Pub Date : 2021-11-04DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1973475
Magdalena Łuniewska, Marta Wójcik, Joanna Kołak, Karolina Mieszkowska, Z. Wodniecka, E. Haman
ABSTRACT Word knowledge and the speed of word processing in monolingual children and adults are influenced by word properties, such as the age of acquisition (AoA), imageability, and frequency. Understanding how different properties of words contribute to the ease of processing by bilingual children is a critical step for establishing models of childhood bilingualism. However, a joint impact of these properties has not been so far assessed in bilingual children. Here, we compared the impact of AoA, imageability, and frequency on accuracy and response times in picture naming and picture recognition tasks in monolingual and bilingual children. We used Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks to test 45 monolingual children (aged 4 to 7 years) and 45 migrant bilingual children in their L1 (Polish). Word AoA, imageability, and frequency independently affected the accuracy and response times in both picture naming and picture recognition tasks. Crucially, bilingual children were more sensitive to word characteristics than their monolingual peers: Bilingual children’s accuracy was particularly low for words of high AoA (in the picture recognition task) and for words of low frequency (in the picture naming task). Also, the increase in response times for low-imageable and low-frequent words was particularly salient in bilingual children. The results suggest a new area of interest for further studies: the question of whether bilinguals and monolinguals show different sensitivity to psycholinguistic factors, and if so, does that sensitivity change with age or language exposure?
{"title":"Word knowledge and lexical access in monolingual and bilingual migrant children: Impact of word properties","authors":"Magdalena Łuniewska, Marta Wójcik, Joanna Kołak, Karolina Mieszkowska, Z. Wodniecka, E. Haman","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2021.1973475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.1973475","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Word knowledge and the speed of word processing in monolingual children and adults are influenced by word properties, such as the age of acquisition (AoA), imageability, and frequency. Understanding how different properties of words contribute to the ease of processing by bilingual children is a critical step for establishing models of childhood bilingualism. However, a joint impact of these properties has not been so far assessed in bilingual children. Here, we compared the impact of AoA, imageability, and frequency on accuracy and response times in picture naming and picture recognition tasks in monolingual and bilingual children. We used Cross-Linguistic Lexical Tasks to test 45 monolingual children (aged 4 to 7 years) and 45 migrant bilingual children in their L1 (Polish). Word AoA, imageability, and frequency independently affected the accuracy and response times in both picture naming and picture recognition tasks. Crucially, bilingual children were more sensitive to word characteristics than their monolingual peers: Bilingual children’s accuracy was particularly low for words of high AoA (in the picture recognition task) and for words of low frequency (in the picture naming task). Also, the increase in response times for low-imageable and low-frequent words was particularly salient in bilingual children. The results suggest a new area of interest for further studies: the question of whether bilinguals and monolinguals show different sensitivity to psycholinguistic factors, and if so, does that sensitivity change with age or language exposure?","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"29 1","pages":"135 - 164"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42783881","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-13DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1965606
A. Pérez-Leroux, Yves Roberge, Alex Lowles, P. Schulz
ABSTRACT Languages vary according to which morphosyntactic forms of embedding are present in the grammar as well as to which of these forms allow recursive embedding. The present study examines how German-speaking children discover which forms of embedding are recursive. In German, possessive modifiers are expressed by several structural options (i.e., genitive case, possessive -s, relative clauses, and von-prepositional phrases, placed to the left or the right of the possessum), of which only some are recursive. In contrast, other forms of phrasal noun modification are more homogeneously realized as two basic structures (right branching PPs or relative clauses), both recursive. We examine whether recursive possessives are delayed in German L1 acquisition compared to other forms of recursive modification. A referential elicitation task tested 5-year-olds’ (n = 21) and adults’ (n = 22) production of recursive modification of possessives, comitatives, locatives, and relational structures. Overall, production of recursive possessives is not inhibited by structural diversity, relative to the other conditions. Children’s target responses to the possessive condition differed from adults’ in that children reduced the inventory of structural types and relied more commonly on certain forms that adults used less frequently. These results indicate that structural diversity does not delay children’s mastery of recursive expressions in a given domain and that structural complexity can determine the overall timing of the onset of recursive modification, but this fails to help explain performance across domains or the actual options children select.
