ACQUIRING CONSTRAINTS ON MORPHOSYNTACTIC VARIATION SUBJECTVERB VERB SUBJECT

ACQUIRING CONSTRAINTS ON MORPHOSYNTACTIC VARIATION: SUBJECT-VERB ~ VERB SUBJECT WORD ORDER IN SPANISH Naomi Lapidus Shin 14 th International Congress for the Study of Child Language (IASCL) Lyon, France July 17 -21, 2017 1

Morphosyntactic variation Grammatical patterns that are probabilistically determined by multiple linguistic factors For example… 2

Spanish subject pronoun expression Two morphosyntactic options • Expressed subject: Ella vivió con su papá She lived with her father • Unexpressed subject: Vivió con su papá She lived with her father Ø Choice of expression is probabilistically determined 3

Spanish subject pronoun expression Factors that increase the likelihood of expressed subject pronouns: 1. 1 sg yo ‘I’ 2. Subject reference is switched rather than maintained • • Bueno era una niña que se le- que desde pequeña se le murió su madre, ella vivía con su papá. Y su papá era viudo, Ø se volvió a casar. Well she was a girl who – since (she was little) her mother died, she lived with her father. And her father was a widow, Ø got married again. (901 Mex) 4

Spanish subject pronoun expression Factors that increase the likelihood of expressed subject pronouns: 1. 1 sg yo ‘I’ 2. Subject reference is switched rather than maintained 3. Verb is a copula Ella es una niña ‘She is a girl’ 4. Verb in the imperfect tense Ella bailaba ‘She used to dance’ None of these contexts categorically requires a subject pronoun 1 sg, Switch-reference, Copulas, Verb tense are “CONSTRAINTS”. 5

How do children acquire constraints on morphosyntactic variation? 1. Pattern reproduction (e. g. Hudson Kam 2015, Labov 1989, Miller 2013, Roberts 1997, Smith et al. 2007, 2009). Pattern should apply to both frequent and infrequent lexical items. 2. Piecemeal learning. First learn high frequency sequences (no generalized pattern) and then gradually abstract over those sequences to extract generalizations/patterns. (e. g. Chevrot et al. 2009, Díaz-Campos 2004; Foulkes et al. 2001; Pine & Lieven 1997; Nardy et al. 2013; Tomasello 2003; etc. ) Patterns should emerge with frequent items first. For a nice overview contrasting the approaches see De Vogelaer et al. 2017 6

Piecemeal learning of morphosyntactic variation Patterns emerge first with high frequency lexical items Shin (2016): Children’s Spanish subject pronoun expression (also see Chevrot et al. 2009; Díaz-Campos 2004) 7

Children’s Spanish subject pronoun expression Age group (in Factors that significantly favor pronoun expression years) 1 sg yo ‘I’ Switch. Copulative Imperfect reference verbs ser/estar tense ’to be’ 6 -7 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✗ 8 -9 ✔ ✔ 10 -11 ✔ ✔ 8

Children’s Spanish subject pronoun expression Age group (in Factors that significantly favor pronoun expression years) 1 sg yo ‘I’ Switch. Copulative Imperfect reference verbs ser/estar tense ’to be’ 6 -7 ✔ ✔ ✔ ✗ 8 -9 ✔ ✔ 10 -11 ✔ ✔ 6 -7 year olds had not yet acquired the ‘Imperfect verb’ constraint 9

Constraints on variation: Frequency effects 6 -7 -year-olds: Constraints on Spanish subject pronoun expression 1 sg yo Switch‘I’ reference Copulative Imperfect verb ser/estar tense Infrequent verb lexemes ✔ ✔ ✔ ✗ Frequent verb lexemes ✔ ✔ *Frequent = verb lexeme comprises at least 1% of the data. 10

Constraints on variation: Frequency effects 6 -7 -year-olds: Constraints on Spanish subject pronoun expression 1 sg yo Switch‘I’ reference Infrequent verb lexemes Frequent verb lexemes Copulative Imperfect verb ser/estar tense ✔ ✔ ✔ ✗ ✔ ✔ *Frequent = verb lexeme comprises at least 1% of the data. 11

Frequency effects: Constraints on variation Do constraints on morphosyntactic variation emerge first with highly frequent lexical items? ✔ Subject pronoun expression: Impact of verb tense emerges first with high frequency verb lexemes. What about other morphosyntactic patterns? Current study: Subject-verb ~ Verb-subject alternation in Spanish 12

Subject-verb ~ Verb-subject word order in Spanish Subject-verb … y la rana entró y el perrito también. La rana se quedó…afuera de la casa (#108) … and the frog entered and the dog too. The frog remained… outside the house. Verb-subject … Y allí se quedó la rana. …. Y luego, llegaron a su casa, y estaba la puerta abierta y entró la rana. (#103) … And remained the frog there. … And later, (they) got to his house, and the door was open and entered the frog. 13

Constraints on Spanish subject-verb ~ verb-subject word order Among adults… Subjects are more likely to appear after a verb if: 1. they refer to a new referent rather than a given referent (i. e. one that has been previously introduced). 2. they occur with change of location verbs* like llegar, venir, caer ‘arrive, come, fall’. * ‘Change of Location’ class is a better predictor for Spanish word order than ‘Unaccusative’ References: Bentivoglio & Weber 1986, Delbeque 1988, Díaz-Campos 2001, Erker et al. 2017, Llompart 2016, Mayoral Hernández 2014, Nava 2007, Ocampo 2005, Olarrea 2012, , Roggia 2011, Silva-Corvalán 1982, 2014 14

