Pub Date : 2020-12-20DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1859511
Tobias Ruberg
ABSTRACT This study addresses the question of whether gender agreement is impaired in SLI German. Article production and gender marking on articles were examined in three groups of German-speaking children: 10 children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), 10 age-matched typically developing (TD) children, and 10 TD children who were on average two years younger. Gender marking on articles did not reveal any evidence of an agreement deficit in the SLI group. Nevertheless, the children of the SLI group had a selective deficit in assigning the correct gender to neuter nouns. Regarding article production, it was found that article omissions were more frequent in the SLI group than in the age-matched TD group. However, these omissions cannot be clearly attributed to a deficit in gender agreement. The data indicate that article omissions may also reflect an avoidance strategy due to a lack of gender information. These results provide evidence for the ability of SLI children to acquire and use rule-governed syntactic computations. This is incompatible with accounts of SLI that posit a broad syntactic deficit in these children.
{"title":"Gender agreement in SLI: A study on production and inflection of articles in German","authors":"Tobias Ruberg","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2020.1859511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2020.1859511","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study addresses the question of whether gender agreement is impaired in SLI German. Article production and gender marking on articles were examined in three groups of German-speaking children: 10 children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), 10 age-matched typically developing (TD) children, and 10 TD children who were on average two years younger. Gender marking on articles did not reveal any evidence of an agreement deficit in the SLI group. Nevertheless, the children of the SLI group had a selective deficit in assigning the correct gender to neuter nouns. Regarding article production, it was found that article omissions were more frequent in the SLI group than in the age-matched TD group. However, these omissions cannot be clearly attributed to a deficit in gender agreement. The data indicate that article omissions may also reflect an avoidance strategy due to a lack of gender information. These results provide evidence for the ability of SLI children to acquire and use rule-governed syntactic computations. This is incompatible with accounts of SLI that posit a broad syntactic deficit in these children.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"28 1","pages":"131 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10489223.2020.1859511","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48576533","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 : 2020-10-07DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1803329
Katherine Howitt, Soumik Dey, W. G. Sakas
ABSTRACT In this article, we propose a reconceptualization of the principles and parameters (P&P) framework. We argue that in lieu of discrete parameter values, a parameter value exists on a gradient plane that encodes a learner’s confidence that a particular parametric structure licenses the utterances in the learner’s linguistic input. Crucially, this gradient parameter hypothesis obviates the need for default parameter values. Default parameter values can be put to use effectively from the perspective of linguistic learnability but are lacking in terms of empirical and theoretical consistency. We present findings from a computational implementation of a gradient P&P learner. The findings suggest that the gradient parameter hypothesis provides the basis for a viable alternative to existing computational models of language acquisition in the classic P&P paradigm. We close with a brief discussion of how a gradient parameter space offers a path to address shortcomings that have been attributed to the P&P framework.