{"title":"Structural diversity does not affect the acquisition of recursion: The case of possession in German","authors":"A. Pérez-Leroux, Yves Roberge, Alex Lowles, P. Schulz","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2021.1965606","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.1965606","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Languages vary according to which morphosyntactic forms of embedding are present in the grammar as well as to which of these forms allow recursive embedding. The present study examines how German-speaking children discover which forms of embedding are recursive. In German, possessive modifiers are expressed by several structural options (i.e., genitive case, possessive -s, relative clauses, and von-prepositional phrases, placed to the left or the right of the possessum), of which only some are recursive. In contrast, other forms of phrasal noun modification are more homogeneously realized as two basic structures (right branching PPs or relative clauses), both recursive. We examine whether recursive possessives are delayed in German L1 acquisition compared to other forms of recursive modification. A referential elicitation task tested 5-year-olds’ (n = 21) and adults’ (n = 22) production of recursive modification of possessives, comitatives, locatives, and relational structures. Overall, production of recursive possessives is not inhibited by structural diversity, relative to the other conditions. Children’s target responses to the possessive condition differed from adults’ in that children reduced the inventory of structural types and relied more commonly on certain forms that adults used less frequently. These results indicate that structural diversity does not delay children’s mastery of recursive expressions in a given domain and that structural complexity can determine the overall timing of the onset of recursive modification, but this fails to help explain performance across domains or the actual options children select.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"29 1","pages":"54 - 78"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45973942","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-10-02DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1934685
Tina Ringstad, Dave Kush
ABSTRACT This article investigates how children acquire word order generalizations from ambiguous and infrequent input. We focus on verb placement in Norwegian relative and complement clauses. In two elicitation experiments we explore where children (age 3–7) place verbs in three embedded clauses types: one requiring a purely syntactic generalization and two requiring a semantic-pragmatic generalization. We find that children overgeneralize the main clause word order to embedded clauses. However, this happens with different probabilities across all three clause types. We take this to mean that children overgeneralize and that they entertain both coarse and fine-grained hypotheses simultaneously. We also suggest that children make use of frequency information, both in making initial hypotheses and when retracting from overgeneralization.
{"title":"Learning embedded verb placement in Norwegian: Evidence for early overgeneralization","authors":"Tina Ringstad, Dave Kush","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2021.1934685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.1934685","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article investigates how children acquire word order generalizations from ambiguous and infrequent input. We focus on verb placement in Norwegian relative and complement clauses. In two elicitation experiments we explore where children (age 3–7) place verbs in three embedded clauses types: one requiring a purely syntactic generalization and two requiring a semantic-pragmatic generalization. We find that children overgeneralize the main clause word order to embedded clauses. However, this happens with different probabilities across all three clause types. We take this to mean that children overgeneralize and that they entertain both coarse and fine-grained hypotheses simultaneously. We also suggest that children make use of frequency information, both in making initial hypotheses and when retracting from overgeneralization.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"28 1","pages":"411 - 432"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46148001","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-28DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1968867
An Nguyen, G. Legendre
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.
{"title":"The acquisition of wh-questions: Beyond structural economy and input frequency","authors":"An Nguyen, G. Legendre","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2021.1968867","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.1968867","url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"29 1","pages":"79 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47336133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-13DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1939354
Emma Nguyen, Lisa Pearl
ABSTRACT Children seem to be relatively delayed in their comprehension of the verbal be-passive in English, compared to their acquisition of other constructions of object-movement such as wh-questions and unaccusatives. Prior work has found that children’s performance on these passives can be affected by the verb’s lexical semantics. Through a meta-analysis of experimental studies assessing English-speaking children’s age of acquisition for the verbal be- passive, we identify a developmental trajectory composed of five classes, where each class has a distinct lexical semantic profile. A Truth-Value Judgment (TVJ) Task assessing English-speaking children’s comprehension of verbal be-passives supports this developmental trajectory. Together, the meta-analysis and TVJ study underscore the importance of lexical semantics for understanding the development of the English verbal be-passive.
