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 betweenhumans & 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-clausesShe does not know what to write.

– Russian does not have exceptional case marking (ECM) complementsI 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.*Sally poured the glass with water.

• *Sally filled the water into the glass. Sally filled the glass with water.

• Sally piled the books on the table. Sally piled the table with books.

Figure-verbs -- manner of motionpour, spill, drip, shake, etc.

Ground-verbs -- change of statefill, cover, decorate, soak, etc.

Alternator-verbs -- manner & changepile, scatter, load, etc.

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’

(Summary of Tomasello, 1992, First Verbs)

But…

‘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 VerbsCatch, dry, push shoot, wrap

Target VerbsBreak, 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