The Acquisition of Finiteness
Elma Blom
Mouton de Gruyter
The Acquisition of Finiteness
≥
Studies in Generative Grammar 94
Editors
Henk van Riemsdijk Jan Koster Harry van der Hulst
Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York
The Acquisition of Finiteness
by
Elma Blom
Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York
Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin.
The series Studies in Generative Grammar was formerly published by Foris Publications Holland.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blom, Wilhelmina Bernardina Theodora, 1972⫺ The Acquisition of Finiteness / by Elma Blom. p. cm. ⫺ (Studies in generative grammar ; 94) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-019083-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Language acquisition. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general ⫺ Verb. 3. Cognition in children. 4. Germanic languages ⫺ Acquisition. I. Title. P118.B588 2008 4151.6⫺dc22 2008021357
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ISBN 978-3-11-019083-0 ISSN 0167-4331 쑔 Copyright 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin. All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin. Printed in Germany.
Acknowledgements
The research reported in this book was supported by grants of the DutchFlemish Cooperative Programme on language and culture (VNC nrs. 20041.031 and G.2201.96 titled A data-driven model of language acquisition: Computational and psycholinguistic investigations), sponsored by NFWO and Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), and in addition by NWO grant nr. 254-70-010 (Variation in Inflection). During this research I could profit from the outstanding research environments provided by the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS (University of Utrecht), the Linguistics Department of the University of California Los Angeles, the Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (University of Amsterdam), and from close collaborations with my colleagues from the University of Antwerp and Groningen University. There were many people who contributed to this book in many different ways. I want to thank my colleagues at the aforementioned research institutes, the researchers and students who contributed to the CHILDES database, an excellent source of data that I used for my research, the parents, daycares, schools that enabled me to undertake experiments, and my family and friends for their support and patience. In particular I want to mention Hans Broekhuis, Jan Don, Paul van Geert, Nina Hyams, Alexander Kaiser, Evelien Krikhaar, Daniela Polišenská, Henk van Riemsdijk, Henriette de Swart, Sharon Unsworth, Fred Weerman, and Frank Wijnen for the special role they played in the making of this book. Last but not least, I am grateful to all the children I had the pleasure to work with and whose language I had the opportunity to analyze. Elma Blom
Contents
Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... v Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 Chapter 2 Background ................................................................................................. 5 1. Introduction .................................................................................. 5 2. Verb Second ................................................................................. 6 3. Three early accounts .................................................................... 9 3.1. Small Clause Hypothesis.............................................................. 9 3.2. Lexical Learning Hypothesis ..................................................... 11 3.3. Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis ........................................................ 12 3.4. Summary .................................................................................... 14 4. No overlap versus optional infinitives ....................................... 15 4.1. No Overlap Hypothesis .............................................................. 15 4.2. Optional Infinitive Hypothesis................................................... 16 4.3. Summary .................................................................................... 17 5. Underspecification and full competence.................................... 18 5.1. Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis ................................... 18 5.2. Underspecification of Number Hypothesis................................ 19 5.3. Agreement and Tense Omission Model ..................................... 20 5.4. Truncation Hypothesis ............................................................... 22 5.5. Summary .................................................................................... 23 6. Aspects of meaning .................................................................... 23 6.1. Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis ................................... 24 6.2. Underspecification of Telicity Hypothesis ................................ 25 6.3. Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis ...................... 26 6.4. Summary .................................................................................... 27 7. Summary .................................................................................... 28 Chapter 3 Theoretical framework ............................................................................ 29 1. Assumptions ............................................................................... 29 2. Hypotheses ................................................................................. 31
Contents vii
Chapter 4 Form and meaning ................................................................................... 34 1. Introduction ................................................................................ 34 2. A working definition of modality............................................... 35 3. The Elsewhere Hypothesis......................................................... 38 4. Root infinitives........................................................................... 41 4.1. Method ....................................................................................... 41 4.2. Results ........................................................................................ 44 4.3. Discussion .................................................................................. 45 4.4. Conclusion.................................................................................. 46 5. Other verb constructions ............................................................ 47 5.1. Past participles ........................................................................... 47 5.2. Finite verbs................................................................................. 49 6. The modal shift .......................................................................... 