Syntax

Question 1

Syntactic bootstrapping

Answer 1

Exploiting the semantic properties of argument structure to narrow down the meaning of verbs

Question 2

Holophrastic (One Word) Stage

Answer 2

One word utterances that parents often interpret as meaning more than the word itself
E.g. “milk” for “I want milk”

Question 3

Children at the holophrastic stage (first stage) are sensitive to _____ and ______ positions

Answer 3

Heads and complements

Question 4

Head

Answer 4

Determines the category of a phrase (e.g., verb)

Question 5

Complement

Answer 5

Phrase that is needed to complete the meaning of the head (complements are often arguments that are needed to complete the meaning of a verb, i.e. direct and indirect objects)

Question 6

Head directionality parameter:

Answer 6

Languages are either:
o Head-initial: the head of a phrase precedes its complements (like V head, NP complement in English); or
o Head-final: the head of a phrase follows its complements

Question 7

Children understand head directionality at the ____ _____ stage

Answer 7

One word (holophrastic)

Question 8

The holophrastic stage ends at age ___

Answer 8

~1;6

Question 9

Behaviors that indicate transition to the telegraphic stage

Answer 9

(a) Chained one-word utterances
E.g. “mommy door”
- to describe something in the environment
(b) Repetition of the same word several times
- to obtain a particular result

Question 10

Telegraphic (Two Word) Stage

Answer 10

• mostly lexical/content words;
• Few grammatical morphemes (inflectional morphemes & function words) ; at least in English with no case marking

Question 11

crosslinguistic differences during the telegraphic stage

Answer 11

Inflection is absent at higher rates in English (impoverished inflectional system) than in languages like Italian or Hungarian (richer inflectional system)

Question 12

Is the word order target-like during the telegraphic stage ?

Answer 12

Yes

Question 13

Semantic bootstrapping

Answer 13

Children can pick out what is going on (event) and who is doing what, through experience with the real world: children can then map semantic categories onto syntactic categories relatively easily

Question 14

What does semantic bootstrapping assume that children must know in advance, through their
experience with the real world?

Answer 14

• able to distinguish objects from events.
  -able to distinguish agents (something animate that volitionally causes an event or change of state) and themes (something, animate or inanimate, that is acted upon).
  -know the names and meanings of some nouns

Question 15

What does semantic bootstrapping allows ?

Answer 15

Once children have associated agents with subjects and themes with objects, they can determine the basic word order in their language (e.g., that English is head-initial (VO) and that subjects precede predicates (SVO)).

Question 16

Structure-dependent distributional learning

Answer 16

Children use the rules of the mini grammar they have built to determine the structure of semantically non-transparent sentences.

Question 17

Mini grammar

Answer 17

o nouns can be preceded by determiners, like the and a;
o when an event is complete, it is marked by -ed.
o subject is always before the word that is marked for tense
This helps children understand complex sentences like “the decision evoked a harsh response”
- They will know that “decision” is a noun because it follows a determiner, and “evoked” a verb because it has a past tense marker
- They will know that “decision” is the subject because it precedes the word that is marked with tense

Question 18

Lexical categories

Answer 18

• nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions
• introduce lexical roots that carry information about meaning

Question 19

Functional categories

Answer 19

enter into relations with other (lexical) categories:
o play a key role in syntax, e.g. in determining word order.
o involved in morphological dependencies, e.g. case marking.

Question 20

Functional categories can be expressed as … or …

Answer 20

Free morphemes (function words) or bound morphemes (inflectional morphology)

Question 21

Functional category words

Answer 21

Complementizer : that, because, whether, if, since
Conjunction : and, but, or, nor
Wh-words : why, how
Auxiliary verbs : is, has, does
Modal auxiliaries : can, may, will, might
Negation : not, no
Tense : -ed
Agreement -s (in present tense only)
Determiners the, a, that, these, some
*NOT English -ing

Question 22

We encode the abstract functional syntactic organization of a sentence with…

Answer 22

functional phrases like IP (Inflectional Phrase)

Question 23

IP

Answer 23

contains the inflectional head (I), which houses the tense morpheme that is ultimately suffixed to the verb.

Question 24

Below IP is the Verb Phrase (VP), which contains the ____ and ____.

Answer 24

Verb and object

Question 25

True or false : tense is not part of the argument structure of the verb

Answer 25

True (why I is above the VP)

Question 26

Most sentences are during the telegraphic stage are ...

