GRS LX 700 Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory

1. GRS LX 700Language Acquisition andLinguistic Theory Week 11.Maturation, passives, A-chains and phases

2. Continuity or Maturation? • Pretty well accepted that there is something “built-in” concerning the acquisition of language (UG). • A limiting version of this is the Continuity Hypothesis (Pinker 1984) (or Rigidity) which says that what’s built in is there from the beginning and doesn’t change.

3. The situation • Quite a bit of evidence shows that kids know a lot about the principles of UG from as early as they can be tested. • Yet, languages do differ from one another—kids end up speaking different languages depending on the language in the environment, so they do learnsomething.

4. The situation • So there are in principle two dimensions of development: • learning language-particular properties • development of the grammar itself • Grammar development is what has been argued (poverty of the stimulus) not to be learnable by experience. Thus, it must be in some way genetically provided.

5. The situation • Being genetically specified does not mean “present from the outset” however. Ample evidence from other biological systems of this. • Pretty much the only conclusion available to deal with time delay of innately specified aspects of grammar is that parts of the grammar matures.

6. What if we don’t like maturation as an explanation? • Two options: • Grammar doesn’t mature in a biological sense; it is learned. But we don’t believe that, because we have good reasons to think that it’s just not possible. • Grammar doesn’t mature in a biological sense; it is there from the outsetin its totality. (“Continuity”, “Rigidity”) • Neither option seems very good.

7. Rigidity is hard to justify • Kids don’t seem to have identical linguistic properties as adults. How can we explain this without some difference in the system? • Why do kids take so long to reach adult-like competence? If the data is available, why don’t kids use it immediately? If the learning mechanism changes, how does it change? • How far back does Rigidity go? One would suspect that “fertilization of the egg” is too far…

8. The way things seem to be • We have evidence that kids do know quite a bit of what we posit to be in UG and very early, often as early as we can test it. • We have evidence that in certain areas kids’ grammars differ from adults. We also have in some of these cases evidence that the differences seem to go away around the same age across kids (& across languages).

9. It becomes interesting to know… • What are the principles that kids know as early as we can test? • What are the principles that are delayed, and until when are they delayed? • Wexler (1997) suggests the terminology Continuous Development for this model (vs. Rigidity). (so, *tadpole  frog)

10. Is maturation a cop-out? • If a kid doesn’t behave according to Principle X of UG, we say that kid’s grammar needs to mature until it gets Principle X. Can’t we just say that about anything? Can we ever show that “it just matures” is false? • Actually, yes—if it matures, if it is on a biological schedule, then it can’t really differ from language to language (at least to any greater extent than, say, malnutrition can delay puberty).

11. How different is a kid’s grammar? • In principle, it could be quite different. Tadpoles do become frogs in the real, biological world. • But it seems like what kids have is pretty close to what adults have, based on empirical studies—leading to the hypothesis that there is a close connection between kids grammars and adult grammars…

12. UG-constrained maturation • Borer & Wexler (1992) introduced the hypothesis as UG-Constrained Maturation, which says that all child grammatical representations are representations that are available in UG. • In other words, a kid’s syntactic tree is one that could exist in some adult language without violating principles of UG.

13. UG-constrained maturation • This hypothesis only allows for certain kinds of “kid deficits”—a kid grammar can rule out a structure, which an adult (speaking some adult language) would consider grammatical, but it cannot allow a structure that no adult language would make grammatical.

14. Optional infinitives • Young, young kids show evidence of knowing how to inflect, move verbs, etc. They know the parameter settings for their language, even. Kids know a lot. • But—kid allows nonfinite forms in contexts that adult requires finite forms in. • How does this fit in to UGCM?

15. Optional infinitives • Take the Wexler (1998) view that kids don’t know that D is interpretable. This can be seen as another kind of “coordination” issue—coordinating the syntactic system and the interpretation system. • As long as the syntactic system doesn’t require T or Agr, this fits in with UGCM. • That is, we take “Have T” and “Have Agr” as being principles outside the syntax—maybe tied to discourse.

16. Passives • John kicked the ball (active) • The ball was kicked (by John) (passive) • Standard analysis: the ball starts off as complement of V in both; in the passive, the agent is suppressed and the verb is deprived of its ability to assign Case. Thus, the ball moves into SpecIP (SpecAgrSP) to get Case. • The balli was kicked ti.

17. Passives • The balli was kicked ti. • The chain between the ball and t created by moving the ball into SpecIP is an A-chain (a chain whose top is in a position where you can only find arguments). Like subject position (SpecTP or SpecAgrSP). • And not like SpecCP, where you can find things like why, or when. That’s known as an “A-bar position,” or a non-argument position.