52 6.1. Overall increase of modality? .................................................... 54 6.2. The elsewhere effect .................................................................. 55 7. Summary .................................................................................... 59 Chapter 5 Differences across languages ................................................................... 61 1. Introduction ................................................................................ 61 2. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis............................... 63 3. Naturalistic data ......................................................................... 66 3.1. The Modal Bias Hypothesis ....................................................... 67 3.2. A reanalysis of Dutch corpus data ............................................. 69 3.3. Implications of the Modal Bias Hypothesis ............................... 70 3.4. Conclusion.................................................................................. 71 4. Experimental data....................................................................... 71 4.1. Why an experiment?................................................................... 72 4.2. Picture selection ......................................................................... 73 4.3. Elicited production..................................................................... 74 5. Recapitulation ............................................................................ 77 6. Incorrect bare verbs.................................................................... 78 7. Summary .................................................................................... 81 Chapter 6 Developmental patterns ........................................................................... 83 1. Introduction ................................................................................ 83 2. Growing Overlap Hypothesis..................................................... 84
viii Contents 3. 4. 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 5. 6. 7.
Cause of no overlap.................................................................... 86 Morphological Cueing Hypothesis ............................................ 88 Increasing number of errors ....................................................... 91 Increasing type frequency .......................................................... 93 Conclusion.................................................................................. 94 Verb Second ............................................................................... 95 Null subjects............................................................................... 96 Summary .................................................................................. 101
Chapter 7 Discussion ................................................................................................ 102 1. Introduction .............................................................................. 102 2. Summary .................................................................................. 102 3. Implications.............................................................................. 104 4. Second language learners......................................................... 111 5. Null subject languages ............................................................. 116 6. Receptive grammar................................................................... 117 7. Concluding remarks ................................................................. 120 Appendix.................................................................................................. 121 Appendix 1: Selected CHILDES files...................................................... 121 Appendix 2: Properties of selected files................................................... 122 Appendix 3: Coding modality .................................................................. 123 Appendix 4: Permutation test ................................................................... 125 Appendix 5: Jack knife method................................................................ 130 Appendix 6: Verb constructions per stage ............................................... 132 Appendix 7: Experimental material.......................................................... 133 Appendix 8: Verb constructions (experimental data) .............................. 136 Appendix 9: Finite verb types in stage I/II ............................................... 137 Appendix 10: Coding subjects ................................................................. 138 Appendix 11: Null subjects ...................................................................... 139 Notes......................................................................................................... 140 References ............................................................................................... 143 Index ........................................................................................................ 160
Chapter 1 Introduction
This book is about the acquisition of finiteness, with a focus on the morphosyntax of finiteness. In this chapter we will first describe the main properties of finite verbs. Then we will introduce the developmental issue at stake: The apparent absence of finiteness in the early child grammar. This is followed by a brief summary of the approach taken here to analyze child data. The outline of the book will be given at the end of this introductory chapter. Depending on the language, finite verbs can have a variety of properties. Finite verbs express tense (e.g. past, present and future) and denote a relation between speech time and event time (Reichenbach 1947). Finite verbs also encode aspect. Comrie (1985) called aspect the internal temporal structure of an event. Notions like ‘ongoing’, ‘progressive’, ‘inchoative’, ‘prospective’, ‘perfective’, ‘telic’ or ‘punctual’ describe aspectual properties.1 Klein (1994: 4) defines finiteness as a complex notion that contains information about topic time and assertion. Finite verbs can furthermore indicate the mood of a sentence, and distinguish between indicative (used to express perceived reality) and subjunctive sentences (which express doubt, probability, certainty, etc.). Structurally, finite verbs agree with the grammatical subject of the sentence and typically assign nominative case to the subject. Intriguingly, across different languages, young children systematically omit finite verbs and use infinitival verbs instead. Therefore, a study on the acquisition of finiteness crucially deals with the question why young children do not use finite verbs. (1) – (4) below exemplify children’s early infinitival sentences in child Dutch, French (Ferdinand 1996), Russian (Brun, Avrutin, and Babyonishev 1999) and Hebrew (Armon-Lotem 1996): (1)
Jij you
(2)
Pas tomber la poupée. not fall-inf the doll ‘The doll does not fall.’
