The early processing of number agreement in the DP: evidence from

BUCLD 30 – Nov 04 – 06 2005
The early processing of number agreement in the DP: evidence from
from the acquisition
of Brazilian Portuguese
Letícia Sicuro Corrêa, Marina R.A. Augusto, José FerrariFerrari-Neto
Ferrari-Neto
Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio)
www.letras.puc-rio.br/lapal - [email protected]
A minimalist approach to the acquisition of grammatical number from a psycholinguistic point of view
Linguistic assumptions:
Assumptions concerning bootstrapping:
! Language includes a universal computational system (CHL) and a lexicon
upon which the former operates (Chomsky, 1995; 1999).
! Children are pre-disposed to assume that recurrent patterns in the speech around
them (PF) are grammatically relevant.
!The lexicon is constituted of open class and closed class elements -- matrices
of features (phonological, semantic and formal features).
! The computational system, once bootstrapped, functions as a language
acquisition device.
! Formal features are the only grammatically relevant lexical features, i.e.
accessible to the computational system.
!Children segment the speech in prosodic units / processing windows.
!Grammatical operations give rise to systematic patterns in PF (closed class
items--determiners, affixes, classifiers; and word order as a reflex of assymetric ccommand – Linear Correspondance Axiom).
!Number is a formal phi-feature, which can be intrinsic or optional.
!The identification of distributional patterns within a processing window enables
the segmentation of closed class elements.
!The optional number feature heads its own functional projection NumP
(Picallo, 1991; Ritter, 1991; Augusto et al. 2005).
!Non-interpretable formal phi-features are valued by means of Agree once a ccommand configuration results from Merge.
! The parser analyzes members of closed classes/functional elements as functional
heads, giving rise a structure in which elements are in a c-command relation.
!The acquisition of language specific syntactic properties involves fixing the
values of the formal features of functional heads.
!The identification of patterns corresponding to functional items (D in particular)
initializes the computational system, enabling parsing to take place.
!Children are predisposed to represent as a functional element heading its own
projection those closed class items to which some semantic interpretation can
be ascribed.
Grammatical Number and language acquisition:
Number in Brazilian Portuguese DPs:
!Number is a formal feature in most known languages, though there are
exceptions (Eg. Pirahã – a language of the Amazon region that seems to lack
grammatical number (Everett, 1986; Corbett, 2000)).
!Number assumes different values in a single language (Eg. Singular and
plural) and values differ across languages(singular, dual, trial, quadral,
paucal and plural (cf. Corbett, 2000)).
!Number agreement can be differently expressed across languages.
!
Children MUST
Solving reference on the basis of number agreement:
an experiment with 2 year olds
PF: [Ω u"’dabu(")] = Os dabo(s) (The(pl) novel noun(pl))
Speech segmentation
in prosodic units
!
Lexemes recognition
!
/us/ /’dabo(s)/
Parsing 1: morphological
/ word order analysis and
access to lemmas
!
?!
[FP[o]f [s]] f [√? (s)]l ]
[Ω [ωu"] [ω’dabu(")]]
number
affix
D
Masc
Def
Conceptual representation
Reference
?!
Num
Pl
novos
carro
novo
The (pl)
my (pl)
car (pl)
new (pl)
!There are singular nouns that end in /s/.
! Hence the crucial information about number is available in D.
Parse the elements segmented within a processing window.
Recognize D as a functional element and N as a lexical element on the
basis of phonetic and distributional regularities.
Recognize systematic variation within the closed class affixes in D.
Recognize the element that systematically varies as a number morpheme –
an independent functional feature in the lexicon
Parse the DP and compute number agreement (c-command configuration).
Aims:
!To verify whether young children would be able to solve reference on the basis of
the processing of number agreement in the DP .
Task:
! Picture-identification with pseudo-nouns and invented objects
! The child is asked to show something to a puppet called Dedé (among 4 pictures),
three of them presenting unknown objects – two with singletons and one with
multiple tokens of the same type.
Participants: 18 children (18-24 m, mean age 24 months).
DP
Material:
!Grammatical plural:
Mostra os dabos pro Dedé. (Standard)
Mostra os dabo pro Dedé. (Non-standard)
(Show the (pl) dabo(s) to Dedé)
The values
identified
in D are the
results of
Agree
∃y[y=σx*Cx]
There is a set y such that y is a
supremum of the semilattice of dabos
!
carros
meu
Conditions:
N
?
D NumP
[pl/masc]
Num N
[pl/masc] [pl/masc]
!
meus
Os
“More than one entity”
If chidren are able to identify the
correct set of unknown objects on
the basis of the Plural DP in both
variants, they
• have recognized Number as a
formal feature,
• have identified the value of the
marked form
• rely on agreement to acquire novel
nouns
12 charts (3 per condition)
+6 fillers
!Ungrammatical Plural
Mostra o dabos pro Dedé. (suffix in N)
Mostra o dasbo pro Dedé. ( infix in N)
!Singular Control
Mostra o dabo pro Dedé.
Dependent variable: number of choices of the mutiple token picture.
Results:
Grammaticality: more “plural” responses to grammatical plural DPs (t(17) = 5.65 p
<.0001) (Graph 1)
No significant difference between standard and non-standard plural (t(17) = 1.16
p=.26) nor between suffix and infix (t(17) = 0.97 p=.34) (Graph 2)
Graph 1: Mean plural responses
Graph 2: Mean plural responses
as a function of the presence of -s
7
7
6
6
5
Mean
Semantic interpretation
Os
Non-standard
4
3
2
1
0
Grammatical
Plural
Ungrammatical
Plural
Singular
5
Mean
Recognize variation within closed class elements as an expression of
Agree.
(Merge and Agree assuming LCA)
Standard
Children
acquring BP MUST
Recognize number as a formal feature and identify the values that
the number feature assumes on the basis of interface information.
Parsing 2: Syntactic Computation !
Predominantly optional formal feature.
! Two values: singular (unmarked) and plural, marked by the affix -s
! There are two co-existing number systems:
4
3
2
1
0
Standard Plural
Non-standard
Plural
"Plural suffix"
only
"Plural infix"