18. Kids vs. passives… • It was observed early on (Horgan 1978, Maratsos et al. 1985) that kids have trouble with passives. • But there are a couple of asymmetries: • Kids are better at actional passives than nonactional passives: • Jasmine was combed (by Wendy) • Peter Pan was feared (by Captain Hook) • Kids are better at short passives (without the by-phrase) earlier than long passives.

19. Why are kids better at actional passives? • In English at least, it seems like there are two kinds of words with passive morphology: • Verbal:The suspect was seen. • Adjectival:His hair seems combed.

20. Verbal and adjectival passives • Generally, non-action verbs make poor adjectival passives (while action verbs are fine): • *The suspect seems seen. The seen suspect (fled). Seen though the movie was, John went to see it again. • The cloth seems torn. The torn cloth (is useless). Torn though the cloth was, John used it anyway. • So: Action verbs can form adjectival passives. • So: Maybe the reason that kids do better with “actional passives” is that they are only using adjectival passives?

21. Verbal vs. adjectival passives • Borer & Wexler (1987): the early passives that we see kids produce/comprehend are adjectival passives. • The crucial difference (on B&W’s analysis) between verbal and adjectival passives has to do with where the modification of the argument structure (removing the Agent/external argument) happens. • adjectival passive: in the lexicon(turns it into a real adjective) • verbal passive: in the syntax • So, kids can’t do the syntactic passive. Why?

22. Verbal vs. adjectival passives • A likely difference between the two: • verbal passives move their argument into the usual external argument position • adjectival passives just start their argument in the usual external argument position • So, perhaps the movement of the internal argument to the external position is the problem. • Borer & Wexler (1987) propose what we can call the A-chain Deficit Hypothesis:A-chains are unavailable to kidswith a “Proto-UG”.

23. Adjectival passives and verbal passives • So, the “passives” that we see young kids produce are actually deceptions. They are not really verbal passives—and if the ACDH is right, they couldn’t be—but are adjectival. • Looking at Hebrew, where adjectival passives and verbal passives are distinct, B&W observe that adjectival passives are (clearly) used early, and verbal passive only appear at “school age” (Berman & Sagi 1981). • There is an additional complication in Hebrew that we won’t get into here, which involves the availability of unmoved Themes in verbal passives. B&W87 argued that kids were also lacking the case assignment mechanism that allows this; we might alternatively think of it as being like the Russian Genitive of Negation discussed later, involving an (optional) “hidden” movement.

24. Predictions • A-chain Deficit Hypothesis:A-chains are unavailable to kidswith a “Proto-UG”. • So, suppose that this is true. What are the predictions? • Of course, (real, verbal) passives will be impossible. • But also anything else with an A-chain. • Ouch. Well, soon after 1987, people came to believe that pretty much every sentence has an A-chain (VPISH, subject starts inside VP), so that can’t be right as stated. It has to be something special about raising the Theme. One suggestion (B&W92) is “non-canoncial -role assignment”, though that’s not great either, since we need to add some kind of theory of what canonical -role assignment is.

25. Other things with A-chains • The VPISH has given us a hint that perhaps “A-chain” is not exactly the right concept, but let’s focus on the kind of object-to-subject movement that we see in passives. • Other obvious candidate: Unaccusatives. • This opens up a bigger can of worms. Do kids have problems with unaccusatives? What is the nature of the problems?

26. Unaccusatives • There are two kinds of intransitive verbs: • Unergative (subject-type argument) • Unaccusative (object-type argument) • The unergative verbs have an external argument— just like a transitive verb. • The unaccusative verbs have only an internal argument, which moves to subject position—just like in a passive.

27. Unaccusatives ≈ passives • An unaccusative is structurally like a passive: • The traini arrived ti. • An unergative is not. • The baby giggled. • So we expect kids to have the same troubles with unaccusatives and passives. • In particular, we expect kids to have no way to represent an unaccusative. • But we know kids use and understand verbs that are, for adults, unaccusative. So what is the implication?

28. S-homophony • Borer & Wexler suggest that what’s happening when a kid comprehends/uses an “unaccusative” verb is that the verb is misanalyzed as an unergative. • It has to be, the kid—by hypothesis—can’t represent an unaccusative structure. • The boat sank. • *The boati sank ti. • The doll giggled. • The reason this happens is that the surface form doesn’t distinguish between unergatives and unaccusatives. They are “S(yntactic)-homophones.”