{"title":"The link between lexical semantic features and children’s comprehension of English verbal be-passives","authors":"Emma Nguyen, Lisa Pearl","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2021.1939354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.1939354","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Children seem to be relatively delayed in their comprehension of the verbal be-passive in English, compared to their acquisition of other constructions of object-movement such as wh-questions and unaccusatives. Prior work has found that children’s performance on these passives can be affected by the verb’s lexical semantics. Through a meta-analysis of experimental studies assessing English-speaking children’s age of acquisition for the verbal be- passive, we identify a developmental trajectory composed of five classes, where each class has a distinct lexical semantic profile. A Truth-Value Judgment (TVJ) Task assessing English-speaking children’s comprehension of verbal be-passives supports this developmental trajectory. Together, the meta-analysis and TVJ study underscore the importance of lexical semantics for understanding the development of the English verbal be-passive.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"28 1","pages":"433 - 450"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43799112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-24DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1952591
Chao Zhou
This doctoral dissertation explores what constrains L2 phonological acquisition of European Portuguese /l/ and /ɾ/ across prosodic contexts and how different speech modalities interact during this process. The poor distinction between /l/ and /ɾ/ has been considered one of the most perceptible characteristics in Chinese-accented Portuguese. Recent empirical research has revealed that this notorious L2 speech learning difficulty goes beyond the confusion of the two L2 categories—different modalities, representational levels, and prosody all seem to shape this learning process (Zhou 2017). This dissertation aims to deepen our current understanding of how L2 phonological categories /l/ and /ɾ/ are created and developed by L1-Mandarin learners across syllable positions (onset and coda) and of how different modalities (speech perception, production, and visual) interact during their acquisition. To achieve these goals, both experimental tasks and theoretical modelling are employed. The first study of this dissertation examines the role of cross-linguistic influence and orthography on L2 category creation. Following the Full Transfer Hypothesis adopted to L2 speech learning (Escudero & Boersma 2004), we assume that learners initially rely on their L1 phonology to construct representations for the L2 sounds. A delayed-imitation task is administrated to 19 Mandarin native speakers without any knowledge of Portuguese. Moreover, whether orthography conditions L2 category creation was tested by manipulating the input types given in the experiment (auditory input alone vs. auditory + written input). Results show that the naïve imitators’ responses matched with those of L1-Mandarin learners, suggesting that L2 category creation is subject to cross-linguistic influence. Additionally, the Mandarin [ɻ] (a repair strategy for /ɾ/) occurred almost exclusively when the written form was given, providing evidence for the crosslinguistic interaction between phonological categorization and orthography during the construction of L2 phonological categories. In the second study, we first investigate the relationship between L2 speech perception and production by examining whether the deviant L2 productions for the target /l/ and /ɾ/ stem from misperception and whether the acquisition order in L2 speech perception mirrors that in production. Secondly, we assess whether these L2 phonological categories become more target-like with increasing L2 experience. Two perceptual experiments (a forced-identification and an AXB discrimination task) are conducted with 61 L1-Mandarin learners. Results indicate that L2 speech perception and production are related: (i) the acquisition order was consistent in the two speech modalities; (ii) most deviant forms observed in L2 production indeed have a perceptual motivation ([w] for the velarised lateral; [l] and [ɾə] for the tap). However, such correlation does not always hold true, evidenced by the fact that a repair strategy can be product
本博士论文探讨了欧洲葡萄牙语/l/和/ j /在韵律语境中的二语语音习得的制约因素，以及在这一过程中不同的语音模式是如何相互作用的。/l/和/音标/之间的模糊区分被认为是中国口音葡萄牙语中最明显的特征之一。最近的实证研究表明，这种臭名昭著的二语学习困难不仅仅是两种二语类别的混淆——不同的模式、表征水平和韵律似乎都塑造了这一学习过程(Zhou 2017)。本论文旨在加深我们目前对L2语音类别/l/和/音/是如何由l1 -普通话学习者在音节位置(开始和结束)上创建和发展的理解，以及不同的模式(语音感知、产生和视觉)在习得过程中如何相互作用。为了实现这些目标，实验任务和理论模型都被采用。本论文的第一个研究考察了跨语言影响和正字法对二语类别创造的作用。根据二语语音学习的完全迁移假说(Escudero & Boersma 2004)，我们假设学习者最初依靠他们的母语语音来构建二语语音的表征。对19名母语为汉语、不懂葡萄牙语的人进行延迟模仿实验。此外，是否通过操纵实验中给定的输入类型(单独听觉输入vs听觉+书面输入)来测试正字法条件的第二语言类别创建。结果表明，naïve模仿者的反应与普通话学习者的反应相匹配，表明第二语言类别创造受到跨语言影响。此外，普通话[r](对/ r /的一种修复策略)几乎只在给出书面形式时出现，这为在构建第二语言语音类别过程中语音分类和正字法之间的跨语言相互作用提供了证据。在第二项研究中，我们首先研究了二语语音感知与产生之间的关系，通过检查目标/l/和/音/的偏差二语产生是否源于误解，以及二语语音感知中的习得顺序是否反映了二语语音感知中的习得顺序。其次，我们评估这些二语语音类别是否随着二语经验的增加而变得更像目标。本研究以61名l1 -普通话学习者为研究对象，进行了强迫识别和AXB辨别实验。结果表明，二语言语感知与言语产生之间存在相关性:(1)两种言语模式的习得顺序一致;(ii)在L2生产中观察到的大多数异常形式确实具有感知动机([w]);[l]和[j]表示水龙头)。然而，这种相关性并不总是正确的，事实证明，修复策略可以是特定于生产的(删除音节末音)，L2的产生可以先于感知:/l/和/音/之间的区别在某种程度上在生产中保持(/音/→[l]， */l/→[音])，但在感知中却不是(/音/→[l]， /l/→[音])。为了评估第二语言类别/l/和/ r /的可塑性，我们招募了两组在第二语言经验(以接受正规教学的年数和沉浸时间为量化标准)方面存在显著差异的l1 -普通话学习者。《无语言习得》2022年第29卷第1期。1,105 - 106 https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.1952591