{"title":"Gradual syntactic triggering: The gradient parameter hypothesis","authors":"Katherine Howitt, Soumik Dey, W. G. Sakas","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2020.1803329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2020.1803329","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this article, we propose a reconceptualization of the principles and parameters (P&P) framework. We argue that in lieu of discrete parameter values, a parameter value exists on a gradient plane that encodes a learner’s confidence that a particular parametric structure licenses the utterances in the learner’s linguistic input. Crucially, this gradient parameter hypothesis obviates the need for default parameter values. Default parameter values can be put to use effectively from the perspective of linguistic learnability but are lacking in terms of empirical and theoretical consistency. We present findings from a computational implementation of a gradient P&P learner. The findings suggest that the gradient parameter hypothesis provides the basis for a viable alternative to existing computational models of language acquisition in the classic P&P paradigm. We close with a brief discussion of how a gradient parameter space offers a path to address shortcomings that have been attributed to the P&P framework.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"28 1","pages":"65 - 96"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10489223.2020.1803329","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43375217","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 : 2020-09-03DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1803327
Victoria Mateu, N. Hyams
ABSTRACT Experimental studies show that children have greater difficulty with wh-extraction from object position than subject position, arguably an intervention effect (e.g., Relativized Minimality). In this study we provide additional evidence of a S/O asymmetry in A’-dependencies from a novel source—sluicing. The results of our first comprehension study show that English-speaking 3–6-year-olds obey the “identity condition” on sluicing—that is, they disallow interpretations in which the elided verb or arguments are distinct from their antecedent. Importantly, our results also show a subject > object asymmetry and thereby support syntactic theories of sluicing that posit a fully articulated (but unpronounced) TP at the ellipsis site from which the wh-phrase has been extracted, e.g., Someone wrote this paper, but I don’t know who <_ wrote this paper>, as opposed to certain semantic/pragmatic theories that posit no such structure. Our second comprehension study investigates the role of animacy. We find that children’s comprehension of object sluices, but not subject sluices, improves significantly when there is a mismatch in animacy features. Our results are incompatible with models that are solely frequency based but rather provide evidence for structure-based intervention effects. We conclude that subject > object asymmetries can be found even in instances in which the intervener is not overt, such as sluicing, and that [animacy] may be a feature involved in the computation of intervention.
{"title":"Structural intervention effects in the acquisition of sluicing","authors":"Victoria Mateu, N. Hyams","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2020.1803327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2020.1803327","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Experimental studies show that children have greater difficulty with wh-extraction from object position than subject position, arguably an intervention effect (e.g., Relativized Minimality). In this study we provide additional evidence of a S/O asymmetry in A’-dependencies from a novel source—sluicing. The results of our first comprehension study show that English-speaking 3–6-year-olds obey the “identity condition” on sluicing—that is, they disallow interpretations in which the elided verb or arguments are distinct from their antecedent. Importantly, our results also show a subject > object asymmetry and thereby support syntactic theories of sluicing that posit a fully articulated (but unpronounced) TP at the ellipsis site from which the wh-phrase has been extracted, e.g., Someone wrote this paper, but I don’t know who <_ wrote this paper>, as opposed to certain semantic/pragmatic theories that posit no such structure. Our second comprehension study investigates the role of animacy. We find that children’s comprehension of object sluices, but not subject sluices, improves significantly when there is a mismatch in animacy features. Our results are incompatible with models that are solely frequency based but rather provide evidence for structure-based intervention effects. We conclude that subject > object asymmetries can be found even in instances in which the intervener is not overt, such as sluicing, and that [animacy] may be a feature involved in the computation of intervention.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"28 1","pages":"6 - 38"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10489223.2020.1803327","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49321854","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 : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1844477
Hiroyuki Shimada, Takuya Goro
ABSTRACT In a body of empirical research, it has been observed that young children from across different linguistic communities adhered to a particular type of nonadult interpretation of disjunction: They appear to interpret disjunction conjunctively. Through three experiments with Japanese-speaking preschoolers, we investigate the source of this nonadult behavior. Specifically, we ask whether children’s conjunctive interpretation of disjunction in negative sentences can be reduced to strengthening via implicature. To test this possibility, we presented Japanese children with test sentences in which the crucial disjunctive NP was located in different syntactic positions: accusative-marked object (Experiment 1), nominative-marked subject (Experiment 2), and nominative-marked object (Experiment 3). The results showed that children systematically altered their interpretations of disjunction according to its syntactic position in the test sentence. Importantly, they consistently accepted adultlike disjunctive interpretations of the test sentences in Experiments 2 and 3, but they showed adherence to the conjunctive interpretation in Experiment 1. These behaviors cannot be explained by the strengthening account, suggesting that children’s conjunctive interpretation of disjunction in negative sentences is due to their nonadult scope assignment.
