Table 1- Children's longitudinal data



Complex Syntax: Movement Rules

Reading: Friedmann, N., & Lavi, H. 2006. On the order of acquisition of A-movement, Wh-movement and V-C movement. In A. Belletti, E. Bennati, C. Chesi, E. Di Domenico, & I. Ferrari (Eds.), Language acquisition and development (pp. 211-217). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press/CSP.

Three types of movement rules

• Movement rules in simple clauses

– A movement (Unaccusative, Passive)

– WH (Ᾱ) movement (questions, topicalization)

– Verb movement (V1, V2)

• Movement rules in complex clauses

– WH (Ᾱ) movement (Relative clauses)

A-movement - Passive

Maryi was kissed ti by John

• Passive is A-movement rather than A’-movement

• The subject is the patient (no necessary agent)

• The transitive verb has unique morphology (with or without an auxiliary verb) which makes it intransitive

• The passive derives n-place predicate from n+1-place predicate

• Not all languages permit an agent-phrase (by phrase), and the same agent-phase can occur with non-passive verbs

What is passive used for?

A forgrounding and backgrounding operation

1. John kissed Mary

2. Mary was kissed (by John)

3. Mary, John kissed (topicalization)

4. As for Mary, John kissed her (left-dislocation)

Issues in acquisition

• Reversible vs. non-reversible

• Actional vs. non-actional

• Adjectival vs. verbal

• Do children understand the by-phrase?

• Comprehension vs. Production

• Actional vs. non-actional

Kids are better at actional passives than nonactional passives (Fox & Grodzinsky 1995):

1. Jasmine was combed (by Wendy)

2. Peter Pan was feared (by Captain Hook)

• Do children understand the by-phrase?

Kids are better at short passives (without the by-phrase) earlier than long passives.

The by (agent)-phrase problem (stative- preference)

• Adjective Passive is acquired earlier than verbal Passive (Hogan, 1978), Borer & Wexler (1987).

• Adjective (stative structures) do not permit by-phrases.

• By-phrase is less frequent in input

• Reliance on Canonical word order

The canonical sentence strategy for English:

NP - V - NP = Agent - Action - Theme.

Turner & Rommentveit (1967): Reversible passives are later acquired than non-reversible passives.

• Canonical word order is preferred acquisition device.

• It’s the most basic in many languages (Givon, 1984).

The example of Hebrew

The passive is morphologically derived using different conjugations (pattern).

|Adjectival Passive |Passive |Active |

|CaCuC (pa’ul) |niCCaC (nif’al)* |CaCaC (pa’al) |

|shavur ‘broken’ |nishbar ‘was broken’ |shavar ‘broke’ |

|MeCuCaC (mefu’al) |CuCaC (pu’al) |CiCeC (pi’el) |

|mesupar ‘has a hair cut’ |supar ‘got a hair cut’ |siper ‘gave a hair cut’ |

| |mesupar ‘gets …’ | |

|muCCaC (muf’al) |huCCaC (huf’al) |hiCCiC (hif’il) |

|mustar ‘hidden’ |hustar ‘ was hidden’ |histir ‘hid’ |

| |Mustar ‘is hidden’ | |

*This conjugation is also unaccusative, e.g., the door opened

Acquisition of Passive in Hebrew

• Adjectival passives are used from the age of 3, but verbal passives do not emerge in Hebrew-speaking children until school age (Berman & Sagi (1981), Borer & Wexler (1987), Berman (1994))

• While preschool children comprehend the adjectival passive, comprehension of verbal passive is later (Sudhalter & Braine 1985).

• In Hebrew, passive is fully acquired by the age of 9, Nif’al is acquired first and the other two conjugations only by 8-9 (Ravid, Landau and Lubazky (2003)).

• Nif’al (niCCaC) is acquired first because the same conjugation also has an unaccusative reading.

Findings

Findings – by conjugation

Comprehension of passive

• Looking at the overall performance, the 3s and 4s seem to score slightly above chance, while the 5s and 6s show comprehension of passive (~80% success).

• Comparing the two conjugations, all age groups score better (and above chance) with nif’al.

