Lecture 3 - Syntax

• Syntax


  Conventions (set of rules) for ordering words in ways that change the meaning of an utterance
• Syntax

  • Mary loves John
  • John loves Mary
• What is the recursive rule?

  
  

  Finite number of words + finite number of rules = infinite number of sentences
• Syntax generates semantics
• At what age do children master Syntax?Sentences with varying complexity

  • Age 5: Mastery of syntax ~ equivalent to adult
• 3 key features of syntax

  • Word order
  • Syntactic categories (verbs, nouns, adjectives, prepositions, etc.)
  • Abstract rules (conjugation, inflections)
• Comprehension of word order


  Happens very early
• Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff (1993) - 19 mo. olds' comprehension of a sentence like "Big Bird is tickling Cookie Monster" (preferential looking paradigm)

  
  

  infants look longer at correct video
• The ability to work out how word order creates meaning is in place ~ 19 months
• Infants can infer syntactic categories after only a few exemplars
• Mintz (2006), 12 mo. olds, head-turn preference procedure
• Mintz (2006), 12 mo. olds, head-turn preference procedure

  • Familiarisation: Verb frame
  • Familiarisation: Noun frame
  • Test: Grammatical
  • Test: Ungrammatical
• Infants listen longer to the ungrammatical than grammatical sentences (a novelty effect). Note that the effect is stronger for the verb frames than for the noun frames
• The understanding that words fall in different categories, is in place ~ 12 months
• Abstract rule learning is observed around 1 year
• Gomez and Gerken (1999), 12 mo. olds, head-turn preference procedure
• Gomez and Gerken (1999), 12 mo. olds, head-turn preference procedure


  • Exposure: 10 grammatical "Sentences" e.g., VOT PEL JIC RUD TAM RUD
  • Test: New grammatical sentences e.g., PEL TAM PEL JIC RUD TAM
  • Test: Non-grammatical sentences e.g., PEL RUD JIC RUD VOT TAM
• Listening time: 6.71 sec for new grammatical, 4.61 sec for non-grammatical
• Sensitivity to how sequences of syllables tend to pattern is in place ~ 12 months
• Vygotsky


  Mastery of language emerges through practical activities in the "zone of proximal development" and, more generally, in a social environment
• Skinner


  Children imitate what they see and hear. Associations are fine-tuned by positive and negative reinforcement (Hebbian learning?). Emphasis on the linguistic environment
• Piaget


  Language development is connected to (= conditioned by) cognitive development. Cognitive prerequisites language. Stages
• Vygotsky's, Skinner's, and Piaget's approaches are not mutually exclusive. They are all almost certainly correct to some extent but they focus on different driving forces, none of them language-specific. Overall, all three claim that language is learned
• Chomsky


  The child's language input is poor (poverty of the input claim) and it contains limited negative evidence: Children are rarely exposed to ungrammatical sequences as counterpoints, parents do not tend to correct the child's syntactic errors. Therefore, children must have a hard-wired ability to learn and process abstract rules (e.g., how to turn active sentences into passive sentences, etc.)
• Children have to understand the "internal constituent structure" (deep structure) of language
• Recursivity is the ultimate hallmark of syntax (it can generate meaning to infinity)
• Critical period


  Chomsky nonetheless agrees that the linguistic environment is important. But only insofar as it is needed to trigger an innate syntax-acquisition device. This must happen during the first few years of life
• Learning expectation according to the critical period hypothesis


  • Open-ended ability to learn
  • Gradual decline in learnability
• Genie, age 13 (in 1970)


  • Genie bad cold live father house. ('I had a bad cold when I lived in my father's house.')
  • Father hit Genie cry long time ago. ('When my father hit me, I cried, a long time ago.')
  • Genie have Mama have baby grow up. ('I have a Mama who has a baby who grew up.')
• Genie, age 13 (in 1970), had hardly been spoken to until that age
• 24 months: Short MLU


  • - Hot. This hot. This hot this time.
  • - Mommy, help me. This hot.
  • - Cinnamon on them.
  • - Ow. Hot! This burn my hand.
  • - Mommy, put butter on mine
• 36 months: Long MLU


  • Mom fixed this for me and I don't like it.
  • Abe's gonna eat rest of it.
  • I like a mayonnaise sandwich.
  • Mom will come home and not like it.
  • Put it right here so I can eat it
• For Genie, Language exposure happened after the critical period for language acquisition. Language acquisition (exploitation of our innate ability to process language) was substituted with language learning (general-learning mechanisms)
• Compared to Vygotsky, Skinner, and Piaget, Chomsky emphasises the necessity to explain how SYNTAX is acquired in the face of an impoverished input
• Vygotsky, Skinner, and Piaget do not address syntax formally other than as an emergent property (a by-product) of a supportive social, linguistic, and cognitive input
• Chomsky (1965)


  Children come equipped with a biological endowment for language processing (cf. poverty of the input and lack of negative evidence)
• Universal Grammar (UG)


  Children come into the world knowing that languages take certain limited forms
• Continuity from infancy to adulthood
• Chomsky (1981)


  UG is not entirely fixed. It has a few Parameters that are free to vary from language to language
• Different word orders, as percentages of languages (based on Clark & Clark, 1977)

  • Subject object verb 44%
  • Subject verb object 35%
  • Verb subject object 19%
  • Verb object subject 2%
  • Object verb subject 0%
  • Object subject verb 0%