Transcript GRS LX 700 Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory

GRS LX 865
Topics in Linguistics
Week 3. More optional infinitives,
this time with meaning
Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Child English bare stems as “OIs”?
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In the present, only morphology is 3sg -s.
Bare stem isn’t unambiguously an infinitive form.
No word order correlate to finiteness.
OIs are clearer in better inflected languages.
Does English do this too? Or is it different?
Hypotheses:
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Kids don’t “get” inflection yet; go and goes are
basically homonyms.
These are OIs, the -s is correlated with something
systematic about the child syntax.
Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Exploring a consequence of having T in
the structure: do support.
Rationale:
Main verbs do not move in English.
 Without a modal or auxiliary, T is stranded:
The verb -ed not move.
 Do is inserted to save T.
 Predicts: No T, no do insertion.
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Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Empirically, we expect:
She go
 She goes
 She not go (no T no do)
 She doesn’t go (adult, T and do)
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but never
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She not goes (evidence of T, yet no do).
Note: All basically options if kids don’t “get”
inflection.
Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Looked at 10 kids from 1;6 to 4;1
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Adam, Eve, Sara (Brown), Nina (Suppes),
Abe (Kuczaj), Naomi (Sachs), Shem (Clark),
April (Higginson), Nathaniel (Snow).
Counted sentences:
with no or not before the verb
 without a modal/auxiliary
 with unambiguous 3sg subjects
 with either -s or -ed as inflected.
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Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Affirmative:
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43% inflected
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782
47
< 10% inflected
-inflec
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neg
Negative:
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aff
It not works Mom
no N. has a microphone
no goes in there
but the horse not stand ups
no goes here!
+inflec 594
5
Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Small numbers, but in the right direction.
Generalization: Considering cases with no
auxiliary, kids inflect about half the time normally,
but almost never (up to performance errors)
inflect in the negative.
If do is an indicator of T in the negative, we
might expect to see that do appears in negatives
about as often as inflection appears in
affirmatives.
Also, basically true: 37% vs. 34% in the pre-2;6
group, 73% vs. 61% in the post-2;6 group.
Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Also, made an attempt to ascertain how the form
correlated with the intended meaning in terms of
tense. (Note: a nontrivial margin of error…)
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Inflected verbs overwhelmingly in the right context.
present
bare stem 771
-s
418
-ed
10
past
128
14
168
future
39
5
0
Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Last, an elicitation experiment contrasting
affirmative, never (no T dependence for adults),
and not.
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Does the cow always go in the barn, or does she
never go?
Does the cow go in the barn or does she not go in the
barn?
Do you think he always goes or do you think he never
goes?
Do you think that he goes, or don’t you think that he
goes?
Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Designed to test a processing load type
hypothesis: the extra load of not might be
alleviated by leaving off the -s.
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If that’s the case, we’d expect never and
not to behave the same way—in fact,
never might be harder, just because it’s
longer (and trigger more -s drops).
Harris & Wexler (1996)
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Affirmatives inflected often, not inflected rarely,
never sort of inbetween.
Looking at the results in terms of whether the
question was inflected:
Kids overall tended to use inflection when there
was inflection in the question.
When the stimulus contained an -s:
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affirmative: 15 vs. 7 (68%)
never: 14 vs. 16 (48%)
not: 4 vs. 12 (25%) —quite a bit lower.
Hoekstra & Hyams (1998)
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Root infinitives are a crosslinguistically
attested phenomenon.
Fn. Children use both don’t and doesn’t.
H&H suggest don’t might be a case where
do is supporting n’t (rather than tense).
When inverted (i.e. in utterances like
Doesn’t he want to go?), the inflection is
always correct according to them.
Hoekstra & Hyams (1998)
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Quick notes contra Radford and the nofunctional-projections approach:
Sure, English uses bare stems. But what about
the other languages that use actually marked
infinitives? That infinitival marker is assumed to
live in a functional projection.
Kids use both finite and nonfinite utterances at
the same developmental point, so a maturational
account seems not to work.
Interpretation and functional
categories
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A basic premise of Hoekstra & Hyams (1998) is
that tense is a means of connecting between the
structural meaning and the discourse. Tense
anchors a sentence in the discourse.