{"title":"On the source of children’s conjunctive interpretation of disjunction: Scope, strengthening, or both?","authors":"Hiroyuki Shimada, Takuya Goro","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2020.1844477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2020.1844477","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In a body of empirical research, it has been observed that young children from across different linguistic communities adhered to a particular type of nonadult interpretation of disjunction: They appear to interpret disjunction conjunctively. Through three experiments with Japanese-speaking preschoolers, we investigate the source of this nonadult behavior. Specifically, we ask whether children’s conjunctive interpretation of disjunction in negative sentences can be reduced to strengthening via implicature. To test this possibility, we presented Japanese children with test sentences in which the crucial disjunctive NP was located in different syntactic positions: accusative-marked object (Experiment 1), nominative-marked subject (Experiment 2), and nominative-marked object (Experiment 3). The results showed that children systematically altered their interpretations of disjunction according to its syntactic position in the test sentence. Importantly, they consistently accepted adultlike disjunctive interpretations of the test sentences in Experiments 2 and 3, but they showed adherence to the conjunctive interpretation in Experiment 1. These behaviors cannot be explained by the strengthening account, suggesting that children’s conjunctive interpretation of disjunction in negative sentences is due to their nonadult scope assignment.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"28 1","pages":"98 - 130"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10489223.2020.1844477","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43891022","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 : 2020-08-22DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1803328
Kristen Syrett, J. Austin, Liliana Sánchez
ABSTRACT Quantificational elements such as some pose a challenge to young language learners, given their vague meaning and ability to take on an upper-bounded interpretation (relative to all) in certain contexts. The challenge is enhanced when a child is acquiring multiple languages that do not share a one-to-one mapping between their lexical entries with some. Such is the case with some in English and unos and algunos in Spanish. Indeed, Heritage Spanish-English bilinguals have been documented as diverging from monolingual children and adults in their interpretation of algunos, which is said to lexically encode this upper-bounded meaning, although early Heritage bilinguals do not demonstrate this knowledge robustly. In this article, we ask how pervasive this challenge is by (a) investigating whether the same pattern holds in English, where there are not two words for some, and (b) comparing the pragmatic process for some to other linguistic items that either invoke another pragmatic process (particularized conversational implicature) or a semantic upper bound. Our results strongly suggest that the extended process of fine-tuning of quantificational lexical entries within and across languages precedes a pragmatic comparison of alternatives, but at the same time, Heritage bilinguals demonstrate pragmatic awareness beyond generalized conversational implicatures.
{"title":"Establishing upper bounds in English monolingual and Heritage Spanish-English bilingual language development","authors":"Kristen Syrett, J. Austin, Liliana Sánchez","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2020.1803328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2020.1803328","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Quantificational elements such as some pose a challenge to young language learners, given their vague meaning and ability to take on an upper-bounded interpretation (relative to all) in certain contexts. The challenge is enhanced when a child is acquiring multiple languages that do not share a one-to-one mapping between their lexical entries with some. Such is the case with some in English and unos and algunos in Spanish. Indeed, Heritage Spanish-English bilinguals have been documented as diverging from monolingual children and adults in their interpretation of algunos, which is said to lexically encode this upper-bounded meaning, although early Heritage bilinguals do not demonstrate this knowledge robustly. In this article, we ask how pervasive this challenge is by (a) investigating whether the same pattern holds in English, where there are not two words for some, and (b) comparing the pragmatic process for some to other linguistic items that either invoke another pragmatic process (particularized conversational implicature) or a semantic upper bound. Our results strongly suggest that the extended process of fine-tuning of quantificational lexical entries within and across languages precedes a pragmatic comparison of alternatives, but at the same time, Heritage bilinguals demonstrate pragmatic awareness beyond generalized conversational implicatures.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"28 1","pages":"39 - 64"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10489223.2020.1803328","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42196424","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 : 2020-07-07DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1769631
J. Schaeffer, Stéphanie Durrleman, Inge-Marie Eigsti
ABSTRACT This Special Issue on linguistic and cognitive development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) arose from the 42nd Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) (2017), when Jeannette Schaeffer, Stephanie Durrleman, and Inge-Marie Eigsti organized a symposium on this topic. It shows that the study of language development in ASD provides a unique perspective on the associations between the development of syntax, pragmatics, intelligence, theory of mind, and working memory. In addition, it emphasizes the importance of studying children with ASD across the spectrum and across research groups. Such research serves to address an important question in (typical) language acquisition—whether the acquisition of pragmatics and/or syntax requires general intelligence, working memory, phonological memory, and theory of mind, or vice versa.