Constraints on Spanish subject-verb ~ verb-subject word order How do children acquire these probabilistic constraints on word order? 15

María, ages 1; 7 – 2; 0: SV ~ VS Bel (2003, 2005) found that María (CHILDES, López Ornat) produced more VS with unaccusative verbs than with other verb types. 16

BUT… María’s SV ~ VS = Lexically restricted 125 tokens of SV~ VS variation between 1; 7 -2; 0 Ø 66% of Maria’s ‘unaccusative’ verbs are caerse ‘to fall’ • Se ha caído el nene, se cae el nene, etc. Ø 71% of estar ‘to be’ = postverbal • no está Maria, no está mamá, aquí están las botas Ø 100% ser ‘to be’ = preverbal • esta/este es X [demonstrative + is] Ø Mixed-effects regression • (i) Verb type (unaccusative, unergative, stative, transitive) not significant • (ii) Verb lexeme accounted for 75% of the variability! 17

This study: Research Questions 1. Is 6 -8 year-olds’ subject-verb ~ verb-subject variation constrained by factors that are known to constrain subject placement among adults? 2. Do the constraints apply equally to frequent and infrequent verb lexemes? 18

Participants 24 monolingual children in Mexico • Queretaro & Oaxaca • Ages 6; 3 -8; 5 • Mean age: 7; 4 19

Data collection – Sociolinguistic interviews – Picture book narration – Corpus of 27, 413 words 20

Data for study – Extracted: All finite verbs with expressed subject. N = 1, 379 – Excluded: • 92 impersonal haber ‘there is/there are’ • 30 Interrogatives • 426 transitive verbs querer, hacer, tener, etc. ‘want, do/make, have, etc. ’ • 10 experiencer-object verbs gustar ‘to be pleasing to’, doler ‘to hurt’ Total number of tokens for analysis: 821 tokens Overall rate of VS = 20% 21

Lexical frequency ‘Frequent verb lexeme’ = at least 1% of data set (following Erker & Guy 2012) – 1% of 1, 379= 13. 8, so verb lexeme must occur at least 14 times to be considered ‘frequent’. • Examples of frequent verbs: token frequency – estar ‘to be’: 191, ser ‘to be’: 190, ir(se) ‘to go/to leave’: 109 • Examples of infrequent verbs – jugar ‘play’: 5, regresar ‘return’: 4, sonreir ‘smile’: 3 Frequent verb lexemes, N tokens = 577 Infrequent verb lexemes, N tokens = 244 22

Predictor variables 1. Given/new: ‘Given’: Average distance from previous mention = 3 clauses back (Std Dev = 3). 2. Verb type. All main verbs coded as: • Change of location: caer(se), entrar, ir(se), llegar, meterse, regresar, salir, tropezarse, venir, voltearse, volver. ‘fall, enter, go/leave, arrive, go in, return, leave, bump into, come, turn around, return’ • Stative/Change of state: ser/estar, acabarse, alegrarse, aparecer, existir, nacer, morir, vivir, quedar(se), etc. ‘be, end, become happy, appear, exist, be born, die, live, remain/stay, etc. ’ • Other intransitives or ‘unergatives’: bailar, caminar, saltar/brincar, jugar, correr, llorar, hablar, etc. ‘dance, walk, jump, play, run, cry, talk, etc. ’ 23

Mixed effects binary logistic regression analysis Dependent variable: SV ~ VS Predictor variables: 1. Given/new 2. Verb type Random variable: Verb lexeme 24

Figure 1. Mixed effects logistic regression. Estimated means of VS by Given/New * Given New FREQUENT VERB LEXEMES * Given New INFREQUENT VERB LEXEMES 25

Trend in line with Sorace’s (2000) classification of ‘unaccusativity’ as gradient * Figure 2. Mixed effects logistic regression. Estimated means of VS by Verb Type Frequent verb lexemes Unergative Stative Change Location 26

Figure 3. Mixed effects logistic regression. Estimated means of VS by Verb Type * Unergative Stative Change Location FREQUENT VERB LEXEMES Unergative Stative Change Location INFREQUENT VERB LEXEMES 27

Research Questions 1. Is 6 -8 year-olds’ subject-verb ~ verb-subject variation constrained by factors that are known to constrain subject placement among adults? • Given/new - YES (cf. Díaz-Campos 2000) • Verb type – yes, but only for frequent verbs 2. Do the constraints apply equally to frequent and infrequent verb lexemes? • No. Constraints emerge first with frequent verbs. 28

How do children acquire morphosyntactic variation? Piecemeal learning: Probabilistic patterns should emerge with frequent items first. Evidence in favor: 1. Spanish subject pronoun expression • Influence of imperfect verbs emerges first with frequent verb lexemes (Shin 2016) 2. Spanish SV ~ VS word order • Ages 1; 7 – 2; 0 – lexically-restricted word order • Age 6 -8: Influence of Change of Location verb type emerges first with frequent verb lexemes. 29

Conclusion: Piecemeal learning. Well established for more categorical components of grammar (e. g. Aguado-Orea & Pine 2015; Pine & Lieven 1997; Tomasello 2003). Piecemeal learning characterizes the acquisition of (at least some) constraints on morphosyntactic variation, too. Grammatical patterns emerge based on experience with language. High frequency sequences are practiced more often and provide the opportunity to extract generalizations. 30

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THANK YOU! • Coding: Joely Morales, Desirée Ramírez-Urbaneja, Dominique Rodríguez • Transcription work: Dora La. Casse, Kristen Zadick • Funding: University of New Mexico, University of Montana 32