patterns correlates with grammatical proficiency and hence that a deficit in the detection of these regularities may underlie the difficulties with grammar observed in children with DLD. Although there is some empirical evidence supporting this claim, individual studies, both in children with and without DLD, vary in the strength of their reported associations. The aim of the present study is therefore to evaluate the evidence for the proposed association. This is achieved by means of (a) a conceptual replication study on 35 children with DLD and 35 typically developing children who performed the serial reaction time task and a test of grammatical proficiency and (b) a meta-analysis over 19 unique effect sizes, which collectively examined the serial reaction time task – expressive grammar correlation in 139 children with DLD and 573 typically developing children. Both outcomes provide no evidence for or against the existence of the proposed association. Neither do they provide evidence for a difference in the strength of the association between both groups of children.
{"title":"Statistical Learning in the Visuomotor Domain and Its Relation to Grammatical Proficiency in Children with and without Developmental Language Disorder: A Conceptual Replication and Meta-Analysis","authors":"I. Lammertink, P. Boersma, F. Wijnen, J. Rispens","doi":"10.1080/15475441.2020.1820340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2020.1820340","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have difficulties acquiring the grammatical rules of their native language. It has been proposed that children’s detection of sequential statistical patterns correlates with grammatical proficiency and hence that a deficit in the detection of these regularities may underlie the difficulties with grammar observed in children with DLD. Although there is some empirical evidence supporting this claim, individual studies, both in children with and without DLD, vary in the strength of their reported associations. The aim of the present study is therefore to evaluate the evidence for the proposed association. This is achieved by means of (a) a conceptual replication study on 35 children with DLD and 35 typically developing children who performed the serial reaction time task and a test of grammatical proficiency and (b) a meta-analysis over 19 unique effect sizes, which collectively examined the serial reaction time task – expressive grammar correlation in 139 children with DLD and 573 typically developing children. Both outcomes provide no evidence for or against the existence of the proposed association. Neither do they provide evidence for a difference in the strength of the association between both groups of children.","PeriodicalId":46642,"journal":{"name":"Language Learning and Development","volume":"44 1","pages":"426 - 450"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2020-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76330979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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