摘要：这期关于自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童语言和认知发展的特刊源于第42届波士顿大学语言发展会议（BUCLD）（2017），Jeannette Schaeffer、Stephanie Durrleman和Inge Marie Eigsti组织了一场关于这一主题的研讨会。这表明，对ASD语言发展的研究为句法、语用学、智力、心理理论和工作记忆的发展之间的联系提供了一个独特的视角。此外，它强调了跨领域和跨研究小组研究自闭症儿童的重要性。这样的研究有助于解决（典型的）语言习得中的一个重要问题——语用学和/或句法的习得是否需要一般智力、工作记忆、语音记忆和心理理论，反之亦然。
{"title":"On links between language development and extralinguistic cognitive knowledge: What we can learn from autism","authors":"J. Schaeffer, Stéphanie Durrleman, Inge-Marie Eigsti","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2020.1769631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2020.1769631","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This Special Issue on linguistic and cognitive development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) arose from the 42nd Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD) (2017), when Jeannette Schaeffer, Stephanie Durrleman, and Inge-Marie Eigsti organized a symposium on this topic. It shows that the study of language development in ASD provides a unique perspective on the associations between the development of syntax, pragmatics, intelligence, theory of mind, and working memory. In addition, it emphasizes the importance of studying children with ASD across the spectrum and across research groups. Such research serves to address an important question in (typical) language acquisition—whether the acquisition of pragmatics and/or syntax requires general intelligence, working memory, phonological memory, and theory of mind, or vice versa.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"28 1","pages":"1 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10489223.2020.1769631","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47461829","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 : 2020-07-02DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2019.1707204
G. Schwartz, K. Kaźmierski
ABSTRACT This article presents an acoustic study of the acquisition of vowel formant dynamics in L2 (Southern British) English by Polish learners at two levels of proficiency, along with baseline data from L1 English and L1 Polish. Results from our experiment suggest that the acquisition of English vowels by Polish learners entails a temporal reorganization such that vocalic targets in English are housed later in a vowel’s duration than they are in Polish or Polish-accented English. This leads to an increase in the degree of formant movement through the 20%–40% portion of vowel duration with increased English proficiency. Implications of these findings for cross-language phonetic similarity, a crucial concept for current theoretical models of L2 speech, are also discussed.