Answer 26

Non-finite (they lack inflection and auxiliary verbs : cannot be situated in time)

Question 27

Finite clauses

Answer 27

Auxiliary verbs and tense marking on verbs express finiteness. * A sentence is finite if it is marked for grammatical tense, which locates the event in time

Question 28

Non-finite clauses

Answer 28

Cannot be located in time. * Non-finite clauses are ungrammatical in isolation; they must be embedded under a finite clause (which locates the event in time) E.g. I want [Juan to help Susan] (infinitive), *Juan to help Susan

Question 29

Type of verbs in English telegraphic speech

Answer 29

Bare verbs (e.g. Apple drop) Bare participle (e.g. apple dropping)

Question 30

Type of verbs in German, Dutch and French during the telegraphic stage

Answer 30

Infinitive verbs E.g. Fermer yeux But also finite verbs: E.g. Elle roule

Question 31

Word order in German

Answer 31

* Finite and non-finite verbs appear in different positions in the target grammar: o finite verb occurs in second position; o non-finite verb occurs at end of sentence.

Question 32

Explanations for why English speaking children do not produce finite sentences as early as German speaking children

Answer 32

-English bare verbs have no visible infinitive morphology -Present tense/Agreement is only marked in 3sg present in English - The position of the verb in English does not change according to whether it is finite or non-finite

Question 33

For every adult sentence, the top node of the syntactic tree is the ...

Answer 33

Complementizer phrase (CP)

Question 34

What categories require an IP structure ?

Answer 34

Tense inflection, modals and auxiliaries

Question 35

What categories require a CP structure ?

Answer 35

Embedded clauses, yes/no questions and wh-questions

Question 36

The (almost) full competence hypothesis

Answer 36

- Functional structure is present from onset of acquisition (at least up to IP). * Other factors (e.g., cognitive load) account for absence of inflection in children’s productions.

Question 37

Small clause hypothesis (Radford 1988, 1990)

Answer 37

* Functional structure is absent at onset of acquisition * Learners gradually build up structure on basis of exposure to/understanding of input.

Question 38

Small clause

Answer 38

any type of structure that lacks functional categories

Question 39

If a structure projects only up to VP, the result will be ...

Answer 39

non-finite – no tense marking, i.e. no IP

Question 40

Bare verbs (tree (6b)) or bare participles (tree (6d)) are inside VP because...

Answer 40

They are infinitival : not situating the event in time.

Question 41

Subjects in small VP clauses

Answer 41

If the top node of the tree is VP, then the grammatical subject position will not be available : it will appear in Specifier of VP (SpecVP) * Subjects will be omitted from truncated structures more often than from non-truncated structures

Question 42

This is a problem for the small clause hypothesis : At the point in development when children produce nonfinite sentences, they also produce...

Answer 42

finite sentences.

Question 43

Problem for small clause hypothesis :at the ages/MLUs when children learning English are failing to produce agreement and tense, children learning languages with ... show evidence of having acquired it (or of being in the process of acquiring it).

Answer 43

richer inflection

Question 44

Optional infinitives

Answer 44

The same child can alternate between producing nonfinite and finite sentences.

Question 45

How do we know a child has IP ?

Answer 45

When children produce finite forms :the IP is the functional structure necessary to express tense

Question 46

Truncation hypothesis

Answer 46

Children have the root of the sentence as undefined Root = XP * For any given sentence the child produces, the structure above XP will be truncated (not projected) if XP is lower than CP (e.g., IP, VP);

Question 47

True or false : the top XP root can change across utterances

Answer 47

True

Question 48

If a structure projects only up to VP

Answer 48

the result will be NONFINITE (no tense marking – i.e. no IP, equivalent to a small clause).

Question 49

If a structure projects up to IP

Answer 49

the result will be FINITE, i.e. tense marking is produced

Question 50

If a structure is projected all the way up to CP

Answer 50

all nodes below CP (including IP) will be projected - evidence : child produces e.g. question with tense marking

Question 51

CP automatically means _____ is presently

Answer 51

Tense

Question 52

According to the truncation hypothesis, children will only project CP in questions when they produce ...

Answer 52

Inflection/auxiliaries

Question 53

Problem for truncation hypothesis

Answer 53

Children do produce questions that do not contain inflection

Question 54

Movement analysis solution to the truncation hypothesis problem

Answer 54

Wh-word moves to specifier position of CP (SpecCP), even in questions without overt evidence of I * Maybe there is a null Spec C' copula (be) in I

Question 55

Children produce more subjects in _____finite/non finite sentences

Answer 55

Finite (because finite = IP = place for subject in specifier)

Question 56

An OI (optional infinitive) will occur if the child specifies the root XP as anything below ...

Answer 56

IP

Question 57

A fully finite sentence only occurs when...

Answer 57

The child specifies the top node as IP or higher

Question 58

Crisma’s effect

Answer 58

OIs seem to never occur with Wh-questions

Question 59

Counter argument to Crisma's effect

Answer 59

English children do produce questions with OI like: ‘What doggie eating?’ In spite of this, we will assume that questions like ‘What doggie eating?’ involve movement of the wh-word to SpecCP. Even though this type of question does not involve any evidence of IP, we will assume that IP has been projected, consistent with the following: * If a structure is projected all the way up to CP: then all nodes below CP (including IP) will be projected.