First Verbs

1. First Verbs By Michael Tomasello Presented by Megan “KK” Anderson and John “B-cakes” Korba

2. the Verb Island Hypothesis • Tomasello argues that grammatical constructions are lexically and semantically restricted in early language learning. • This differs from generativist views, like Chomsky’s: “Irrespective of questions of maturation, order of presentation, or selective availability of evidence, the result of language acquisition is as if it were instantaneous: In particular, intermediate states attained do not change the principles available for interpretation of data at later states in a way that affects the state attained.”

3. Introduction • Developmental psychologist, not a linguist • Verbs are important because they lead to the development of complex sentences • Attempts to show that verbs are important organizing elements early on • Book does not attempt to resolve the problem • Or even the Cognitive v. Generative debate

4. In the beginning was the verb • Early vocabularies often show a preponderance of object labels • New research shows that nonnominals may be just as frequent • Especially in languages like Japanese and Korean • Describes child’s language in it’s own terms • Four negative assumptions

5. Methods and T’s LangUage • Travis (T) is Tomasello’s daughter. • Wife recorded mornings and he recorded afternoons • Interpreted meaning through context of learning and of use • Includes relational words (more, bye-bye) • Designated same types of sentences • Put hat on these feet = put that in the box

6. Change of State Verbs • Presence, absence, and recurrence of objects (where, find) • Presence, absence, and recurrence of activities (help, stop) • Exchange and possession of objects (thanks, here-go) • Location of objects (up, down) • Movement of objects (bring, take) • State of objects (open, close) • Learned opposites almost simultaneously • Often one word utterances; objects came next

7. Activity verbs and sentences • Some verbs classified as Activity actually Change of State for adults • Activity verbs describe widely different actions, with no common semantic feature among them (unlike change of state verbs) • Actor acting on object vs. Actor simply acting • Actor more likely to be expressed in verbs which did not take objects.

8. Other grammatical structures • Sentence without verbs • 4 types: • Object-object constructions (“Mommy sock”, “Book table”) • Possessive constructions (“Mommy’s sock”) • Locative constructions (“Books on table”, “Bugs here”) • Attributive constructions (“Flowers pretty”, “Little kitty”)

9. Noun morphology • Possessive and plurals early • Possessive - first intonation, then –s • Plurals, before 18 months lexically restricted (chips, never chip) • Probably tied to concept “Two ____s”, which she learned at 17 months • Didn’t have 100% performance-irregular forms; overgeneralization • Foots, sheeps, describing her face: “Two ears, two eyes, but just one no” (nose)

10. Verbal morphology • First past tense at 15 month, stuck • Past tense learned, seem to be lexically restricted • 66% of past tense used were strong/irregular • 17 months, uses present progressive in –ing, also lexically restricted • By 19 months, seemed to have generalized -ing and began to use it regularly • Change of state verbs tended to be in past tense • Activity verbs tended to be in present tense • (aspect!)

11. Summary • Cognitive linguistics • Symbolic integration • T combines two words early on • GONE RAISIN: Raisin Raisin • Tomasello argues these constructions are pre-grammatical. T understands the concepts, but does not know how to manipulate syntax to express the relationships.

12. Summary • After 18 months T begins using three-word constructions • Daddy driving keys (Agent-Action-Instrument) • Mostly likely the result of combining previous constructions she had • Little stickers up here! Previous constructions: Little _____ (object). Up here ______ (object). • She maintains structure in three-word-sentences from previous two-word constructions • Similar findings in Dutch, which Tomasello argues is proof of generality of symbolic integration

13. Syntagmatic and Paradigmatic categories • Ninio’s (1998) hypothesis: Children do not have a class of verbs until verbs have appeared in the argument slots of other verbs (same is true for nouns) • Early on, T showed class of nouns (common and proper), but no verbs • Inconsistent verbal morphology • Often did not use past tense when necessary, because she did not have morphology • 66% of T’s past tense verbs were irregular, may have inhibited development of verbal class • Verbs did not operate as a coherent class, rather as individual islands of organization

14. Verb Island Hypothesis • The development of marking grammatical relationships varies by verb • Opposing theory: systematic marking of grammatical relationships • Difficult to establish, due to the different pragmatic situations in which each verb is used might account for different constructions • Pragmatic determines some, but not all of the reasons she used certain constructions with certain verbs • No instances of inanimate Actors/Agents until 20 months 

15. Social-cognitive basIs: cultural learning • Tomasello argues that “at the earliest stages of word combination, children may mimic adult syntactic devices such as word order and grammatical morphology without understanding their productive functions.” • Words and syntax learned pragmatically • Same skills used to learn other social and cultural skills used in learning language • “Uniqueness of product does not imply uniqueness of process” (Bates et al. 1991)

16. Our study • Russian has more verb morphology than English, so interesting to see if the same trends were noticable • CHILDES Database • http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/ • Subject: Varvara, Russian, studied between 18 – 28 months

17. OUR study: 18 months • Mother/Father • A lot of naming things (Nominative) • Mostly two word constructions • Varvara used verbs, mostly in present tense • 3rd person sg, even for herself and interlocutor • Does use some personal pronouns (‘you’ accusative singular) and possessive ‘grandfather’s) • Made some mistakes with verbal morphology

18. OUR study: 20 months • Grandmother • Fewer instances of verbs among same number of utterances • Did use first and second singular • Generalizing verbal paradigm

19. OUR study: 22 months • Mother • Uses more verbs in correct persons/tenses • More present tense • Some verbs overlap in use of past and present tense • Begins to use 3 word constructions (Actor – Action – Object/Location/Instrument)

20. OUR study: 24 months • Mother • Increase in verbal lexicon • Able to hold conversations • Made mistakes: 3pl for 3sg (mother corrects her) By 28 months • No mistakes in verbal morphology • Varied range of verbs and usage

21. Conclusions • Russian has verbal morphology • Nevertheless, verbs are lexically restricted until generalization begins • Stoll (2005) – aspect not acquired simultaneously either in Russian • Aktionsart perfectives acquired sooner than ‘Natural’ perfectives • May have to do with regularity

22. Bibliography • Bates, E. et. al. Biobehavioral foundations of language development. Hinsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. • CHILDES Database. Carnegie Mellon University. http://childes.psy.cmu.edu. • Ninio, A. 1988. On formal grammatical categories in early child language. Categories and Processes in Language Acquisition. Levy et. al, eds. Hinsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 11-30. • Tomasello, M. 1992. First Verbs. Cambridge U Press. 383pp. • Stoll, S. 2005. Beginning and End in the Acquisition of the Perfective aspect in Russian. Journal of Child Language 32, 805-825.