de the
walvis maken. whale make-inf
Daan 2;04.28
Nathalie 2;2.2
2 Introduction (3)
Papa peèku topit.' daddy stove keep-going-inf ‘Daddy keeps the stove going.’
Zhenya 1;9
(4)
Tapuax lishtot. apple drink-inf ‘I want to drink an apple.’
Lior 1;8.08
The same characteristic that is shared by many different child languages reveals a difference between child and adult language. Just to illustrate the contrast between children and adults: Daan, one of the Dutch-learning children whose language is examined in this book, utters (1) in a context where his parents would use either (5) or (6): (5)
Jij moet de walvis maken. you must-aux the whale make-inf ‘You have to make the whale.’
(6)
Jij maakt de you make-fin the ‘You are making the whale.’
walvis. whale
A comparison between (1) on the one hand and (5) and (6) on the other hand shows that Daan does not produce a finite verb. He either leaves out the finite auxiliary or fails to inflect and move the verb to second position, which is, in Dutch, the syntactic slot for finite verbs. On the basis of this comparison, we could hypothesize that Daan does not know the words and/or rules how to make finite verbs, and that he therefore is unable to produce finite sentences. Although Daan’s parents would use a finite sentence instead of (1), it is not the case that they always use finite sentences. In telling a story to the investigator who audiotaped his son, Daan’s father said: (7)
Oeh hij krijsen. uh he scream-inf ‘And then he started to scream.’
Dutch adults can and, obviously do, use infinitival sentences. These adult utterances are restricted by certain discourse conditions, like embedding in
Introduction
3
a narrative context, as in (7). Adults obey these discourse rules, whereas young children seem to violate them. Examples as in (7) give rise to a second hypothesis about children’s infinitival sentences. This hypothesis states that young children lack the knowledge of where to use finite verbs. In recent years there have been a mounting number of studies on children’s use of infinitival sentences, commonly known as root infinitives. As a result, detailed empirical data on various properties of this particular construction are available. In addition, numerous explanatory hypotheses have been raised that aim to answer the question Why do children use root infinitives? In the above, two possible hypotheses are described. According to the first, children use root infinitives because they are not in command of the grammatical means to mark finiteness. According to the second, children lack the resources or knowledge to fulfill the pragmatic requirements of finiteness marking. Before we can draw the conclusion that children use root infinitives as the effect of (processing limitations that lead to) pragmatic deficits, we first have to know whether the finite alternatives for root infinitives are available to the children. If these alternatives are not yet acquired, children are forced to violate the discourse conditions by using root infinitives. Then, their use of root infinitives is not due to pragmatic deficits, but to the unavailability of finite forms. In this book it will be argued that children (over)use of root infinitives because they have not yet acquired finite verb forms. The basic premise that underlies the analyses proposed here is that children’s use of root infinitives and properties of root infinitives can be understood as phenomena at the interface between syntax and the lexicon. Our analysis finds a natural embedding in the framework of Distributed Morphology. Especially the assumption that the syntactic component and the morphological component are separated and the assumption that vocabulary items can be underspecified (which are both critical notions in Distributed Morphology) provide ways to account for a range of empirical observations. In our view, root infinitives contain underspecified vocabulary items (infinitives) that are acquired prior to the specified finite alternatives. This analysis explains not only the developmental patterns of root infinitives and their finite counterparts (e.g. relative frequencies, subject use), but also allows us to understand several aspects of the semantics of root infinitives (e.g. variability in the meaning assigned to root infinitives, changes in meaning over time and cross-linguistic differences in the meaning of root infinitives). The empirical focus of this book is on the language development of monolingual Dutch children, who are roughly between ages two and three.