They propose that the relation between
discourse (CP) and T must be signaled (to
ground an utterance), and is signaled by
different things in different languages.
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Dutch: number morphology  only these have RIs?
Japanese: tense morphology
Italian, Spanish, Catalan: person morphology
Underspecification of
number?
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H&H propose in light of this that what’s
wrong with kids has to do with number
specifically. OI languages are those where
number is crucial in the finite inflection.
H&H picked up on something about when
these RIs seem to be used. It seemed that
there are certain verbs that showed up in
the nonfinite form, but others that didn’t.
Eventivity Constraint
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In particular, it seems that RIs show up only with
verbs referring to events —not with verbs
referring to states, not with auxiliary verbs. Finite
verbs seem to have no such restriction. Original
research on Dutch on French, also Russian.
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Eventivity Constraint
RIs are restricted to event-denoting predicates.
Modal Reference Effect
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The other thing is that RIs often have a
“modal” meaning (can, will, must, want
to..) (pretty dramatic in Dutch, German,
French).
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Modal Reference Effect
With overwhelming frequency, RIs have
modal interpretations.
English = weird
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English doesn’t seem to conform to the
pattern. Ud Deen (1997) found:
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plenty of bare stative verbs (*EC)
Man have it
 Ann need Mommy napkin
 Papa want apple
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plenty of non-modal bare verbs (*MRE)
Dutch: 86% of RIs have modal meaning. Cf. 3%of
finite forms.
 English: 13% of bare forms have modal meaning
Cf, 12% of finite forms..
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Null Modal Hypothesis
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A possible explanation for this is that RIs
are simply utterances with an
unpronounced modal. This would for the
most part make sense.
Mommy (should) not go.
 Eve (will) sit on (the) floor.
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Explains why the verb is non-finite,
explains why it behaves nonfinite (null
modal is doing all the tensed verb stuff,
like V2, etc.). A quite elegant explanation.
Problems with NMH (rats!)
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RIs and finite utterances have different
properties, but the NMH obliterates any
distinction we can use to capture that
(both are finite under NMH).
E.g., topicalization in German, Dutch,
Swedish (all V2), which never occurs with RIs,
but often occurs with finite forms.
 E.g., wh-questions in German, Dutch,
Swedish, French, which never occur with RIs,
but often occur otherwise.
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H&H’s hypothesis
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Number is an inflectional property both of
the nominal and the verbal system.
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though it arises in the nominal system.
Missing determiners and RIs are both a
symptom of “underspecified” Number.
Spec-head agreement
communicates number
(under)specification
to the verb.
H&H (1998) BUCLD
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Looked at Niek (CHILDES, Dutch).
They found that with “finite DPs”, the verb
was pretty much always finite too.
They found that with “nonfinite DPs”, the
verb was somewhat more likely to be
nonfinite than with a finite DP, but still
overwhelmingly favored finite DPs.
Only null subjects didn’t overwhelmingly
favor finite V. (NS 45% nonfinite).
H&H (1998) BUCLD
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All things being equal, we might have
expected a 1:1 correlation between finite
DP subjects and finite V, if it were a matter
of Spec-head agreement. We don’t have
that. We have a one-directional relation.
If DP is finite, V is finite.
If V is nonfinite, DP is nonfinite.
H&H (1998) BUCLD
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In a sense, one setting “cares” about its partner
in the Spec-Head relationship, and the other
setting doesn’t.
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Finite V seems not to care whether the subject is finite
or not.
Nonfinite V does seem to care, and requires a
nonfinite subject.
More specifically, there is a “default”, and the
“default” does not need to be licensed (whereas
non-defaults do).
H&H (1998) BUCLD
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In Dutch, 3sg is default.
1sg verb licensed only by a 1sg subject.
 3sg verb licensed by any old subject.
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In English, 3sg is not the default. It’s the
one marked form.
3sg verb licensed only by a 3sg subject.
 bare verb licensed by any old subject.
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Thus
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The doggie bark.
He bark
Doggie sit here.
*Doggie barks.
*Het hondje hier zitten.
*He hier zitten.
Hondje hier zitten.