• Both 3s and 4s seem to score at chance (50%) with pu’al

Passive – A crosslinguistic study (COST A33)

Preliminary Summary of findings – 5s

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Ᾱ-Movement

Questions in English

• Yes/no questions are marked only by subject-auxiliary inversion, i.e., an overt syntactic change in word order in which the auxiliary is raised into C. Do-support operates when there is no auxiliary is the declarative.

• [Spec, CP] is the target for overt Wh-movement both in matrix and embedded clauses, with subject-auxiliary inversion in matrix clauses, but not in embedded clause. Do-support operates when there is no auxiliary is the declarative.

a. What did the child see?

b. The teacher wondered what the child saw.

Questions in Adult Hebrew

• Yes/no questions are marked only by rising intonation without overt syntactic change in word order. In formal speech, yes/no questions are preceded by a question mark haim 'whether'

• [Spec, CP] is the target for overt Wh-movement both in matrix and embedded clauses, but no obligatory verb raising or subject-auxiliary inversion occurs.

1. a. ma ra'a ha-yeled?

‘what saw the-child?’

b. ma ha-yeled ra'a?

‘what the-child saw?’

2. a. ha-mora sha'ala ma ha-yeled ra'a

‘the-teacher asked what the-child saw’

b. ha-mora sha'ala ma ra'a ha-yeled

‘the-teacher asked what saw the-child’

• There is no difference between matrix and embedded clause.

Acquisition of Questions in English (Klima and Bellugi 1966)

Phase I

• Children use neither modals nor auxiliaries

• Yes/no questions are marked only with rising intonation

• Wh-word appears sentence initially in wh-questions without inversion.

• A limited set, ‘what,’ ‘where’ and ‘why,’ ( ‘where (NP) go?,’ ‘w(NP) doing?’)

• Children do not seem to understand wh-questions and their responses are often inappropriate (Radford 1990)

Phase II

• Auxiliary verbs are used in subject auxiliary inversion for yes/no questions

• Auxiliary verbs are not used for wh-questions.

• Wh-questions involve productive use of an extended set of wh-words, but no inversion.

Phase III

• Children make adult use of question formation, which involves subject-auxiliary inversion.

Acquisition of Questions in Hebrew

Armon-Lotem (1996) - Longitudinal study of 4 children aged 1;6 - 3;0. 4 phases.

a. Formulaic forms

a. ma asit? [Lior1;09;25]

what you-did

'what have you done?' (limited to dirtying her pants)

b. ma kara? [Lior 1;09;16]

‘what happened?’

These formulaic questions correlate with the acquisition of the gender and number distinctions (AgrPrt) and lack of overt knowledge of Tns.

b. Non-formulaic questions with verbs inflected for gender & number

lama ata boxe? [Lior 1;11;00]

why you-sg-ms cry-sg-ms

'Why are you crying?'

This phase correlates with the use of Tns and to certain extent AgrS in the declarative sentences.

c. Productive use of questions with all inflections & null subject

a. ma asiti aba? [Lior 2;01;18]

what I-did Daddy

'what have I done, Daddy?'

b. ma samti? [Lior 2;01;18]

what I-put

'What did I put?'

d. Adult-like full questions

a. lama at lo kanit et ze?

why you-sg-fm not bought-2-sg-fm ACC it

‘Why didn’t you buy it?’ [Yuval 2;06]

b. ma hu lo hevi li?

what he not brought-3-sg-ms to-me

‘What didn’t he bring me?’ [Yuval 2;07]

Adultlike wh-questions are used just before complementizers are mastered.

Types of complex clauses

• Complement clauses – I want to drink, I know that she is late

• Coordinate clauses – I like juice and she likes water

• Adverbial clauses – I went to sleep when we got home

• Relative clauses – The man who Mary saw was funny

Preconjunctional subordinate clause (PSC)

a. roce Yuvali yiftax xashmal

want Yuvali will-open light

'I want that Yuvali will turn on the light' [Yuval 2;01;00]

a. *ze regel koevet lax

this foot-fm hurts-fm you

'This is the foot that hurts you' [Lior 1;10;08]

b. *ze shaon ose tuktuk

this clock does ticktock

'This is a clock that goes ticktock' [Leor 2;1]

Order of Acquisition

Order for English (Bloom et al 1980, Bowerman 1979)

1) Complement clauses – I want to drink, I know that she is late

2) Coordinate clauses – I like juice and she likes water

3) Adverbial clauses – I went to sleep when we got home

4) Relative clauses – The man who Mary saw was funny

Order for Hebrew ( Kaplan 1983, Dromi and Berman 1986)

1) Coordinate clauses

2) Subordination, complementation by an embedded question precedes complementation by a declarative sentential complement,

3) Adverbials clauses for causativity and then for temporality.

