Download - Language, Mind, and Brain by Ewa Dabrowska
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Language, Mind, and Brainby Ewa Dabrowska
Chapter 9: Syntactic constructions, pt. 1
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Is syntax like morphology?
• Q: What kinds of points is Dabrowska going to make that parallel morphology?
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Is syntax like morphology?
• Q: What kinds of points is Dabrowska going to make that parallel morphology?
• A: – the same mental mechanism can account for
both regular and irregular constructions– speakers extract patterns at varying degrees
of abstraction– associative memory plays a prominent role
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1. Ties between lexical and grammatical knowledge
• Q: How can we account for these facts?– Very strong statistical correlation between
vocabulary size and grammatical complexity mastered by young children; age was not statistically a predictor
– Equally strong correlation between lexicon and grammar in impairment
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1. Ties between lexical and grammatical knowledge
• Q: How can we account for these facts?– Very strong statistical correlation between
vocabulary size and grammatical complexity mastered by young children; age was not statistically a predictor
– Equally strong correlation between lexicon and grammar in impairment
• A: People use “chunks” – form-meaning pairings that combine lexical items and grammatical constructions
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2. Multi-word units in acquisition
• Q: What is “premature usage”?
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2. Multi-word units in acquisition
• Q: What is “premature usage”?
• A: Children often use chunks containing grammatical morphemes long before they use the morphemes in novel utterances.
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Q: What is a “developmental U-curve”?
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Q: What is a “developmental U-curve”?
• A: Early limited correct usage of a form followed by absence or incorrect usage, later followed by reliable use in a range of situations. E.g. What’s this? (chunk!) > What this is? > What is this?
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2.3 Inappropriate and ungrammatical usage
• Q: Is it true that children’s errors result from faulty abstract rules?
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2.3 Inappropriate and ungrammatical usage
• Q: Is it true that children’s errors result from faulty abstract rules?
• A: Not necessarily. They can also arise from inappropriate combination of chunks.
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2.4 Pronoun reversals
• Q: What is a “pronoun reversal”? What theories are there about them and what does the author suggest?
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2.4 Pronoun reversals• Q: What is a “pronoun reversal”? What theories are there
about them and what does the author suggest?• A: Children use “you” to refer to themselves. It is
theorized that they don’t understand deixis. But maybe they are just echoing what they heard said to them!
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2.5 Filler syllables
• Q: What are filler syllables, and what do they indicate?
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2.5 Filler syllables• Q: What are filler
syllables, and what do they indicate?
• Filler syllables are underspecified unstressed syllables (schwa &/or nasal). They indicate that children are working with a phrase-level structure, not word-level, gradually filling in larger patterns.
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2.6 Lexically based patterns
• Q: Tomasello is famous for the “verb-island hypothesis”. Can you guess what it is?
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2.6 Lexically based patterns• Q: Tomasello is famous for the “verb-island hypothesis”.
Can you guess what it is?• A: A theory that children don’t form rules for
constructions of verbs, but rather use lexically specific chunks, like: X fall down, ride X, X gave Y Z
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• Michael Tomasello’s webpage:• http://email.eva.mpg.de/~tomas/index.html
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2.6 Lexically based patterns
• Q: How much of children’s speech shows evidence of lexical patterning and when do children gain competence to produce syntactic patterns with novel verbs?
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2.6 Lexically based patterns
• Q: How much of children’s speech shows evidence of lexical patterning and when do children gain competence to produce syntactic patterns with novel verbs?
• A: In children up to 3yrs 60% is lexical formulas and 30% is frozen phrases. Children don’t succeed in reliably forming new transitive constructions until age 8.
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2.7 “Mosaic” acquisition
• Q: What is Chomsky’s claim about acquisition?
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2.7 “Mosaic” acquisition
• Q: What is Chomsky’s claim about acquisition?
• A: That once a rule is learned, it is applied in all contexts. But is this true? This is not corroborated by research.
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2.7 “Mosaic” acquisition
• Q: What is “mosaic” acquisition?
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2.7 “Mosaic” acquisition
• Q: What is “mosaic” acquisition?
• A: Piecemeal, gradual, probabilistic (not rule-governed), often lexically-specific acquisition of grammatical features and the range of their application.