Hondje zit hier.
cf. Schütze & Wexler
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“…the English bare form is ambiguous
between an infinitive … and a finite form…”
(H&H98:101)
Although stated in different terminology,
and addressing a slightly different arena of
facts, the basic concept is the same as that
in S&W96.
[+T+A] -> finite (-s)
 [+T-A], [-T+A], [-T-A] -> “nonfinite” (stem)
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but +A ones will have +A properties (e.g. NOM),
just stem form. Same for +T.
English bare form ≠ infinitive
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S&W and H&H agree that the English bare
form isn’t strictly speaking (necessarily)
the true infinitive.
H&H and interpretation
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Claim: RIs are interpreted as [-realized], the
contribution of the infinitival morpheme itself.
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Languages with an infinitival morpheme and
actual RIs should show 100% modal ([-realized])
interpretation with RIs.
English, with a Ø infinitival morpheme, obscures
the correlation; in practice, we expect only some
(the actually infinitive) bare forms to be modal.
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epistemic vs. deontic
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John must leave.
Deontic: About the way the world isn’t now but
needs to be.
John must know French.
Epistemic: About the way the world is (now).
Seems to be a correlation between “eventivity”
and modality type, in the adult language.
Modality and kids
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In other circles of research, people have
proposed that kids basically “don’t have”
epistemic uses of modality (John must be
a genius) before about 3 years old—for
whatever reason.
If that’s true, there’s only deontic modality
(John must go to class).
If deontic modality only goes with eventive
predicates, we’re done. Kids RIs are
modal, necessarily deontic, hence
necessarily with eventive verbs.
English must be different
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English bare forms are not (necessarily)
infinitives, not necessarily modal, hence
not necessarily deontic, eventive.
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Hence, the EC and MRE seem not to hold
of English, but for reasons we can now
understand.
English be
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Becker (2000) BUCLD studied the interpretive
patterns with the copula be in English (and when
it is dropped).
Looked at Nina, Peter, and Naomi, 2;0 to 2;3-5.
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existential: There is a man in the garden. Always
there.
nominal predicative: John is a student. Just about
always there.
adjectival predicative: John is tall, John is sick. There
about half the time.
locative predicative: The book is on the table. Rarely
there.
Becker (2000)
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Becker observes that this hints at a distinction
between inherent and accidental properties of
things. (“individual-level” vs. “stage-level”).
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John is a boy. John is tall.
My pen is on the floor. John is sick.
Dividing adjectival predicates this way (tall vs.
sick), we get about 80% be with individual-level
and about 40% be with stage-level. Cf. around
20% with locatives.
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Both 20% and 40% are considered low.
Becker (2000)
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Cf. the stative/eventive distinction?
Statives are kind of timeless, like individual-level
predicates.
Eventives are kind of time-specified, like stagelevel predicates.
They are different—John is sick is a stage-level
stative—but they might respond to similar
distinction.
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Existentials (there’s a camel) unexpectedly always
show up with be. Becker proposes that part of the
way expletives like there work requires be to be there.
(ed: MB’s exx. look like inverted locatives to me…)
Wexler (2000)
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In terms of ATOM, Wexler suggests that be is
special in that if either TP or AgrSP is missing,
be is not spelled out at all. Be is the most
inflected verb form in English, the most sensitive
to both T and Agr.
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am, are, is, was, were
Following a widely known analysis of Molly
Diesing’s, he suggests that subjects of
individual-level predicates start higher (outside
VP, say in SpecTP). Thus, no need to omit either
TP or AgrP for individual-level predicates, hence
we should always find be.
Wexler (2000)
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With respect to eventivity, Wexler raises doubts
about whether it’s really about “eventivity” vs.
“stativity” or whether we again have a “stagelevel” vs. “individual-level” question.
For example, see/hear seem to actually be
stative (*John is seeing/hearing the baseball
game) but stage-level, while love is stative and
individual-level. The first kind occur in the RI, the
second kind don’t. Perhaps it’s really again
stage-vs.-individual-level, where subjects start
higher with individual-level predicates.