29. S-homophony • That is: the (immature) kid can’t tell the difference between an unergative and an unaccusative. • Is there evidence of that? • Maybe, there’s some. But there’s also some evidence against it. • Is this even conceptually a good idea? • Probably not. Why is an unaccusative unaccusative? Because the argument is a Theme. UTAH says Themes are in object position. So when a kid uses sink or fall do they think the argument is an Agent? Or do they violate UTAH? And once their grammar matures, how do they recover?

30. B&W: Pro-conflation: Causatives • Causativization adds a causative argument (in English, it happens to be Ø): • Mom’s favorite vase broke. • Timmy broke Mom’s favorite vase. • In English (not in all languages, e.g., Hebrew), this can only happen if there wasn’t already an external argument. Works for unaccusatives, but not for unergatives or transitives: • The doll giggled. • *Peter giggled the doll. • Peter kicked the ball. • *I kicked Peter the ball (‘I made Peter kick the ball.’)

31. Causatives • If kids can’t represent unaccusatives (that is, if all intransitives are for them unergative), then they can’t make that distinction. • Kids hear: • The door opened. Daddy opened the door. • The kids cannot reach the (adult-)correct conclusion that causativization only works for unaccusatives. It must be possible for any intransitive. • And indeed, kids over-apply causativization to unergatives too: • Daddy giggled the doll.

32. Anti-conflation: Kim (1997) • Kim (1997) observed that in Korean, kids make a “negation misplacement” error only with respect to objects and unaccusative subjects, never to unergative or transitive subjects: • na an pap mek-e (adult: na pap(-ul) an mek-e)I neg rice eat‘I do not eat rice.’ • an ippal ssek-e (adult: ippal(-i) an ssek-e)neg teeth rot‘I won’t have a cavity.’

33. Anti-conflation: Guasti (2002) • Guasti also notes (in the textbook, without any citation of any other study) that Italian kids generally get the auxiliary selection right—much earlier than the purported maturation. • Gianni {è, *ha} andato. (adults)Gianni {is, has} left‘Gianni left.’ • Diana between 2;0 and 2;7 produced 22 relevant sentences and 19 of them correctly had be. • Guasti concludes that this is bad for the “maturational account”—but it’s really only bad for the ACDH version of it. Something else could still be maturing.

34. Pro-conflation: Babyonyshev et al. (1998) • Testing the idea from Borer & Wexler (1987) that unaccusatives are analyzed as if they are unergatives by kids in the pre-passive stage of life. • Turns out that Russian provides a nice test of unaccusativity/unergativity with the “genitive of negation” so we can directly check to see how kids are analyzing their intransitives.

35. Russian genitive of negation • In negative sentences, an object in the scope of negation can be accusative (if the object is definite/specific) orgenitive (if the object is indefinite/non-specific). • So: ability to be marked with genitive a property of VP-internal indefinite objects. • Ja ne poluchil pis’ma.I not received letter-acc.pl‘I didn’t receive the/some letters.’ • Ja ne poluchil (nikakix) pisem.I not received (neg-kind-gen.pl) letter-gen.pl‘I didn’t receive any letters.’ • Ja poluchil pis’ma/*pisem.I received letter-acc.pl/*letter-gen.pl‘I received the/some letters.’

36. Russian genitive of negation • Arguments of unaccusatives and passives (pronounced in their postverbal, VP-internal base position) can be marked with GoN. • A small class of verbs requires its arguments to be marked with GoN (regardless of definiteness); includes existential be.

37. Russian genitive of negation • Base-generated objects (arguments of passives and unaccusatives) still have a “hidden A-chain”, however. There is some relation between these objects and the subject position that is (like?) an A-chain. • (They “move covertly”—it’s as if they move to subject position, except that you pronounce the trace instead.) • We believe this based on the following facts about licensing of negative phrases.

38. Covert movement of genitive argument • Point 1: When clausal negation co-occurs in the same clause with negative phrases, all is well. • [ any .. neg ], [ … neg … any] • Point 2: Negation in a lower clause can’t license a negative phrase in the upper clause. • * [ any … [ … neg … ]]

39. Covert movement of genitive argument • Point 3: A raised negative phrase subject has to raise to a clause with negation—not from a clause with negation. • [ anyi … neg … [ ti … ] ] • * [ anyi …[ ti … ] ]

40. Covert movement of genitive argument • Point 4: A raising verb embedding a clause with an unaccusative and an genitive negative phrase needs to have negation above it and not down with it. • [ … neg … [ … any-gen … ]] • * [ … [ … neg … any-gen … ]] • GoN acts as if it moved into the upper clause, we just can’t see it (it’s covert).