4 Introduction From these children were longitudinal spontaneous speech data as well as experimental data analyzed. In a cross-linguistic experiment, we compared the data of monolingual Dutch-speaking and English-speaking children. Many analyses are, however, applicable to other languages, data from other learner groups and other types of data, as will be pointed out in the final chapter. After providing an empirical and theoretical background in Chapter 2, we will introduce in Chapter 3 our framework and hypotheses. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 describe different types of empirical data that substantiate our claims. In appendices 4 and 5 detailed information is given on the statistical procedures used to analyze the child data. Variation is the running theme of Chapters 4, 5 and 6. In Chapter 4 we will show that Dutch root infinitives can have various temporal and modal interpretations. In this respect they differ from the other verb forms that children use. Chapter 5 deals with variation across two root infinitive languages (Dutch and English). In this chapter we will also discuss the relation between two seemingly nonfinite verb forms, that is, the verb that has infinitival morphology and the (ungrammatical) bare verb stem that lacks finite morphology. Chapter 6 is about variation over time. Important issues discussed in this chapter are the type frequency of finite verbs and infinitives, the resulting increase of lexical overlap between the two verb forms, changes in the error patterns of finite verbs and changes in subject use in finite sentences and root infinitives. Finally, Chapter 7 summarizes the main claims and observations present in our study, discusses their empirical, theoretical and methodological implications and their relevance for other learner groups, languages and types of data.
Chapter 2 Background
1. Introduction As will be illustrated in this chapter, root infinitives are certainly among the most frequently investigated topics in the field of child language research. An impressive amount of ideas fuelled the collection of new empirical data; reversely, new data resulted in a better understanding of root infinitives. The aim of this chapter is to single out and evaluate a number of influential root infinitive studies that constitute the root infinitive tradition. Providing a background, this overview may help appreciating the central questions in this book, and the solutions that will be given. Many studies on root infinitives addressed the question whether Dutch children – and children acquiring other verb second languages - use root infinitives because they do not know the verb placement rules of their language. Therefore, we will start in section 2 with a brief description of the Dutch verb placement rules and the Verb Second mechanism. In section 3, three studies will be described that had a major influence on the debate of root infinitives, albeit that it later turned out that the analyses proposed in these studies could not be upheld because of empirical inadequacy. In section 4, two other, potentially promising but contrastive, proposals will be discussed that present a different analysis of the early child grammar during the period of time in which children use both finite sentences and root infinitives (Optional Infinitive stage). According to one view, root infinitives show that children lack the knowledge of verb placement rules. According to the other view, children have full access to verb placement rules in the Optional Infinitive stage, yet they do not always use them. Section 5 elaborates on the question as to why children would avoid using grammatical marking of finiteness. Semantic properties of children’s finite clauses and root infinitives are discussed in section 6. Section 7 gives a brief summary.
