Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem
Early lexical acquisition
Early verbs – meaning and argument structure in L1
Reading: Tomasello, M. & A. Kruger, 1992. Joint attention on actions: acquiring verbs in ostensive and non-ostensive contexts, Journal of Child Language 19, 311-333.
Verbs- “lexical items which express activities, changes of state, etc.”
Early Verbs- “verb forms that are the first to appear in speech of children at the one-word stage and in the transition to word-combinations.”
First 50 Words of 1 Israeli girl (Keren) - in Order of Acquisition
From: Dromi, E. 1987. Early Lexical Development. Cambridge UP.
Word / Gloss / Word / Gloss1 buba / doll / 26 baat = taba'at / ring
2 myau = xatul / cat / 27 nadned / swing
3 dubi / teddy / 28 mayim / water
4 tutu = rakevet / train / 29 ken / yes
5 ia = xamor / donkey / 30 nyar / paper
6 hupa / for contact / 31 apit / spoon
7 hine / here / 32 cet / go out, get out
8 cifcif = cipor / bird / 33 uga / cake, cookie
9 tiktak = sha'on / clock / 34 dod / uncle = man
10 ima / Mommy / 35 etze / this, it
11 pil / elephant / 36 et / pen
12 mu = para / cow / 37 od / more, another
13 pisa = peca / sore / 38 day / enough! no more
14 toda / thanks / 39 imaima / unclear
15 oto = mxonit / car / 40 tik / bag, purse
16 bamba / pretzel / 41 boi(li) / come (to me)
17 aba / Daddy / 42 mita / bed
18 am = oxel / eating / 43 . nuf = yanshuf / owl
19 haw = kelev / dog / 44 laa)mod / (to) stand, get up
20 kaki / poop / 45 te / tea
21 ze / this, it / 46 xam / hot
22 ix = fuya / yucky / 47 nok = tinok / baby
23 en / allgone / 48 noranora = meod,nora / very
24 apchi = lehitatesh / sneeze / 49 kuku / peekaboo
25 or / light / 50 kax / take, Masc. Sg. Imp.
First words of a bilingual child (Shelli) – classified
From: Berman, R. 1977. The role of proper nouns at the one-word stage. TAU ms.
Berman, R. 1978. Early verbs. Int'l J Psycholinguistics 5: 21-29]
Age / People / Nursery words / OtherWord / Gloss / Word / Gloss / Word / Gloss
18 mos / idzi = Itsi / father / alo = hello / phone / am = xam / hot
uti= Ruti / mother / shshsh / sleeping / doi / dog, Dolly
lala= Lela / sister / dyo / horsieback / lo ~ now / no
aba / Daddy / xxxx / animals in book / oto / car, tractor, bus
Dadi = David / Daddy, cousin / grgrgr / airplane (category-label)
haw-haw / dog, horse, etc.
19;0 / aba ~ idzi / buw / 'moo' / bo / come ms. Imp.
Mimi / cousin / haw / dog / (d)ubi / teddy
Bele / Yonti, / dyo / camel, horsie / kele(v) / dog
eli/ali = Shelly / self / xexexexe / cat / inne / here [deictic]
miyi = Miri / sitter / Oyi! / surprise / lililili / give me
li / to-me
bu / book
do / doll
19;15 / ima ~ uti / mother / i?o / donkey / uki / cookie
aba / only her Dad / kuku / cock / ke(n) / yes
upala / all-fall-down
20 / digdi / tickle / oto / ship (in picture)
(n)umi / sleepies / pele / pelican
bay-bay
dele(t) / door, open
kxi / take, Fem. Imp
20;15 / Sya = Siya / dog / kuku / peekaboo / zuzi / move, Fem. Imp
Koko / dog / zse / wanting
(Shar)on / cousin / hine / when asked where X is
(R)oni / cousin / od / more
eli ~ ali / self in mirror / say / outside
may(im) / Water (category) tap, sprinkler, bottle, coffee, bath
Questions?
· Why are verb acquired later than nouns?
· How is verb meaning acquired?
· Does the acquisition of verbs follow the same word-meaning constraints as for nouns?
· Do we find cases of over/underextension for verb meaning?
· How is the verbal morphology acquired?
· How are the argument structure and selectional restrictions of a verb acquired?
Acquiring verbs … (Tomasello & Kruger)
· In order to acquire a word it should be mapped onto a referential context.
· How? Joint attention (an ostensive context)
· Can this work for action verbs?
· Can we point to actions? Do we point to actions?
· Adults usually use verbs in non-ostensive context.
· Naturalistic findings - 60% of verbs were used for impending actions. Children were most responsive to such verbs.
· Experimental procedure with nonce verbs in impending, on going and completed modes, presented to three groups of children (ages 1;10-2;2). After presenting the verb to the child, he was tested on both comprehension and production.
