1 / 37

A usage-based approach to grammatical development

A usage-based approach to grammatical development. Holger Diessel University of Jena holger.diessel @uni-jena.de http://holger-diessel.de/. Language learning. Connectionism (Rumelhart & McClelland 1986; Elman et al. 1996; Lewis and Elman 2001).

reece-molina
Download Presentation

A usage-based approach to grammatical development

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. A usage-based approach to grammatical development Holger Diessel University of Jena holger.diessel@uni-jena.de http://holger-diessel.de/

  2. Language learning • Connectionism (Rumelhart & McClelland 1986; Elman et al. 1996; Lewis and Elman 2001). • Corpus studies of the ambient language (Redington et al. 1998; Mintz et al. 2002; Monaghan et al. 2005). • Experimental studies with infants (Saffran et al. 1996; Saffran 2002; Newport and Aslin 2004).

  3. Construction grammar Meaning Meaning Form Form Meaning Form Meaning Meaning Form Form

  4. One-word utterances / holophrases Daddy. [Adam 1;4] Mommy. [Adam 1;4] Doggy. [Adam 1;5] Milk. [Adam 1;5] Allgone. [Adam 1;6]

  5. Take this key off . Take this paper off. Take that off . Take this dress off. Take that belt off me. Take it off. More corn. More cookies. More mail. More popsicle. More jump. More Peter water. Lexically-specific constructions Block get-it. Phone get-it. Mama get-it. Bottle get-it. Towel get-it. Books get-it.

  6. Emergence of schematic constructions VERB __ Get __ Get doggy Get milk Get him Get Billy

  7. Hypotheses • Relative clauses form a network of related constructions that children acquire in a piecemeal, bottom-up fashion. • The development originates from relative constructions that are only little different from simple sentences. • The development can be seen as an example of ‘abductive constructivist learning’.

  8. Study 1 (Diessel 2004)

  9. Head of the relative clause (1) The man who we saw was reading a book. SUBJ (2) He noticed the man who was reading a book. OBJ (3) He saw to the man who was reading a book. OBL (4) The man who was reading a book. NP (5) That’s the man who was reading a book. PN

  10. Head of relative clause (total)

  11. Head of relative clause (earliest)

  12. Head of relative clause (development) PN OBJ PN NP OBJ NP OBL OBL OBL SUBJ

  13. Input frequency PN-relatives are among the most frequent relative clauses in the ambient language, but they are not as frequent in the ambient language as in the children’s data.

  14. Semantic complexity (1) Here’s the tiger that’s gonna scare him. > The tiger is gonna scare him. (2) This is the sugar that goes in there. > The sugar goes in there. (3) It’s something that you eat. > You eat something.

  15. Semantic complexity (1) You left this toy I’m playing with. > You left this toy. + I’m playing with the toy.

  16. Information structure The information structure of PN-relative constructions is similar to the information structure of simple sentences, i.e. they do not include presupposed information.

  17. Pragmatic function PN-relatives are pragmaticlly very useful in parent-child speech: They occur in constructions that focus the hearer’s attention on elements in the surrounding situation.

  18. Conclusion PN-relatives are the earliest relative clauses that children learn because: (1) they suit the communicative needs of young children (2) they are semantically similar to simple sentences.

  19. Syntactic amalgams (1) That’s doggy turn around. [Nina 1;11] (2) That’s a turtle swim. [Nina 2;2] (3) Here’s a mouse go sleep. [Nina 2;3] (4) That’s the roof go on that home. [Nina 2;4] (5) That’s the rabbit fall off. [Nina 2;4]

  20. Relativizsed syntactic role (1) The man who met the woman. subj (2) The man who the woman met. obj (3) The man who the woman talked to. obl (4) The man who the girl gave the book to. io (5) The man whose dog bit the woman. gen

  21. Relativized syntactic role (total)

  22. Relativized syntactic role (development) obj subj obl

  23. Diessel & Tomasello (2005)

  24. Results English German subj vs. do p =. 001 do vs. io p = .173 Do vs. obl p = .169 subj vs. do p =. 001 do vs. io p = .061 io vs. obl p = .001

  25. Subj-relatives Do-, io-, and obl-relatives were often converted to subj- relatives. English ITEM: This is the girl who the boy teased at school. CHILD: This is the girl that teased … the boy … at school. German ITEM: Da ist der Mann, den das Mädchen im Stall gesehen hat. CHILD: Da ist der Mann, der das Mädchen im Stall gesehen hat.

  26. Subj-relatives However, children were not consistent in their performance. In addition, they often repaired their conversion errors before they reached the end of the sentence: (1) This is the girl who bor/ Peter borrowed a football from. (2) Da ist der Junge, der/ dem Paul … die Mütze weggenommen hat.

  27. Hypothesis The conversion errors are due to the fact that subj-relatives are more easily activated than other types of relative clauses.

  28. Frequency and ease of activation The more frequently a grammatical construction occurs, the more deeply entrenched it is in mental grammar, and the easier it is to activate in language use.

  29. Input frequency (Diessel 2004)

  30. Subj-relatives and simple sentences Children’s good performance on subject relatives can be explained in terms of the similarity between subject relatives and simple sentences. AGENT VERB PATIENT. Simple clause PRO is AGENT rel VERB PATIENT. subj PRO is PATIENT rel AGENT VERB. do / io / obl

  31. Word order in English relative clauses NP [V …] subj NP [NP V …] do NP [NP V …] io NP [NP V …] obl NP [[GEN N] V …] gen

  32. Relative pronouns in German relative clauses Der Mann, der … subj Der Mann, den … do Der Mann, dem … io Der Mann, mit/von dem … obl Der Mann, dessen N gen

  33. Gen- and io-relatives Both gen- and io-relatives are basically absent from the ambient language. Io-relatives caused fewer errors than gen-relatives because they are similar to do-relatives.

  34. Summary Important is the similarity between constructions: • Subj-relatives caused few problems because they are similar to simple sentences. • English do-, io-, and obl-relatives caused basically the same amount of problems because they have the same word order. • Io-relatives caused relatively few problems because they are similar to direct do-relatives. • Gen-relatives and German obl-relatives caused great problems because they are dissimilar to other relative clauses.

  35. Why does similarity matter? Relative clauses are constructions (i.e. form-function pairings) that are related to each other in a network like lexical expressions. Children acquire this network in a piecemeal, bottom-up fashion by relating new relative clause constructions to constructions they already know.

  36. A network of relative constructions … [gen-relative] …-relatives …-relatives …-relatives That is N [subj-relative] Simple Sentences

  37. References Diessel, Holger. 2004. The Acquisition of Complex Sentences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Diessel, Holger & Tomasello, Michael. (2005). A new look at the acquisition of relative clauses. Language.

More Related