Wexler (2000)
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Finite null subjects. Hamann discussed
this question: If null subjects are licensed
by RIs, what should we say about the null
subjects with finite verbs? W had
previously said “topic drop”, but H showed
that Danish kids’ use of null subjects with
finite verbs correlated highly with the use
of RIs in general.
Wexler (2000)
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Are there really lots of null subjects with finite
verbs? Perhaps not—perhaps some of the “finite
verbs” are really the RIs.
Idea: There is no agreement marking per se
(agreement is always null), but the form of the
tense node differs depending on whether
agreement is there.
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If there are agreement features around, spell out “er”
(“present”), regardless of the value or presence of tense
features.
Past, “de”, otherwise “e” (default, infinitive)
Point: køb-er looks like present tense finite, but it
could be missing T (hence legitimately license NS).
Wexler (2000) vs. Danish
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That is,
[+Agr, +Tns] køb-er (present) (adult)
 [-Agr, +Tns] køb-e (infinitive) no NS allowed
 [-Agr, -Tns] køb-e (infinitive) NS allowed
 [+Agr, -Tns] køb-er (“present”) NS allowed.
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Predicts: No NS’s with past tense verbs like
køb-de (since unambiguously +Tns, which is
the thing that prevents NS). True?
Hamann (2002) vs. Wexler
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Well, not really vanishingly small…
Jens (20-34 mos.s) 14/42 (33%) NS past.
Anne (18-30 mos.) 13/33 (39%) NS past.
Maybe we’ve got 3 functional projections?
TP is there. If either of the others are
missing, no NS, but if both are missing NS
is ok? That would give us a third.
A pause to regroup
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English bare form is unmarked, only -s is
unambiguously +T+A.
Do is a reflex of +T (and/or +A), and as
expected, almost never in negative sentences
was there a post-negation inflected verb (she
doesn’t go vs. *she not goes).
The actual infinitive morpheme in English is Ø,
so we can’t differentiate bare forms between
infinitives and other bare forms.
The infinitive morpheme seems to carry modal
meaning—in languages where you can see it
you can tell. Effectively RI only with eventives.
A pause to regroup
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H&H propose that the languages which show
OIs are those which rely (only) on number in
their inflectional system. Those that don’t
(Japanese [tense only], Italian [person]) seem to
be immune. Hence, person is the special,
possibly omitted thing for kids.
This isn’t really distinctly at odds with ATOM.
Wexler suggests that the problem is with doublemovement of the subject, but movement of the
subject might itself be driven by person features
in recent versions of the syntactic thy.
A pause to regroup
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H&H observed a correlation between specified
(“finite”) subjects and verbal form.
Specifically,”finite” subjects seem to “cause”
finite verbs. Not obvious why this would be
under ATOM directly, but it might be something
like what H&H suggest—there is feature sharing
between the subject and the AgrP. It might be
interesting to see if “finite” subjects necessarily
always show the reflex of AgrP and not
necessarily of TP.
A pause to regroup
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The presence of be seems to be correlated with
something like the stative/eventive distinction:
individual-level vs. stage-level properties.
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Jury is probably still out on which is crucial,
because there is such overlap.
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Adult syntactic analyses put individual-level
subjects higher, perhaps able to escape the
UCC (*double-movement) requirement.
BUCLD notes
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Friday:
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Hamann on French functional categories in normal vs.
impaired kids
Kazanina & Philipps on comprehension of aspect by
Russian kids
Berger-Morales & Salustri on RIs and bilingual acquisition?
Serratrice & Sorace on overt and null subjects in Italian
mono- & bi-lingual acq.
Sunday:
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Sigurjonsdottir on RIs vs. finite verbs in Icelandic.
Ud Deen: Underspec’d verb sand subject drop in Swahili
Salustri & Hyams: Analogue of RI stage in NS lgs?
Comments about nina13
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When I did it…
I found about 70 relevant utterances (where
there is a pronoun subject and the verb is
unambiguous) to pass on to the “subjects” sheet.
Of those I omitted around 10 as repetitions or
otherwise uninformative.
Be particularly careful about the lower bounds
on these larger blocks—nina13 is a bigger file
than peter07, and so you will occasionally need
to increase some of the numbers to get all of the
utterances in.
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