Early child utterances

1. Early child utterances

2. Sentence formulas

3. Sentence formulas Children’s early utterance are sentence formulas that describe a limited number of (semantically defined) situation types. (Brown 1973; Schlesinger 1974)

4. Sentence formulas Kendall swim. Kimmy come. Doggie bark. Pillow fall. agent - action

5. Sentence formulas Daddy cookie. [= Daddy is eating a cookie] Kendall spider. [= Kendall is looking at a spider] Adam book. [= Adam is reading a book] Daddy door. [= Daddy is closing the door] agent - patient

6. Sentence formulas Hit ball. Put book. Drink milk. Eat apple. action - patient

7. Sentence formulas Play bed. Sit pool. Walk street. Come here. action - location

8. Sentence formulas Book table. Sweater chair. Ball floor. entity - location

9. Sentence formulas Kimmy bike. Daddy shoe. Adam foot. possessor - possessed

10. Sentence formulas Big train. Red train. Hot milk. modifier – object

11. Sentence formulas No milk. No water. No play. negation – object/action

12. Sentence formulas That doggy. It cat. There ball. This my spoon. pronoun – object

13. Sentence formulas What dat? Who dat? WH – pronoun

14. Sentence formulas Children’s early utterances are organized on semantic grounds. Grammatical relations and syntactic structure emerge only later. (Schlesinger 1974)

15. The pivot look

16. Item-based constructions More car. 1;11 More that. 2;0 More cookie. 2;0 More fish. 2;1 More jump. 2;1 More Peter water. 2;4

17. Item-based constructions Block get-it. 2;3 Bottle get-it. 2;3 Spoon get-it. 2;4 Towel get-it. 2;4 Dog get-it. 2;4 Books get-it. 2;5

18. Item-based constructions Spoon back. 2;2 Tiger back. 2;3 Give back. 2;3 Ball back. 2;3 Want ball back. 2;4

19. Item-based constructions More __ . __ get-it. __ back. Children’s early multi-word utterances are lexically specific. [Tomasello 2000]

20. Item-based constructions No bed. 1;11 No bread. 2;0 No eat. 2;2 No milk. 2;2 No apple juice. 2;5

21. Item-based constructions Clock on there. 2;2 Up on there. 2;2 Hot in there. 2;2 Milk in there. 2;4 Water in there 2;5

22. Item-based constructions All broke. 2;0 All buttened. 2;3 All clean. 2;4 All done. 2;4 All gone milk. 2;2 All gone shoe. 2;2 All gone juice. 2;2 All gone bear. 2;3

23. Item-based constructions Dat Daddy. 2;0 Dat’s Weezer. 2;0 Dat my chair. 2;1 Dat’s him. 2;1 Dat’s a paper too. 2;4 That’s too little for me. 2;9

24. Item-based constructions Boot off. 2;0 Light off. 2;1 Hands off. 2;1 Pants off. 2;1 Hat off. 2;3

25. Generative grammar

26. The generative view Adam book = Adam is reading a book. S VP VP NP NP N AUX V DET N Adam (is) read(ing) (a) book.

27. Pivot grammar

28. Pivot grammar Martin Braine (1963): Children’s early utterances are composed of words from two word classes: 1. pivot words 2. open class words

29. Pivot grammar Pivot words: • Spatial particles up, off, back • Pronouns/deictics that, it • Possessives my, your • Certain verbs put, take, see • Certain adjectives big, pretty • Relational expressions other, more, allgone

30. Pivot grammar Four sentence types: 1. O Daddy 2. P + O That cat. 3. O + P Book back. 4. O + O Adam book.

31. Pivot grammar

32. Pivot grammar

33. Pivot grammar

34. Pivot grammar Pivot grammar rules: 1. S  P O 2. S  O P 3. S  O O 4. S  O

35. The construction-based approach

36. Construction Grammar Grammar consists of form-function pairings, i.e. constructions. A construction is a complex linguistic sign that combines a specific form with a particular meaning.

37. Linguistic sign r{bIt

38. Passive Construction (1) The meal was cooked by John. (2) Mary was hit by the car. (3) The ball was kicked by Peter. (4) The book was written by John. NP be V-ed by NP PA verb AG

39. Caused-motion Construction (1) She dragged the child into the car. (2) He wiped the mud off his shoes. (3) She forced the ball into the jar. (4) He pushed the book down the chute. NP V NP PP <X causes Y to move somewhere> (5) She sneezed the napkin of the table.

40. Resultative Construction (1) Peter meeked the bleek dizzy. NP V NP ADJ <X changes Y such Y becomes Z>

41. Transitive Grammar (1) Peter hit Mary. (2) Peter kicked the horse. (3) Peter pressed the button. (4) Peter pushed the elephant. NP V NP <X affected Y>

42. Item-based constructions Item-specific constructions help to bridge the gap between rote learning and grammatical development.

43. Item-based constructions First words Mommy Doggy Allgone goodbye Item-specific constructions More __ . __ allgone. __ back. Schematic constructions NP V NP PP X moves Y somewhere

44. Item-based constructions Item-specific constructions help to bridge the gap between word learning (=route learning) and grammatical development (=system building). They involve both object similarity and structural similarity.

45. Similarity

46. Similarity Children are initially more sensitive to ‘object similarity’ than to ‘relational similarity’. (Dedre Gentner 1983) Word learning involves object similarity (=recognition of the same phonetic substance). Grammatical development involves relational similarity (=recognition of relationship between words and categories).

47. Children are conservative learners

48. Brooks and Tomasello 1999 Look, Jack is meeking the wagon. 2;0-3;0 year olds

49. Brooks and Tomasello 1999 Look, the wagon is getting meeked. 2;0-3;0 year olds

50. Brooks and Tomasello 1999 Look Jack is meeking the ball.