41. Now, what do we expectpre-A-chain kids to do? • In GoN constructions, the unaccusative argument is pronounced in its base-position • There can be no re-analysis as an unergative. • No S-homophones. • Moreover, GoN is prohibited with unergatives. • This is pretty much impossible to solve—the kid’s stuck, and we expect them just not to use GoN.

42. Testing the GoN • GoN is allowed with transitives and these do not involve problematic A-chains. • First order of business is to see if kids know how to use GoN in the unproblematic cases. • Tested 30 kids in Moscow between 3;0 and 6;6. • First result: Kids use genitive about 75% of the time where it should be used, around 4% of the time where it shouldn’t. Smart kids.

43. Testing the GoN • Second result, split by age: Verbs that require GoN showed significant difference by age: younger kids (4;0) used GoN 30% of the time, older kids (5;4) used it 60% of the time. • This is still fairly course—it turns out that if we look at the individual subjects, we will find all and only the patterns the hypothesis predicts with respect to where kids accept GoN. • At least this is what Babyonyshev et al. assert—it’s actually not really clear that this is the case (Hale 2001).

44. Subject by subject use of GoN • Kids divided by their case response for • transitive non-specific (adult: gen) • transitive specific (adult: acc) • unaccusative (adult: gen) • bleached unaccusative (adult: gen) • They fell into classes. • Kids who don’t know how to use GoN at all. • Kids who use GoN like adults (post-A-chain kids) • Kids use GoN right for transitives, not for unaccusatives. • *Kids use GoN right for unaccusatives not for transitives.

45. Kids who use GoN right for transitives, not for unaccusatives • 7 really act as predicted: • Nom for both bleached and non-bleached unaccusatives. (Adults would have gen here; and nom for unergatives, as these kids have) • 3 get non-bleached unaccusatives (only) right: • Gen for non-bleached, nom for bleached. • Explanation: maybe these kids are in transition, or maybe UTAH vs. ACDH are fighting, or maybe it’s just performance errors. • 8 get bleached unaccusatives (only) right: • Nom for non-bleached, gen for bleached. • Explanation: be is in this class, overwhelming frequency, learned by rote? So, we ignore bleached.

46. GoN as a diagnostic • So, it’s not really clear what we have here. We have something like a tendency toward a problem with unaccusatives, for a certain set of kids. The results were not as clear-cut as one might have hoped for, however. • Perhaps this is a problem with GoN as a true diagnostic of unaccusativity, particularly with respect to the “bleached” verbs. • Perhaps this is a problem with the premise itself: maybe pre-passive kids don’t have the same problem with unaccusatives as with passives. • In any event, the case for unaccusatives is less clear.

47. Two possible interpretations • The ACDH says that the object-to-subject movement required in a passive is problematic, and there is at least some evidence that points to problems with unaccusatives too. But that movement is not the only thing they have in common. • ACDH: A-Chain Deficit Hypothesis(no A-chains) • EARH: External Argument Requirement Hypothesis (external arguments required) • Passives and unaccusatives both fail both. Transitives and unergatives both pass both.

48. Possible support for EARH over ACDH • Snyder, Hyams, and Crisma (1994) found that French kids get auxiliary selection right from a young age—in particular with reflexive clitics. • Although the unaccusative/unergative distinction seems to play a role in the selection of the auxiliary, it’s not a 1-to-1 correlation (particularly in French, it might be closer in Italian, though). Only some unaccusatives take be, and a kid still needs to figure out which. • Reflexives OTOH are much more reliable. There are good arguments for supposing that their structure involves object-to-subject movement: • Le chienj si’est [ ti mordu tj ]‘the dog bit itself.’

49. EARH… • If this analysis is right, then we have “object-to-subject” movement just like in passives and unaccusatives, yet kids can do this at a young age. What gives? • There is an A-chain just like in unaccusatives and passives. So the problem would seem not to be about A-chains. • The reflexive and unaccusative/passive differ in that the reflexives still have their external -role intact. • Hence: maybe the “pre-A-chain” kids are really “obligatory external argument” kids (EARH).

50. What else does EARH predict? • So, if EARH is right, it predicts kids will do poorly on anything without an external argument. So far, we have: • Fine: transitives, unergatives • Not fine: unaccusatives, passives • What else lacks an external argument? Well, raising verbs and weather verbs: • Johnnyi seems [ tito be riding a horsie ]. • It seems [ that Johnny is riding a horsie ]. • It rained. • So how do kids do on those?