Transcript Abstraction in Early Syntax

Abstraction in Early Syntax
Abstraction in Early Syntax
• ‘Abstraction’ in syntax - what does this mean?
• Why does it matter whether 2 year olds have abstract syntax?
• What would it take to show that 2 year olds have abstract
syntax?
• Two different notions
– ‘complex’ syntax (functional projections, null elements, etc.)
– productive syntactic combinations
(Poeppel & Wexler 1993)
Michael Tomasello, MPI/EVA, Leipzig
Motivations
• Compressed human evolution
(~100,000 years)
• Basic differences between
humans & primates
– Imitation
– Theory of Mind
• Eye of primatologist applied to early child language
Abstractions support inferences
(Tomasello, 2000, p. 210)
• A common assumption:
– Once a child is able to parse an utterance such as “close the
door”, he will be able to infer from the fact that the verb
“close” in English precedes its object “the door,” that all
verbs in English precede their complements. (Radford 1990:
61)
– What evidence do we have for this?
Andrew Radford
Tomasello 2000
(Poeppel & Wexler 1993)
Poeppel & Wexler (1993)
• Contingency between verb form and verb position
– When finite morphology is used, it is used appropriately
– When finite morphology is used, verb in V2 position
– Individual verbs found in both V2 and V-final position
• Additional contingency: topicalization fails to co-occur with root
infinitives
Argument
Interaction of verb form and verb
position in adult language is due to
functional heads (I, C) in clause
structure.
Similar form-position contingency in
child speech implies same clause
structure.
Morphology
• Morphological successes/failures
– Errors of omission are common (or use of defaults)
– Errors of commission (substitution) are rare
– Suggestion: 2 stages in generation of forms
• Identifying morphological features based on context
• Mapping morphological features to morphological forms
– Morphological difficulty persists longer in less inflected languages
• Functional account: kids pay less attention in English
• Hard to say why English inflection is harder, especially if speakers
simply map features to forms
• Morphological variation casts doubt upon claim that problems
are entirely due to syntactic ‘optionality’ of Tense-marking
Bigger sentences, better morphology
• In wh-questions, or sentences with topicalization, ‘root infinitives’
disappear (German, Dutch, French, …)
• In sentences with overt nominative subject NPs, root infinitives
are rarer (Russian, Dutch, …)
• Why are children more accurate with morphology in more
complex sentences?
• ‘Clausal truncation’ (Rizzi, 1994, etc.)
(Phillips 1995)
Even more structure!
• Revised generalizations
– Root infinitives disappear in wh-questions when verbs raise to C
position, not when they remain in-situ
– Root infinitives disappear in sentences with nominative subjects
when verbs raise to Infl position, not when they remain in-situ
• Argument
– How to guarantee that verbs have the correct form when they
raise?
– Assume that syntax is always perfectly represented
Surface generalization
• Most child root infinitive clauses are possible embedded clauses
in the corresponding adult language
– German does not have infinitival wh-clauses
She does not know what to write.
– Russian does not have exceptional case marking (ECM)
complements
I want her to leave.
– Is this all that is wrong with the children!
(Ingram & Thompson 1996)
Infinitives are not syntactically optional.
Agreement is not morphologically productive.
(Pena et al. 2002)
Very Conservative…
• Claims
– Two-year olds learn clausal constructions for individual
verbs, and do not generalize
– It takes a long while before English-speaking children treat
word-order as an indicator of grammatical functions
Tomasello 2000
Verb Argument Structure
• “Locative Verbs”
•
Sally poured the water into the glass. Figure-verbs -- manner of motion
pour, spill, drip, shake, etc.
*Sally poured the glass with water.
• *Sally filled the water into the glass.
Sally filled the glass with water.
Ground-verbs -- change of state
fill, cover, decorate, soak, etc.
•
Alternator-verbs -- manner & change
pile, scatter, load, etc.
Sally piled the books on the table.
Sally piled the table with books.
Verb Argument Structure
• Demonstrations of productivity (Gropen et al., 1991)
– Children (aged 3;5 upwards) are taught only the meaning of new
verbs
– Children infer appropriate syntactic frames from the meanings that
they’re taught
Experiment 2 - ‘purer endstate verb’
But…
(Summary of Tomasello, 1992, First Verbs)
‘Verb Islands’
• #1: Children are boring…
– Analyses of spontaneous speech from children and
caregivers
– Children mostly use verbs in same ‘constructions’ as
observed in input
– Exceptions such as causative/inchoative overgeneralizations
claimed to be later
• She falled me down
• Don’t giggle me
• Don’t worry Mommy, I’ll get a band-aid to feel you better
‘Verb Islands’
• #2: Children are unimaginative (e.g., Tomasello &
Brooks, 1998)
– Failure to extend causative/inchoative alternation
• John closed the door
• The door closed
– Training
• The sock is tamming. [describing event where sock is being
acted upon by a bear to yield a particular motion]
• What is the doggie doing? [dog is performing same action on a
car]
• ‘…very few of them at either age produced a full transitive
utterance with the novel verb.’
‘Verb Islands’
• #3: Children are gullible (Akhtar, 1999)
– Training
• Ernie meeking the car.
• Ernie the cow tamming.
• Gorping Ernie the cow.
– Production (ages, 2;8, 3;6, 4;4)
• Many younger children repeated the odd orders
• Some alternated
(garbage in, garbage out)
• Things that 2-year olds don’t know, according to MT
– Item-independent word-order rules
– Word order as cue for argument interpretation
– Recursive clausal embedding
But wait…
Preferential looking paradigm
(Naigles; Hirsh-Pasek &
Golinkoff, etc.
She’s kissing the keys.
Big Bird is hugging Cookie Monster.
Cookie Monster is hugging Big Bird.
The duck is kradding the bunny.
The duck and the bunny are kradding.
(In)transitive Frames
• Naigles (1990) and similar
– Look at Cookie Monster gorping Big Bird!
– Look at Cookie Monster and Big Bird gorping!
Prime Verbs
Catch, dry, push shoot, wrap
Target Verbs
Break, close, color, cut, lock
Abstraction?
• Tomasello’s arguments about ‘failure to generalize’
– Focus on form-form inferences
• Arguments that children show generalization in verb
learning
– Focus on form-meaning inferences (found in 2+ year olds)
– Focus on meaning-form inferences (only few tests below ~3;6)
• Syntactic priming evidence is not yet clear
Abstraction
• Abstraction is a double-edged sword
• Advantages
– Powerful & flexible
– Efficient
– Supports inferences
• Cost
– Removed from experience
– Danger of overgeneralization
– Need for rich constraints