6 Background 2. Verb Second One of the questions that has figured prominently in the root infinitive debate is whether or not children that use root infinitives have knowledge of verb movement. And, if they have this knowledge, what keeps them from using it? Before turning to some answers to these questions, we will start with a brief explanation of verb movement. In the declarative Dutch sentence in (1) the finite verb zal ‘will’ is placed in second position, directly following the topicalized temporal adverb ooit ‘once’, and the infinitival verb beklimmen ‘climb’ is in final sentence position: (1)
Ooit zal zij de berg once will-fin she the mountain ‘One day she will climb the mountain.’ Adv – Vfin – Subj – Obj – Vinf
beklimmen. climb-inf
The sentence in (1) contains two clues on the syntactic derivation. First, finite and nonfinite verbs appear in distinct positions. Secondly, the finite verb precedes the subject, in contrast to the more standard sentences without topicalization, as illustrated in (2): (2)
Zij zal ooit de berg she will-fin once the mountain Subj – Vfin – Adv – Obj – Vinf
beklimmen. climb-inf
Further comparison of (1) with (3) and (4), which also contain a topicalized object and display inversion of subject and finite verb reinforces the conclusion that the finite verb in Dutch does not necessarily follow the subject, but that the finite verb has to be placed in second position, irrespective of whether or not the preceding constituent is the subject: (3)
De berg zal zij the mountain will-fin she Obj – Vfin – Subj – Adv - Vinf
ooit once
beklimmen. climb-inf
(4)
De berg beklimt the mountain climbe-fin Obj – Vfin – Subj - Adv
zij she
nooit. never
Verb Second
7
According to the standard analysis, the bare verbal stem is base-generated in the head position of the Verb Phrase where it follows its internal arguments. Inflection, i.e. the morphological realization of finiteness, is generated in the head of the Inflection Phrase. The verbal stem moves past its internal arguments to the head position of the Inflection Phrase to pick up inflection, which encodes in Dutch tense and agreement features. The inflected verb moves further on to the head of the Complementizer Phrase to be in a proper tense position (Den Besten 1983; Koster 1975). This analysis, referred to as the ‘V-to-C movement’ analysis, is illustrated in the treediagram of the sentence Jan ziet Marie ‘John sees Mary’ in (5):2 (5) CP ru Spec C' ru Jani C IP zietj ru Spec I' ti ru I VP tj ru Spec V' ru Marie tj
More recent proposals are embedded in the minimalist program as proposed by Chomsky (1993, and later work).3 The minimalist account of verb movement differs from the Government and Binding analysis in several respects. First of all, the head of the Verb Phrase is not occupied by a bare stem but by a fully inflected form. This form contains inflectional features – in Dutch these are restricted to tense and agreement - that project functional structure – in Dutch Tense and Agreement -. The Inflection Phrase is split into a Tense Phrase and an Agreement Phrase, and the inflected verb moves to these functional positions in order to check its features. Move-
8 Background ment takes place in overt or covert syntax, depending on feature strength. Strong inflectional features require movement in overt syntax (prior to spell-out), while weak inflectional features lead to procrastination of movement (until Logical Form). This strong-weak distinction involves a reformulation of the notion ‘parameter’. Previously, Dutch was a headfinal language with a positive value for the Verb Second parameter (+V2). In minimalist terms, Dutch is a head-final language with strong inflectional features. A language like Dutch stands in opposition with another Germanic language like English. Consider the sentences in (6) and (7): (6)
One day she will climb the mountain. Adv – Subj – Vfin – Vinf - Obj
(7)
She will climb the mountain one day. Subj – Vfin – Vinf – Obj -Adv
In English the finite verb follows the subject even if a constituent other than the subject is in first position. Also, overt syntax does not distinguish between placement of the finite and nonfinite verb (as in Dutch). English has therefore been analyzed as a head-initial language with weak inflectional features. Movement of the finite verb in such a language is procrastinated until Logical Form, taking place in covert syntax (Ouhalla 1999; Pollock 1989). Consider now again the Daan’s root infinitive given in (8). (8)
Jij you
de the
walvis maken. whale make-inf
Daan 2;04.28
In (8), the Daan does not apply Verb Second: The infinitival verb is placed in final position. Thus, verb placement in early child Dutch is like adult Dutch in some respects (infinitive in sentence-final position), but not in all (no finite verb). It is precisely this incongruity that dominated much of the early work on root infinitives: Do children who use root infinitives, know verb movement? What is the structure that underlies root infinitives? Does use of root infinitives illustrate deficits in children’s knowledge of syntax? In the following section, three early answers to these questions will be described.