{"title":"Vowel dynamics in the acquisition of L2 English – an acoustic study of L1 Polish learners","authors":"G. Schwartz, K. Kaźmierski","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2019.1707204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2019.1707204","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article presents an acoustic study of the acquisition of vowel formant dynamics in L2 (Southern British) English by Polish learners at two levels of proficiency, along with baseline data from L1 English and L1 Polish. Results from our experiment suggest that the acquisition of English vowels by Polish learners entails a temporal reorganization such that vocalic targets in English are housed later in a vowel’s duration than they are in Polish or Polish-accented English. This leads to an increase in the degree of formant movement through the 20%–40% portion of vowel duration with increased English proficiency. Implications of these findings for cross-language phonetic similarity, a crucial concept for current theoretical models of L2 speech, are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"27 1","pages":"227 - 254"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10489223.2019.1707204","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45128158","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 : 2020-06-23DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1776010
Rushen Shi, C. Legrand, Anna M. Brandenberger
ABSTRACT Previous research suggests that toddlers can rely on distributional cues in the input to track adjacent and nonadjacent grammatical dependencies. It remains unclear whether toddlers understand the hierarchical phrase structures that determine the corresponding grammatical dependencies. We addressed this question by testing toddlers on two different phrase structures in French that govern distinct patterns of grammatical gender feature agreement. We first show that the two structures are in fact extremely infrequent in children’s input. Then we report on a preferential looking experiment in which French-learning 30-month-olds were presented with French sentences in the two structures, and the grammaticality of the feature agreement was manipulated. Crucially, the contrasting structures contained the same sequentially ordered feature-bearing words in our design (e.g., correct agreement: La banane FEMININE dans le chapeau MASCLINE, elle FEMININE … ‘The banana in the hat, it …’; incorrect agreement: *La banane FEMININE et le chapeau MASCLINE, elles FEMININE … ‘The banana and the hat, they …’). Thus, children must go beyond those words and distinguish the structures hierarchically in order to determine the grammaticality of the different agreement patterns. We predicted that if toddlers rely solely on input support to acquire the structures and the agreement, they should show no discrimination of feature grammaticality. If, however, they can rely on mechanisms beyond linear input, such as the principle of structure dependence in the universal grammar (UG), they should show a grammaticality effect. The results confirmed the latter prediction, demonstrating the possible influence of the learner’s internal system, suggesting that UG knowledge might guide early language development.
先前的研究表明，幼儿可以依靠输入中的分布线索来跟踪相邻和非相邻的语法依赖关系。目前尚不清楚幼儿是否理解决定相应语法依赖关系的分层短语结构。为了解决这个问题，我们对幼儿进行了法语中两种不同的短语结构的测试，这两种短语结构控制着语法性别特征一致的不同模式。我们首先表明，这两种结构实际上在儿童的输入中极为罕见。然后，我们报告了一个优先看的实验，在这个实验中，向30个月大的法语学习者展示两种结构的法语句子，并操纵特征一致性的语法性。至关重要的是，对比结构在我们的设计中包含了相同的顺序特征词(例如，正确的一致:La banane FEMININE dans le chapeau MASCLINE, elle FEMININE . ' the banana in the hat, it…';错误的一致:*La banane FEMININE et le chapeau MASCLINE, elles FEMININE…“香蕉和帽子，他们……”)。因此，儿童必须超越这些词语，分层区分结构，以确定不同协议模式的语法性。我们预测，如果幼儿完全依赖输入支持来获得结构和协议，他们应该不会表现出特征语法性的歧视。然而，如果它们能够依赖于线性输入之外的机制，如通用语法(UG)中的结构依赖原则，它们应该表现出语法性效应。结果证实了后一种预测，证明了学习者内部系统可能的影响，表明UG知识可能指导早期语言发展。
{"title":"Toddlers track hierarchical structure dependence","authors":"Rushen Shi, C. Legrand, Anna M. Brandenberger","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2020.1776010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2020.1776010","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Previous research suggests that toddlers can rely on distributional cues in the input to track adjacent and nonadjacent grammatical dependencies. It remains unclear whether toddlers understand the hierarchical phrase structures that determine the corresponding grammatical dependencies. We addressed this question by testing toddlers on two different phrase structures in French that govern distinct patterns of grammatical gender feature agreement. We first show that the two structures are in fact extremely infrequent in children’s input. Then we report on a preferential looking experiment in which French-learning 30-month-olds were presented with French sentences in the two structures, and the grammaticality of the feature agreement was manipulated. Crucially, the contrasting structures contained the same sequentially ordered feature-bearing words in our design (e.g., correct agreement: La banane FEMININE dans le chapeau MASCLINE, elle FEMININE … ‘The banana in the hat, it …’; incorrect agreement: *La banane FEMININE et le chapeau MASCLINE, elles FEMININE … ‘The banana and the hat, they …’). Thus, children must go beyond those words and distinguish the structures hierarchically in order to determine the grammaticality of the different agreement patterns. We predicted that if toddlers rely solely on input support to acquire the structures and the agreement, they should show no discrimination of feature grammaticality. If, however, they can rely on mechanisms beyond linear input, such as the principle of structure dependence in the universal grammar (UG), they should show a grammaticality effect. The results confirmed the latter prediction, demonstrating the possible influence of the learner’s internal system, suggesting that UG knowledge might guide early language development.