rules vs. constructions a debate on question-acquisition lucia pozzan, lidiya tornyova &...
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Rules vs. ConstructionsA debate on question-acquisition
Lucia Pozzan, Lidiya Tornyova & Virginia Valian
IASCL 2011
Special thanks to Language Acquisition Research Center Team
Margarita Zeitlin
Nathan LaFavePaul Feitzinger
Erin QuirkSyelle Graves
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English Main Questions
• Subject-Auxiliary Inversion
Declarative: John is eating pizzaYes/no question: Is John eating pizza?Wh-question: What is John eating?
• Children’s questions: lack of inversion Why my dog is digging a hole?Katie’s brother is feeding the doll?
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Our View
• Input is important but it is not the only factor• Differences in syntactic properties are
reflected in the input and, therefore, in inversion patterns across languages
• Children analyze input in terms of syntactic features, categories, and operations
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Research Questions
• Study 1 (Tornyova & Valian): Are inversion patterns in acquisition determined by syntactic properties of the adult language (reflected in the target input)?
• Study 2 (Pozzan & Valian): Can input frequency alone account for inversion patterns in English-learning children?
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Study 1: Tornyova & Valian• Both Bulgarian and English display inversion in
main wh- and yes/no questions• Different properties of question formation
Bulgarian English
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Elicited Imitation
4 groups: • 2 Bulgarian (n=27, ages 2;2 - 3;3; Mean 2;9 )• 2 English (n=20, ages 2;4 - 3;2; Mean 2;9)• Imitated 24 wh- or yes/no questions
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ProcedureBulgarian wh-question
Kude e igral Ivan s tebe?Where aux-sum played Ivan with you
Bulgarian yes/no question
S tebe li e igral Ivan?With you li aux-sum played Ivan
English wh-question
Where did John play with you?
English yes/no question
Was John playing ball with you?
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Inversion by Question Type
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Summary• Children are sensitive to the syntactic
regularities that underlie input differences• Level of syntactic consistency predicts
differences in performance
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Bulgarian English
Study 2Elicited Production and Input
• Do frequencies of questions in the adult input account for children’s production patterns? • How should frequency of inversion be measured?
• Are production patterns better accounted for in terms of abstract categories (e.g., arguments vs. adjuncts)?
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L1 Production Participants & Materials
• N = 38 monolingual children • Age: 4;3 (Median: 4;2 Range: 3;2-5;8)• SPELT: 33/40• Materials: 16 main questions
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auxiliary wh- yes/no
is 4(what, which, why, when)
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are 4 (what, which, why, when)
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Total 8 8
ProtocolThis is an asking game.
This is Katie and this is her mom. Katie wants to know some things. We are going to help her ask her mom questions.
“Why my dog is digging a hole?”
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Question-typecorrect non-inversion no aux double
auxother
14Wilcoxon Signed Ranks: Z = 2.5, p=.012
Wh-typecorrect non-inversion no aux double
auxother
15Wilcoxon Signed Ranks: Z = 2.5, p=.011
Wh- by auxiliary
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correct non-inversion no aux double aux
other
• Can (token) frequency in adult input account for the observed pattern?• No input data on these particular children.
Assumption: adult input to children is fairly homogeneous
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How to measure frequency?
• Absolute Frequency (inverted main questions):
• Inverted wh-: Why are you laughing?• Inverted yes/no: Are you laughing?
• Relative Frequency (inverted main / all questions):
• Non inverted wh-: I don’t know why you are laughing.• Non inverted yes/no: You are laughing?
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CHILDES CorporaSEARCH:SEARCH:WhWh-elements: -elements: whatwhat, , whichwhich, , whenwhen, , why why Auxiliary and copula: Auxiliary and copula: isis, , areare
Corpus # Children Age Range Adult Input Utterances
Bates 27 1;8-2;4 11,274
Bloom 70 3 1;4-2;10 40,385
Clark 1 2;3-3;2 32,349
Gleason 24 2;1-5;2 37,698
Snow 1 2;3-3;9 19,801
Valian 21 1;9-2;8 26,250
Total 77 1;8-5;2 167,75719
Absolute Frequency(inverted questions)
CorpusQuestion-Type
What Which When Why Yes/No
Bates 735 5 3 19 258
Bloom 70 1339 16 12 33 1056
Clark 1092 16 2 125 299
Gleason 1008 26 4 27 487
Snow 800 23 5 21 59
Valian 1423 35 6 14 581
Total 6,397 121 32 239 2,740
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Relative Frequency(inverted/all questions)
CorpusQuestion-type
What Which When Why Yes/No
Bates 735/760 (97%) 5/5 (100%) 3/3 (100%) 19/21 (90%) 258/336 (77%)
Bloom 70 1339/1428 (94%) 19/22 (86%) 12/13 (92%) 33/35 (94%) 1056/1447 (73%)
Clark 1092/1190 (92%) 17/20 (85%) 2/5 (40%) 125/132 (95%) 299/766 (45%)
Gleason 1008/1205 (84%) 28/29 (96%) 4/4 (100%) 27/33 (82%) 487/772 (63%)
Snow 800/283 (97%) 24/27 (89%) 5/5 (100%) 21/25 (84%) 59/70 (84%)
Valian 1423/1599 (89%) 37/38 (97%) 6/10 (60%) 14/17 (83%) 581/919 (63%)
Total 6397/7005 (91%) 130/141 (92%) 32/40 (80%) 239/263 (91%) 2740/2210 (65%)
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Results
Absolute Frequency: errors should occur in which, when and why
Relative Frequency: errors should occur in yes/no and when-questions
Results: inversion errors only occur in when and why questions
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Take-home Message
• Study 1: input does matter! A grammar in which operations are implemented uniformly is a ‘simpler’ grammar
• Study 2: elements pattern together according to syntactic category, not just (token) frequency
• In progress:• Token vs. Type Frequency • Wh- + is/are + NP combinations• Relative frequency (counting all inverted and non-inverted strings)
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Bonus SlideWh- + is/are + NP combinations
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Auxiliary NP-Subject What When Which Why Yes/no
is
brother/dog/he 385 2 3 57 124
other 4670 16 90 98 1691
Total (is) 5056 18 93 155 1815
areyou 786 11 10 50 716
other 552 3 18 34 212
Total (are) 1338 14 28 84 928
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Bonus Slide 2 Overall Correct Imitation
Bulgarian- and English-speaking children show similar overall correct imitation rates