Three early accounts
9
3. Three early accounts According to the Small Clause Hypothesis, functional categories are absent in the early child grammar. The absence of functional categories disables movement of the verb. The Lexical Learning Hypothesis holds that the initial state is a grammar which has one underspecified functional category. Root infinitives are analyzed as one of the effects of this type of initial state grammar. The Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis states that children have all functional categories, but in root infinitives the landing site for the finite verb is occupied by a silent auxiliary.
3.1. Small Clause Hypothesis According to the Small Clause Hypothesis (also: Reduced Grammatical Competence Hypothesis), a root infinitive is a sentence that lacks functional structure (Lebeaux 1990; Radford 1988, 1990). It is argued that this complete lack of functional structure characterizes all early child utterances. Thus, young children do not only omit finite verbs, but determiners and complementizers are left out as well (the examples in (9) are from Radford 1990): (9)
a. b.
Bear in chair. ‘The bear is in the chair.’ Bow-wow go? ‘Where did the bow-wow go?’
Syntax in this pre-functional stage is, according to the Small Clause Hypothesis, reduced to thematic relations between words. The early clause encodes the thematic relationships between the verb and its arguments, and is, in this respect, a projection of a verb’s lexical properties. An operation such as movement of the verb to the Inflection Phrase cannot take place, as there is no Inflection Phrase. Consequently, the verb surfaces in nonfinite form. Although the Small Clause Hypothesis successfully explains why children omit various different elements, the hypothesis makes developmental predictions that are not borne out. The claim is that functional categories are in the early stages entirely absent. Around the age of 24 months, functional categories mature. It is expected that at this age child language un-
10 Background dergoes a sudden transition from a nonfinite to finite stage. De Haan (1987), however, observes in the data of the Dutch-learning boy Tim (2;01.15 and 2;02.15) that finite sentences and root infinitives co-occur. Tim uses (10) next to (11): (10)
a.
b.
(11)
a.
b.
Gaat niet. goes-fin not AUXfin – Neg Moet daar in. must-fin there in AUXfin – Adv – Prep Ik een keertje doen. I one time do-inf Subj - Obj - Vinf Even buiten kijken. just outside look-inf Adv - Adv - Vinf
In their study on early child German - with respect to verb placement German strongly resembles Dutch - Poeppel and Wexler (1992) observe in Andreas’ (2;1) data the following sentences in one and the same session. The sentences in (12) contain finite hab and mach while (13) contains the infinitival form haben ‘to have’: (12)
a. b.
(13)
a. b.
Ich I Ich I
hab have-fin mach das do-fin that
Thorsten Thorsten Du das you that
ein a nich. not
dossen Ball. big ball
Caesar haben. Caesar (= doll) have-inf haben. have-inf
There is no sudden transition from nonfinite to finite stage; instead there is a period of co-occurrence of finite sentences and root infinitives. This observation is unexpected given the maturational view of the Small Clause hypothesis.