{"title":"L2 speech learning of European Portuguese /l/ and /ɾ/ by L1-Mandarin learners: Experimental evidence and theoretical modelling","authors":"Chao Zhou","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2021.1952591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.1952591","url":null,"abstract":"This doctoral dissertation explores what constrains L2 phonological acquisition of European Portuguese /l/ and /ɾ/ across prosodic contexts and how different speech modalities interact during this process. The poor distinction between /l/ and /ɾ/ has been considered one of the most perceptible characteristics in Chinese-accented Portuguese. Recent empirical research has revealed that this notorious L2 speech learning difficulty goes beyond the confusion of the two L2 categories—different modalities, representational levels, and prosody all seem to shape this learning process (Zhou 2017). This dissertation aims to deepen our current understanding of how L2 phonological categories /l/ and /ɾ/ are created and developed by L1-Mandarin learners across syllable positions (onset and coda) and of how different modalities (speech perception, production, and visual) interact during their acquisition. To achieve these goals, both experimental tasks and theoretical modelling are employed. The first study of this dissertation examines the role of cross-linguistic influence and orthography on L2 category creation. Following the Full Transfer Hypothesis adopted to L2 speech learning (Escudero & Boersma 2004), we assume that learners initially rely on their L1 phonology to construct representations for the L2 sounds. A delayed-imitation task is administrated to 19 Mandarin native speakers without any knowledge of Portuguese. Moreover, whether orthography conditions L2 category creation was tested by manipulating the input types given in the experiment (auditory input alone vs. auditory + written input). Results show that the naïve imitators’ responses matched with those of L1-Mandarin learners, suggesting that L2 category creation is subject to cross-linguistic influence. Additionally, the Mandarin [ɻ] (a repair strategy for /ɾ/) occurred almost exclusively when the written form was given, providing evidence for the crosslinguistic interaction between phonological categorization and orthography during the construction of L2 phonological categories. In the second study, we first investigate the relationship between L2 speech perception and production by examining whether the deviant L2 productions for the target /l/ and /ɾ/ stem from misperception and whether the acquisition order in L2 speech perception mirrors that in production. Secondly, we assess whether these L2 phonological categories become more target-like with increasing L2 experience. Two perceptual experiments (a forced-identification and an AXB discrimination task) are conducted with 61 L1-Mandarin learners. Results indicate that L2 speech perception and production are related: (i) the acquisition order was consistent in the two speech modalities; (ii) most deviant forms observed in L2 production indeed have a perceptual motivation ([w] for the velarised lateral; [l] and [ɾə] for the tap). However, such correlation does not always hold true, evidenced by the fact that a repair strategy can be product","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"29 1","pages":"105 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43511913","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-08-09DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1934686
Nick Huang, Aaron Steven White, Chia-Hsuan Liao, V. Hacquard, J. Lidz
ABSTRACT Attitude verbs like think and want describe mental states (belief and desire) that lack reliable physical correlates that could help children learn their meanings. Nevertheless, children succeed in doing so. For this reason, attitude verbs have been a parade case for syntactic bootstrapping. We assess a recent syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis, in which children assign belief semantics to verbs whose complement clauses morphosyntactically resemble the declarative main clauses of their language, while assigning desire semantics to verbs whose complement clauses do not. This hypothesis, building on the cross-linguistic generalization that belief complements have the morphosyntactic hallmarks of declarative main clauses, has been elaborated for languages with relatively rich morphosyntax. This article looks at Mandarin Chinese, whose null arguments and impoverished morphology mean that the differences necessary for syntactic bootstrapping might be much harder to detect. Our corpus analysis, however, shows that Mandarin belief complements have the profile of declarative main clauses, while desire complements do not. We also show that a computational implementation of this hypothesis can learn the right semantic contrasts between Mandarin and English belief and desire verbs, using morphosyntactic features in child-ambient speech. These results provide novel cross-linguistic support for this syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis.