4) Relative clauses.

First Occurrence of the Three Types of Subordinate Clauses in Six Hebrew-Speaking Children.

| |Asaf |Hagar |Leor |Lior |Sivan |Smadar |

|Relative |2;1;10 |2;1;20 |2;2;05 |2;1;27 |1;11;2 |1;10;19 |

|Adverbial |2;1;10 |2;1;19 |2;2;25 |2;2;18 |2;3;12 |1;10;19 |

|Complement |2;2;28 |2;2;04 |2;2;11 |2;2;25 |2;2;18 |1;11;13 |

Relative clauses

The girli that John kissed ti is nice

• Relative clauses involve an A'-movement which yields coindexation of an NP in the main clause with a gap in the embedded clause, through an operator.

• The operator carries the theta-role of its trace/gap

• subject vs. object

• Some languages have resumptive pronouns in RCs

ha-yalda she dani nishek ota nexmada

the-girl that Dani kissed her nice

'The girl that Dani kissed is nice'

Types of relative clauses

• Subject RC

– The man who _ reads the book is my friend

– I saw the man who _ read my book

– האיש ש_קרא את הספר הוא ידידי

– פגשתי את האיש ש_קרא את הספר

• Object RC

– The man who David saw _ is my friend

– I met the man who David saw _

– האיש שדויד ראה _ הוא ידידי

– פגשתי את האיש שדויד ראה _

Comprehension of relative clauses by monolingual TD children (Sheldon 1974)

• Act-out task

– [The dog that __ jumps over the pig] bumps into the lion [SS]

– The dog stands on [the horse that the giraffe jumps over __] [OO]

– [The lion that the horse bumps into __ ] jumps over the giraffe [SO]

– The pig bumps into [the horse that __ jumps over the giraffe] [OS]

Findings

• SS & OO are easier than SO & OS

• Error in OS: The pig bumps into the horse and __ jumps over the giraffe (49%)

• Why?

Nonadult competence (Tavakolian 1981)

• Linear rather than hierarchical reading

• Problems: Continuity. Negative Evidence (How do children unlearn the structure? )

Adult competence + processing complexity (Goodluck & Tavakolian 1982)

• The errors are the outcome of the complexity of the relative clause

6. d’. The pig bumps into [the horse that __ hops up and down] [OS]

• Correct in 76%

Adult competence + pragmatic factors (Hamburger & Crain 1982)

• Felicity conditions - What is said should be appropriate for the goals of the conversation (Grice 1989)

• Relative clauses should be used only when there is a choice between two identical objects.

• A change in the original experiment: two horses ( 95% at age 5, 69% at age 3

Friedmann, N., & Lavi, H. (2006). On the order of acquisition of A-movement, Wh-movement and V-C movement. In A. Belletti, E. Bennati, C. Chesi, E. Di Domenico, & I. Ferrari (Eds.), Language acquisition and development (pp. 211-217). Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press/CSP.

Subjects: 60 Hebrew speaking children aged 2;2-3;10: 21 children aged 2;2-2;9, 19 children aged 2;10-3;2, and 20 children aged 3;3-3;10.

Task: SR - 80 sentences (8 categories by syntactic complexity), 4 words.

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Findings

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"No correlation was found between repetition of any of the movement types and age (Rpb < 0.22 for all the sentences with movement), and no significant difference in repetition was detected between the three age groups: For example, a 2;3 year old girl succeeded in repeating all the V-C sentences, whereas a 3;10 boy failed in them. Two girls aged 2;5 succeeded in repeating Wh sentences, whereas 4 children aged 3;7 failed in them." (p. 214)

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