· Production - impending context was best. Comprehension - impending and completed are equally good.
· Verbs are more easily acquired in non-ostensive context (when referring to impending and completed actions rather than ongoing actions). Why?
What is acquired when verbs are acquired? Lexical entries for verbs
-human, +animate, +count … / Fly, Vi, move through air with wings
(About, away, off, out)
Vt, Control an aircraft, transport in air
craft
[NP] Patient
Want, Vt, desire, wish
[NP] Patient
[to VP]
[NP to VP]
Give, Vbt, transfer possession, hand over,[NP, PP] Patient, Goal
[NP, NP] Goal, Patient / Donate, Vbt, present as a gift
[NP, PP] Patient, Goal
What can we learn from early verbs?
Armon-Lotem, S. and R. A. Berman. 2003. The Emergence of Grammar: Early Verbs and Beyond. Journal of Child Language 30.4: 845-877
Breakdown of 120 Verb Forms by Mood/Tense and Stripped Stem Forms [in percentages]
Stripped / Infinitive / Imperative / Present / Past / Future46 / 6 / 19 / 10 / 15 / 5
· Children have a large repertoire of verbs even before they start combining words, and these represent a range of predicate types: syntactically, both transitive and intransitive, and semantically, verbs which express activities, events, and states.
· These verbs: 1. Lack overt syntactic marking of argument structure.
2. Fail to make productive use of inflection.
3. Show no ability to use morphological verb-pattern alternation
Nonetheless, early verbs play an important role in children's early grammar and in the interface between the development of syntax, morphology, semantics and the lexicon.
How is verb meaning acquired? Syntactic vs. semantic bootstrapping
The issue:
· How do children acquire words? The acquisition of a morpheme in the lexicon combines syntactic and semantic information.
· How do children pair concepts with their phonological realization? Nouns can be acquired by pairing strings of sounds with concepts inferred from the world using constraints on word learning (Markman 1994), e.g., by the naming game
· Bloom 1994 - nouns are acquired by syntax-semantics mapping.
· How are verbs acquired? Would it be in the same way as nouns?
Gleitman (1994) – Children infer verb meaning by using the syntactic arguments which appear in the sentence (subcategorization frames).
- Verb meaning is acquired in non-ostensive (not ongoing) contexts (Tomasello & Kruger)
- Blind children learn verb meaning without “observing” the situation.
Syntactic bootstrapping (Fisher et al 1994): Syntactic cueing of word meaning. Children rely on a verb’s syntactic subcategorization frames to learn its meaning. The learner represents the linguistic input that is to be paired with the extralinguistic input, acquired by inspecting ongoing events, by a parse tree within which previously learned nominals as well as the novel verb occur.
Semantic bootstrapping (Pinker 1994): Semantic cueing of syntax / word meaning. A verb’s content is learned from its situation of use. The semantics of at least some verb forms are acquired without syntax.
Lexical reconciliation (Grimshaw 1994)
• Fundamental claim: There is a principled relation between the syntax and the semantics of a verb.
• “The range of syntactic configurations associated with a verb is highly predictable from its semantics, once parametric syntactic variation is taken into account.”
• Mapping of lexical semantic representation onto syntactic representation:
• Lexical semantics of a predicate > argument structure
• Argument structure + parametric properties of phrase structure > s-structure
Many verb meanings are compatible with most events
1. a. The boy is ----ing
b. The boy is ----ing the flowers to the girl
c. The girl is ----ing the flowers from the boy
There is no situation in which (3a) is true while (3b) is false
2. a. We killed the dragon
b. The dragon died
> Observation of the world is not enough
> Subcategorization frames contain critical information
3. a. He put the book in his room
b. He wrote the book in his room
4. a. He became a doctor
b. He shot a doctor
> Only a few cases of one-to-one mapping from subcategorization frames to meaning
> Analysis across sentence types is required for sets of frames
5. a. I know her
b. I know that she is here
6. a. ani makir ota
b. ani yodea she hi po
> Clustering of different senses under a single morpheme varies across languages.
> A predictable relationship does not hold
> Without knowing about meaning it is not possible to know how to group subcategorizations together
> We need a way to use the two sources of information > Reconciliation
Reconciliation
· Semantic-to-syntactic mapping provide predictive mechanism. Semantics predicts syntax where UG makes it possible
· The subcategorization structure provided by the syntax serves as a checking mechanism. Syntax eliminate wrong semantic candidates where possible
How are the argument structure and selectional restrictions of a verb acquired?
In class exercise - The Development of Argument Structure
From: Sharon Armon-Lotem (1997). The minimalist child: Parameters and functional heads in the acquisition of hebrew.
