Cours 08

Sharon

Description

Bootstrapping word order• Head-Complement parameter:– head-initial (English, French, Italian,…)• VO• prepositions• complementizers before subordinate clause– head-final (Japanese, Turkish, Bengali…)• OV• postpositions• complementizers after subordinate clauseBootstrapping word orderItalian (head-initial): Japanese (head-final):mangia una mela ringo-wo taberueat an apple apple eatacc‘(s/he) eats an apple’ ‘(s/he) eats an apple’sul tavolo Tokyo karaon.the table Tokyo from‘on the table’ ‘from Tokyo’Bootstrapping word order• A prelexical cue to word order: relative order of function and content words atutterance boundaries– head-initial: function word – content word– head-final: content word – function wordFrequency as a Cuefunctor-final functor-initial1009080706050403020100Japanese Italian% of multiword utterancesExperiment• Artificial language-learning experiment– 8-month-old Japanese and Italian infants• ‘Language’– two content word classes (‘nouns’ and ‘verbs’)• X = {/ru/, /pe/, /du/, /ba/, /fo/, /de/, /ba/, /ra/, /to/}• Y = {/mu/, /ri/, /ko/, /bo/, /bi/, /do/, /ka/, /na/, /ro/}– two function words, one ‘nominal’, one ‘verbal’• A = {fi}• B = {ge}MaterialFamiliarization…AXBYAXBYAXBYA…[3 min 53 s]…gefofibugedefikogepafimoge…Test[8 items]fifogebi bagebofifirugemu kafipagegedofide kufidugegerifipe ragenafiResultsGervain, Nespor, Mazuka, Horie & Mehler (2008)Syntactic knowledge in ...

Informations

• Publié par: Unne
• Nombre de lectures: 16
• Langue: English

Extrait

ish,nglnch, FreilnaI at…,) T ,eikrupasenai…al), shngBe

Head-Complement parameter: – head-initial (   E • VO • prepositions • complementizers before subordinate clause – head-final (   J • OV • postpositions • complementizers after subordinate clause

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Bootstrapping word order

Bootstrapping word order

Italian (head-initial):

mangia una mela eat an apple ‘(s/he) eats an apple’

sul tavolo on.the table ‘on the table’

Japanese (head-final):

ringo-wo taberu apple acc eat ‘(s/he) eats an apple’

Tokyo kara Tokyo from ‘from Tokyo’

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Bootstrapping word order

A prelexical cue to word order: relative order of function and content words at utterance boundaries

–head-initial:

–head-final:

function word – content word

content word – function word

100

90

80

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Frequency as a Cue

functor-final

Japanese

functor-initial

Italian

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Experiment

Artificial language-learning experiment – 8-month-old Japanese and Italian infants

‘Language’ – two content word classes (‘nouns’ and ‘verbs’) • X = {/ru/, /pe/, /du/, /ba/, /fo/, /de/, /ba/, /ra/, /to/} • Y = {/mu/, /ri/, /ko/, /bo/, /bi/, /do/, /ka/, /na/, /ro/} – two function words, one ‘nominal’, one ‘verbal’ • A = {fi} • B = {ge}

Familiarization [3 min 53 s]

Test [8 items]

Material

…AXBYAXBYAXBYA…

…gefofibugedefikogepafimoge…

fifogebi firugemu gedofide gerifipe

bagebofi kafipage kufiduge ragenafi

Results

Gervain, Nespor, Mazuka, Horie

& Mehler

(2008)

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Syntactic knowledge in children

Universalist view (Chomsky): same structure as in adults; what needs to be learned is parameter settings and a lexicon of words

Emergentist view (Tomasello): no structure at the initial state; syntactic knowledge is aquired completely on the basis of input

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Methodologicaldifficulty

(Nearly) impossible to ask children intuitions about the structure and interpretation of complex sentences.

Consensus: at around 4 years of age, children have the same syntax as adults.

This doesn’t tell us whether syntactic structure is innate or acquired before age 4.

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‘Poverty of the stimulus’

Two types of evidence during acquisition –Positive evidence: the set of grammatical sentences the learner has access to, by observing the speech of others –Negative evidenceavailable to the language learner about what is: evidence not grammatical (e.g. correction by parents of – mostoften – the child’s speech)

Premises: – For most aspects of grammar, children are only everpresented with positive evidence; they only hear others using sentences that are grammatical, not those that are ungrammatical. – There are patterns in all human languages that cannot be learned by children usingpositive evidencealone.

Conclusion: – Human beings must have some form of innate linguisticcapacity which provides additional knowledge to language learners.

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Experimental approach

Question: Do 18-month-olds have X-bar structure?

flat structure nested

(X-bar) structure