Three early accounts
11
3.2. Lexical Learning Hypothesis In order to explain developmental stages, Clahsen proposes that children start out with one underspecified functional category F. On the basis of the acquisition of functional morphemes, children specify this category and posit additional, specific functional categories (Lexical Learning Hypothesis). The early underspecification accounts for Clahsen’s observation that children in the earliest stage (25-29 months) do not stick to a fixed order of constituents and that all verbal elements occur in first/second and final position with a preference for final position (Clahsen 1982; Clahsen and Smolka 1985). Clahsen interprets the finding that all verbal elements, including verbal complexes, can appear in first/second position as an indicator of early verb movement. If children start out with only one general functional projection, there is no specific trigger for finite verbs and both finite and nonfinite verbs can appear in sentence-initial position (Clahsen 1990; Clahsen, Eissenbeiss, and Penke 1994; Clahsen and Penke 1992). This would explain the co-occurrence of finite sentences and root infinitives and the initial random distribution of finite and nonfinite verb forms. De Haan (1987) examined Tim's spontaneous speech data to investigate if verb placement in Dutch child language resembles verb placement in German child language. Tim's data did not confirm Clahsen’s claims regarding random distribution. Already in the earliest stages, Tim’s data show a strong contingency between verb form and verb placement: Finite forms (ending on either the suffix -ø or –t) are placed in first or second position while nonfinite forms (ending on the suffix –en) are sentencefinal. Thus, only morphologically finite verbs are fronted (Jordens 1990; Verhulst-Schlichting 1985; Wijnen 1999). Poeppel and Wexler (1993) describe data of the German-learning boy Andreas. Like De Haan (and others), they observe that finite verbs and nonfinite verbs appear in different positions. In his data, there are 197 sentences with the finite verb in second position; 180 contain an overt subject and in 50 examples, the finite verb is preceded by a nonsubject i.e. an object or adverb. Thus, Andreas does not stick to the canonical subject-verb order, but he is able to topicalize constituents. If he topicalizes a constituent, he does this in accordance with the German adult grammar and applies subject-verb inversion so that the finite verb is located in second position. In all, early morphosyntactic dissociation between finite and infinitival verb forms is a robust finding in both Dutch and German child language, and Clahsen’s observation that finite verbs appear in second and in final
12 Background position seems the odd one out. Jordens (1990) explains why: He points out that the sentence-final finite verbs Clahsen mentions are, in fact, past participles with an omitted prefix. Past participles with an omitted prefix that end with the suffix –t are superficially indistinguishable from simple present tense forms, and can only be distinguished from each other on semantic grounds.
3.3. Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis Given the correct placement of the infinitival verb in root infinitives, one may think of a simple and straightforward explanation for children’s root infinitives: They are full-fledged finite structures containing a phonetically not realized (also: A dropped or a null) auxiliary. This would explain the strong correlation between infinitival morphology and position, because omission of the auxiliary results directly in a root infinitive, as illustrated with Daan’s root infinitive (2;04.28), in (14): (14)
Jij you
moet must
de the
walvis maken. whale make-inf
This idea has been proposed by Boser et al. (1992). Ferdinand (1996) narrows it down to the Modal Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis. She assumes that the underlying auxiliary in root infinitives must be auxiliaries that are used by the children elsewhere. Ferdinand’s first relevant observation is that the children use overt auxiliaries (that select infinitival complements) with either a future (‘inchoative’) or deontic denotation. Epistemic modals are absent. A second relevant observation is that epistemic modals select for states, but that the modal auxiliaries used by the children are incompatible with states (Barbiers 1995; McDowell 1987; Steedman 1977). The examples in (15)-(16) below illustrate the relation between denotations of modal auxiliaries and predicate types. The ‘minimal pair’ weten ‘know’/leren ‘learn’ shows that [-dynamic] state-denoting predicates force an epistemic reading of the modal auxiliary (15), while with [+dynamic] event-denoting predicates a deontic reading is preferred (16). The lexical meaning of the two predicates is quite similar, but their dynamicity values differ:
Three early accounts
(15)
Jan moet het antwoord weten. John must the answer know ‘I conclude that John knows the answer.’
(16)
Jan moet Frans leren. John must French learn ‘John is required to learn French.’