{"title":"Syntactic bootstrapping attitude verbs despite impoverished morphosyntax","authors":"Nick Huang, Aaron Steven White, Chia-Hsuan Liao, V. Hacquard, J. Lidz","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2021.1934686","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2021.1934686","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Attitude verbs like think and want describe mental states (belief and desire) that lack reliable physical correlates that could help children learn their meanings. Nevertheless, children succeed in doing so. For this reason, attitude verbs have been a parade case for syntactic bootstrapping. We assess a recent syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis, in which children assign belief semantics to verbs whose complement clauses morphosyntactically resemble the declarative main clauses of their language, while assigning desire semantics to verbs whose complement clauses do not. This hypothesis, building on the cross-linguistic generalization that belief complements have the morphosyntactic hallmarks of declarative main clauses, has been elaborated for languages with relatively rich morphosyntax. This article looks at Mandarin Chinese, whose null arguments and impoverished morphology mean that the differences necessary for syntactic bootstrapping might be much harder to detect. Our corpus analysis, however, shows that Mandarin belief complements have the profile of declarative main clauses, while desire complements do not. We also show that a computational implementation of this hypothesis can learn the right semantic contrasts between Mandarin and English belief and desire verbs, using morphosyntactic features in child-ambient speech. These results provide novel cross-linguistic support for this syntactic bootstrapping hypothesis.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"29 1","pages":"27 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2021-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46341579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-07-20DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1982948
Ezequiel M. Durand-López
ABSTRACT Bilinguals recognize words with shared morphology and phonology cross-linguistically (i.e., cognates) faster than words that do not have these characteristics. Moreover, higher phonological overlap in cognates enhances the effects, which suggests that phonology eases word recognition. However, it is currently unclear whether words compete purely morphologically before spoken word recognition within language and whether proficiency in the L2 modulates the degree of morphological competition. Spanish monolinguals and English L2 learners of Spanish with varying L2 proficiency completed an auditory lexical decision task in Spanish. Stimuli were phonological sequences of Spanish words prior to a recognition point (e.g., /mark/ in /marko/) whose activated cohorts were minimal pairs. Some pairs were morphologically related (e.g., huerto ‘vegetable patch’ versus huerta ‘vegetable garden’), whereas some others had no morphological relationship (e.g., marco ‘frame’ versus marca ‘brand’). Results showed that both groups processed solely phonological competitors in a similar way as they did with morphological competitors. Taken together, these findings suggest that morphological relatedness does not modulate either L1 or L2 spoken word recognition prior to a recognition point when speakers listen to words in absence of context. In addition, the findings suggest that the L2 recognition architecture is qualitatively similar to that of native speakers.