Table 1 - The development of argument structure for the verb ‘fall’
Hagar / Leor / Lior / SmadarNo argument / lipol
‘to-fall’ (1;10;01)
lo nafal
‘not fell’ (1;10;14) / nafal
‘fell’
(1;09;17) / (na)fal
‘fell’
(1;05;26) / (na)fal
‘fell’ (1;06;14)
oy! nafal!
‘oy! fell!’ (1;07;07)
NP subject / Hagar (na)fal
‘Hagar (fm) fell (ms)’ (1;07;14)
hagari nafla ‘Hagar (fm) fell (fm)’ (1;10;17) / oto nafal
‘car fell’
(1;11;22) / Pigi lala
‘Pigi fell’
(1;06;14)
dubi nafal
‘teddybear fell’
(1;07;07)
VS / (n)afal xaruzim
‘fell (sg) bids’
(1;07;17) / nafal ha-magevet
‘fell (ms) towel (fm).
(2;05;15) / (na)fal ze
‘fell this’
(1;07;00) / hala ze
‘fell this’
(1;07;05)
nafal Kushi
‘fell Kushi’
(1;07;07)
Location / nafal, la-mayim
‘fell, to-the-water’
(1;09;26) / nafal Bamba (me ha-)kos
‘fell (ms) Bamba (fm) (of the-)cup’ (1;07;11)
Dative clitic / nafal li
‘fell to-me’
(2;01;13)
nofel lax
‘fell to-you’
(2;02;13) / nafal li
‘fell to-me’ (2;04;22) / nafal li
‘fell to-me’ (1;08;02) / nafal li
‘fell to-me’ (2;01;08)
NP subject +location / Shauli nafal me ha-kise
‘Shauli fell of the-chair’
(2;01;19) / ze yipol al ha-shulxan
‘this will-fall on the-table’
(2;04;22)
hi nafla me ha-ofnoa
‘she fell of the-bikes’
(2;05;15)
NP subject + dative clitic / ze nofel lexa
‘it falls to-you’
(2;02;25) / ze nafal li
‘it fell to-me’
(1;11;13)
nafal li kcat ha-tush
‘fell to-me a-bit the-pen’
(2;02;10)
Table 2 - The development of argument structure for the verb 'want'
Hagar / Leor / SmadarNo arguments / lo roca
‘Don’t want’ (1;07;02) / lo roce
‘Dont want’ (1;09;04) / lo roca
‘Dont want’ (1;08;13)
Nonfinite verbal complement (modal-like use) / roce (l)e(hitla)besh
‘Want to dress up’
roce lishon
‘Want to sleep’ (1;07;22) / roce (leh)o(r)id
‘Want to take off’ (1;09;04) / (ro)ce (li)shon
‘Want to sleep’ (1;08;13)
NP complement / roca od
‘Want (some)more’
(1;08;01)
lo roca yadayim
‘Don’t want hands’
roca aba
‘Want Daddy’ (1;08;04) / roce musika?
‘Want music’ (1;09;00)
roce (et) ze
‘Want this’ (1;09;00) / roca (sa)kin
‘Want a knife’ (1;07;16)
NP subject / ani lo roca
‘I don’t want’ (1;08;09) / Liori lo roce
‘Liori doesn’t want’ (1;11;13) / ani roca
‘I want’ (1;11;13)
Subject and object / ani lo roca kola
‘I don’t want Kola’ (1;09;21) / ani roce kariyot
‘I want pillows’ (1;10;15) / ani roca et ha-harkava ha-zoti
‘I want this pazzle’ (2;01;26)
Non-NP complement / *ani roca same'ax
‘I want happy’ (1;10;01) / roce kan, roce sham
‘Want here, want there’ (1;09;24)
roce levad
‘Want on my own’ (1;11;13) / kodem be ze ani roca
‘First I want with this’ (2;00;07)
Nonfinite CP complement + Subject / ata roce le'exol?
‘You want to eat?’ (1;10;01)
ani roca letayel
‘I want to take a walk’ (1;10;03) / hu roce lesaxek
‘He wants to play (1;11;00) / buba roca (la)shevet (al ha-)sapa
‘Doll wants (to) sit (on the) cauch’ (1;07;07)
ata roce lir'ot?
‘You want to see?’ (1;11;13)
Finite CP complement without complementizer / roca loasim mastik
‘Want chewing chewing-gum’ (2;01;24) / rocim ti(f)tax or
‘Want turn on (the) light’ (1;09;11)
roce tavi'i
‘Want bring’ (1;09;11)
roce ani yasim ‘Want I put’ (1;11;04)
Finite CP complement with complementizer / ani roca she nelex lir'ot
‘I want that we go to see’ (1;11;18)
Table 3 - The development of argument structure for the verb 'give'