Syntactic Knowledge ECSE 500 Spring 2014 February 26

Syntactic Knowledge ECSE 500 Spring 2014

February 26 Language learning activities – Brittany, Mary, Brooke, and Michelle Morphology language sample activity Syntactic Knowledge Pragmatic Skills

Semantic Development Acquisition of words and their meanings First words at about 12 months Initially this is a slow, gradual process Maybe learn a couple of words a week Object words, commands, some social words (bye- bye) Then, several months after it begins, word learning speeds up dramatically Usually begins when child’s vocabulary is around 50 - 100 words The “Vocabulary Burst” or “Naming Explosion

The Vocabulary Burst Rapid increase in the rate of word learning in very early childhood. Estimated that the average 5 -year-old knows about 6000 words If child knows 100 words at 18 -months, this means they learn 5900 words over the next 3 ½ years. Almost 5 words/day “Fast-Mapping” How do they do it? Naming insight: Everything has a name and there’s a name for everything Application of word-learning strategies or principles specific to this task:

Word-learning errors Undergeneralization Using a word to narrowly, e. g. only using “cat” for your own pet More common in early word learning, prior to naming explosion Overgeneralization Using a word too broadly, e. g. using “cat” to label cats, dogs, cows, etc… More common after the naming explosion Do they really think a cow is a cat? More likely it is “lexical gap filling”

The 14 Morphemes (Brown, 1970) 14 early-learned morphemes that are essential to learning English syntax plural –s, posessive –s, progressive –ing, past –ed, irregular past, third person -s in, on the, a copula be, auxiliary be (contracted and uncontracted) Vastly increase the complexity of language Use Mean Length of Utterance in Morphemes as a measure of children’s syntactic development.

What are children learning? Are they simply remembering and imitating what they hear or are they learning syntactic rules? Good evidence that they are learning rules How do children treat words they’ve never heard before: The “Wug” Test Overregularization of syntactic patterns

The “Wug” Test (Berko, 1958) This is a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two ----. Can do this for possessive, progressive, past morphemes

How do kids do? Children as young as 3 productively use all of these morphemes on novel words -ing is acquired the earliest (consistency of form) Plural, possessive, and past allomorphs next /wugz/ /wuks/ /wuc. Iz/ /wugd/ /wukd/ /wud. Id/ Those adding the extra vowel are acquired a little later, but even children as young as 4 regularly apply the correct allomorph to the stem.

Overregularization Application of morphological and syntactic rules Typically see this with irregular forms Goed, eated, hurted Mouses, mooses, childs Children as old as 7 overregularize as will adults learning a new language Syntactic rules are represented as such, the exceptions are stored explicitly. Double markings: “wented” or “mices”

Syntactic development Shortly after the vocabulary burst, kids begin to combine words. “mommy sock” Early word combinations typically express a common set of meanings Recurrence “More bottle” Negation “No bottle” Possession “My bottle” Actor-action “Baby eat”

Syntactic Knowledge Syntax refers to the rules used for combining words to form sentences. – So that there is a systematic way to put words together, NOT in a random order – E. g. , Subject + Predicate + Object is the rule for basic sentences. E. g. , “ John reads a book” E. g. , “Mary is happy”

Syntactic Knowledge The knowledge of how words can be combined in meaningful sentences, phrases, or utterances. Mean length of utterance Complexity of sentences Negation Interrogatives Passive voice Pronouns

Syntactic Knowledge In English the basic order for a simple sentence is: Noun – verb – object The boy kicked the ball. The rule allows us to know that the boy did the kicking and the ball was what he kicked. Kicked the ball the boy. Without rules for order we have no meaning.

Telegraphic Speech A simplified manner of speech in which only the most important content words are used to express ideas, while grammatical function words (such as determiners, conjunctions, and prepositions) as well as inflectional endings are often omitted. Why do children produce telegraphic speech? – Mainly because children possess only limited processing capacity, consequently, – They choose more salient words which are nouns, verbs, and adjectives in adult speech.

Telegraphic Speech Children’s use of telegraphic speech may indicate their level of semantic and syntactic development. More juice Play more All gone

Complexity vs Word Count Measured by Mean length of utterance – MLUm or MLUw MLUm More than number of words Accounts for complexity due to morphemes, and syntax # of morphemes divided by the number of words spoken

Mean Length of Utterance Stage Age (M) MLUm Stage I 15 -30 1. 75 Stage II 28 -36 2. 25 Stage III 36 -42 2. 75 Stage IV 40 -46 3. 5 Stage V 42 -52+ 4. 0

Pronouns Enhance semantics and syntax Why? Pronoun takes the place of a noun –semantic (word meaning) Pronoun refers to a previous noun in a sentence, therefore, it is important to use correct positioning. Because of the reflective nature of pronouns it is difficult for young children to learn to use them correctly. I and me

Negation NO! No sleep I no want to sleep I don’t want to go to sleep

Negation Progression of use of negation: Stage 1: add no to the beginning or end of the sentence No want some food No the sun is shining Wear mitten no Stage 2: insert a negative element He no bite you. I no want envelope. I can’t see you. That no fish school. Stage 3: insert a negative element, include an auxilliary I don’t want no food. I didn’t did it. No, it isn’t.

Intonation and Interrogatives Stage 1: external question marker (rising intonation) I ride train? Who that? Where milk go? Stage 2: subj-aux inversion in Y/N, but not wh-Q Does the kitty stand up? Did Mommy pinch her finger? Why kitty can’t stand up? What you are smiling? Stage 3: subj-aux inversion in wh-Q, too What did you doed? What does coffee taste like?

Passive voice Give me an example of passive voice.

Effects of disabilities Problematic syntactic structures include relationships between words in sentences and phrases. Understanding who a pronoun applies to and what function is served by a direct object and an indirect object are examples of this syntactic skill. Finally, at least one of these studies demonstrated that oral language production did not automatically improve with age for students with learning disabilities as it does for other students (Wiig et al. , 1977).

Strategies to support syntactic development Shared book-reading Parallel-talk and self-talk (modeling)