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"27 1","pages":"397 - 409"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10489223.2020.1776010","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49042705","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 : 2020-06-14DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1769627
K. Wanrooij, M. Raijmakers
ABSTRACT Previous work suggests that adolescents are still refining acoustic-phonetic cue use in clear-speech perception. This study shows adolescents’ immature perception of reduced speech, in which speech sounds are naturally deleted and merged within and across words. German adults and 16-year-olds listened to either German reduced or unreduced (few or full cues) part- and full phrases (without and with context) in a phrase-intelligibility task. As expected, adolescents had lower scores when adequate perception required flexible acoustic-phonetic cue use most, i.e., when hearing reduced speech without context. Participants also listened to reduced and unreduced words and pseudowords (no context) in a lexical decision task. Here, 16-year-olds had poorer and slower responses than adults overall and particularly when hearing pseudowords. Explanations for the age effects are discussed. We conclude that experience continues to refine linguistic representations, at least until adulthood.
{"title":"Evidence for immature perception in adolescents: Adults process reduced speech better and faster than 16-year olds","authors":"K. Wanrooij, M. Raijmakers","doi":"10.1080/10489223.2020.1769627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10489223.2020.1769627","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Previous work suggests that adolescents are still refining acoustic-phonetic cue use in clear-speech perception. This study shows adolescents’ immature perception of reduced speech, in which speech sounds are naturally deleted and merged within and across words. German adults and 16-year-olds listened to either German reduced or unreduced (few or full cues) part- and full phrases (without and with context) in a phrase-intelligibility task. As expected, adolescents had lower scores when adequate perception required flexible acoustic-phonetic cue use most, i.e., when hearing reduced speech without context. Participants also listened to reduced and unreduced words and pseudowords (no context) in a lexical decision task. Here, 16-year-olds had poorer and slower responses than adults overall and particularly when hearing pseudowords. Explanations for the age effects are discussed. We conclude that experience continues to refine linguistic representations, at least until adulthood.","PeriodicalId":46920,"journal":{"name":"Language Acquisition","volume":"27 1","pages":"434 - 459"},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2020-06-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10489223.2020.1769627","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47678844","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 : 2020-06-12DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2020.1769625
Maja Stegenwallner-Schütz, F. Adani
ABSTRACT This study examines the discourse basis for referent accessibility and its relation to the choice of referring expressions by children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typically developing children. The aim is to delineate how the linguistic and extra-linguistic context affects referent accessibility to the speaker. The study also examines the degree to which accessibility effects are modulated by cognitive factors such as working memory capacity. In the study, the contrast levels between the referent and a competitor (one contrast/two contrasts) and the syntactic prominence of the referent (subject/object position in the preceding question) were manipulated in an elicited production task. The results provide evidence that the referring expressions of children with ASD correlate with the discourse status of referents to a similar extent as in typically developing controls. All children were more likely to refer with lexical NPs to referents that contrasted on two levels with a highly prominent competitor, compared to referents that contrasted on one level. They were also more likely to produce pronouns for referents previously mentioned in the subject than the object position. The effect of both discourse factors was modulated by the age and working memory capacity of the children with and without ASD. Accordingly, the study suggests that children with ASD do not generally differ from children with typical development in their referential choices when the discourse status of a referent allows them to model the referent’s accessibility from their own discourse perspective in a way that is modulated by working memory capacity.
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