双语者识别具有相同词法和音系的跨语言词汇(即同源词)的速度要快于不具有这些特征的词汇。此外，同源词中较高的音系重叠增强了效果，这表明音系有助于单词识别。然而，目前尚不清楚的是，在言语识别之前，词汇是否存在纯粹的词形竞争，以及第二语言的熟练程度是否会调节词形竞争的程度。西班牙语单语学习者和英语第二语言学习者以不同的第二语言熟练程度完成了西班牙语听觉词汇决策任务。刺激物是识别点(例如/mark/ in /marko/)之前的西班牙语语音序列，其激活队列为最小对。有些对在形态上是相关的(例如，huerto的“菜地”和huerta的“菜园”)，而其他一些没有形态上的关系(例如，marco的“框架”和marca的“品牌”)。结果表明，两组单独处理语音竞争对手的方式与处理形态学竞争对手的方式相似。综上所述，这些发现表明，当说话者在没有语境的情况下听单词时，在一个识别点之前，形态相关性不会调节第一语言或第二语言的口语单词识别。此外，研究结果表明，第二语言的识别结构在质量上与母语人士相似。
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Pub Date : 2021-07-03DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1887872
Hannah Forsythe, C. Schmitt
ABSTRACT Many languages encode phi-features via overt morphology, yet children’s use of this morphology in comprehension tasks varies widely. Here, we use a picture-selection task to test comprehension of Spanish verbal agreement and clitics, comparing performance across and within each paradigm to examine the effect of two factors: (i) phonological salience, and (ii) semantic (under)specification. Both paradigms encode the same person and number features, but clitics may be easier to comprehend than agreement because they carry more phonological material. Within each paradigm, first- and second-person morphology may be easier to comprehend than third-person because they carry an explicit person feature. We find limited support for phonological salience and stronger support for semantic (under)specification. However, we also find evidence for a third factor affecting interpretation of third-person morphology: discourse prominence. Both adults and children permit third-person agreement and clitics to refer to the speaker and/or addressee if they have been mentioned in the immediately preceding context.
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Pub Date : 2021-06-03DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2021.1914623
M. Tagliani, Maria Vender, C. Melloni
ABSTRACT Italian relative clauses like Il bambino che bacia la mamma ‘the child that kisses the mom’ are ambiguous between a subject reading and an object reading with postverbal subject. However, the latter is scarcely accessible for word order and theory-internal considerations. This study aims at investigating the role of semantic (im)plausibility in processing these ambiguous constructions. Italian children’s (7;01–10;00 years old) and adults’ (21;08–31;02 y.o.) comprehension is tested through a picture selection task. The test sentences contain lexical verbs whose interpretation can be modulated by encyclopedic knowledge (e.g., to spoon-feed). In the ambiguous sentence Il bambino che imbocca la mamma ‘the child that spoon-feeds the mom,’ the object reading is more plausible: Moms rather than children are expected agents of the spoon-feeding. Nonetheless, word order and morphosyntactic and prosodic cues prompt the subject interpretation. Results indicate that semantic plausibility cues alone are not robust enough to discard the subject reading. However, adults are sensitive to these cues, which can modulate their comprehension of ambiguous relatives. Conversely, children are unable to exploit encyclopedic knowledge in sentence processing. This can be explained with children’s reluctance to integrate contextual and encyclopedic semantic cues during processing, and with their limited processing resources, which could constrain their capacity of sentence reanalysis.
抽象的意大利关系从句，如Il bambino che bacia la mamma“亲吻母亲的孩子”，在主体阅读和带有后语主体的宾语阅读之间是模糊的。然而，由于语序和理论内部的考虑，后者几乎是不可接近的。本研究旨在探讨语义合理性在处理这些歧义结构中的作用。意大利儿童（7岁；01–10岁；00岁）和成人（21岁；08–31岁；02岁）的理解能力通过图片选择任务进行测试。测试句子包含词汇动词，其解释可以通过百科全书式的知识来调整（例如，填鸭式）。在模棱两可的句子Il bambino che imboca la mamma“用勺子喂妈妈的孩子”中，宾语阅读更为合理：妈妈而不是孩子是用勺子喂孩子的代理人。尽管如此，语序、形态句法和韵律提示促使了主题的解释。结果表明，单独的语义合理性线索不足以丢弃主题阅读。然而，成年人对这些线索很敏感，这可以调节他们对模糊亲属的理解。相反，儿童无法在句子处理中利用百科全书式的知识。这可以解释为儿童在处理过程中不愿意整合上下文和百科全书式的语义线索，以及他们有限的处理资源，这可能会限制他们重新分析句子的能力。
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