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Language, Mind, and Brain by 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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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. Whats this? (chunk!) > What this is? > What is this?

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2.3 Inappropriate and ungrammatical usage Q: Is it true that childrens errors result from faulty abstract rules?

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2.3 Inappropriate and ungrammatical usage Q: Is it true that childrens 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 dont 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 dont 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 Tomasellos webpage: http://email.eva.mpg.de/~tomas/index.html

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2.6 Lexically based patterns Q: How much of childrens 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 childrens 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 dont succeed in reliably forming new transitive constructions until age 8.

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2.7 Mosaic acquisition Q: What is Chomskys claim about acquisition?

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2.7 Mosaic acquisition Q: What is Chomskys 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.