13
Thus, Ferdinand interprets the observation that root infinitives are eventive as support for the presence of a (deontic) modal auxiliary in root infinitives. The basic idea of the Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis and its more restricted variant, the Modal Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis, is straightforward and hence attractive. As long as it remains unclear why children should drop the auxiliary (assuming that they can, in principle, produce it), the hypothesis is stipulative, however. In addition, there are a number of empirical problems. First of all, it is predicted that overt subjects are obligatory in root infinitives, because, according to Boser et al., the overt subject acts as the licensor of the null auxiliary. One of the characteristics of root infinitives is that overt subjects are, at best, optional though. A comparison with children’s early finite sentences indicates that null subjects are a property of root infinitives (Hamann and Plunkett 1998; Hyams and Wexler 1993; Krämer 1993; Sano and Hyams 1994). Secondly, one could argue that in order to drop the auxiliary, children must be able to use auxiliaries in the first place. Analyses of longitudinal data show that the bulk of periphrastic verbs, containing auxiliaries, are produced after the root infinitive stage (Jordens 1990; Wijnen 2000), and, that although there is a phase in which root infinitives and periphrastic verbs co-occur, there is also an early stage in which only root infinitives occur and periphrastic verbs are not used (Blom and Wijnen submitted). Thirdly, if root infinitives were like finite sentences, as proposed by the (Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis, then it is expected that root infinitives and finite sentences pattern alike. However, both topicalization as well as WH-movement are unattested in root infinitives, whereas they are found in children’s early finite utterances. Asymmetries in use of WH-movement between root infinitives and finite sentences are observed in Dutch, German, Swedish and French child language (Haegeman (1994) for Dutch,
14 Background Poeppel and Wexler (1993) and Kursawe (1994) for German, Santelmann (1994) for Swedish and Crisma (1992) for French).4 The fourth, and final point of criticism that could be raised against the (Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis concerns the independent support brought up by Ferdinand (1996). Ferdinand argues that the eventivity of root infinitives provides support for drop of a modal auxiliary. However, it is not the case that all types of modality used by young children obey an eventivity constraint ánd it is not the case that only modal utterances obey such a constraint, witness the Dutch examples in (17) and (18): (17)
James wil gelukkig James want happy ‘James wants to be happy.’
zijn. be-inf
(18)
*James is gelukkig James is happy ‘James is being happy.’
aan on
het the
zijn. be-inf
The modal sentence in (17) expresses volition (or dynamic modality), which Ferdinand treats on par with deontic modality, but that, unlike deontic modality, does not shift to an epistemic reading in case the auxiliary selects a state-denoting predicate. The nonmodal sentence in (18), which expresses progressive aspect, can, by contrast, not select for state verbs.
3.4. Summary Children pass through a stage in which they use both finite sentences and root infinitives. This observation is incompatible with the claim that the use of root infinitives is caused by complete absence of functional structure. The idea that children initially have access to one underspecified functional category does not hold either, because this would predict random use of finite verb forms in finite and nonfinite position. Dutch and German observations show the opposite: Morphologically finite verb forms appear in second position whereas morphologically nonfinite verb forms occur in final base position. Finally, children’s root infinitives do not seem to be full fledged finite structures with a null modal, since the null modal is not syntactically licensed in root infinitives and root infinitives and finite sentences do not pattern alike. In addition, there is no evidence that chil-
No overlap versus optional infinitives
15
dren who use root infinitives are capable of using auxiliaries, it remains unclear as to why the auxiliary would be dropped and the eventivity of root infinitives does not provide unequivocal support for the presence of a null modal.
4. No overlap versus optional infinitives Although none of three hypotheses discussed in the previous section provides a satisfactory explanation, they have all been of significant influence, not in the least because they contributed to a more precise description of the properties of root infinitives. This section focuses on two analyses of root infinitives that seem more fruitful. De Haan (1987) argues on the basis of a lack of lexical overlap between the finite verbs in children’s early finite clauses and infinitives in their nonfinite sentences that children do not know verb movement, and hence, that the early child grammar is different from the adult grammar. Poeppel and Wexler (1993) defend, on the basis of observed overlap, that young children have full command of syntax and are able to move the verb.
4.1. No Overlap Hypothesis De Haan (1987) observed that the Dutch child Tim uses systematically different lexemes in finite and infinitival form. Tim’s finite verbs are restricted to auxiliary-like verbs that denote temporal, modal and aspectual meanings whereas Tim’s infinitives denote typically dynamicity i.e. ‘act’ or ‘change’. This contrast is crucial for his analysis. Relevant examples of finite sentences and root infinitives given in (10) and (11), are repeated here in (19) and (20): (19)
a.
b.
Gaat niet. goes-fin not AUXfin – Neg Moet daar in. must-fin there in AUXfin – Adv – Prep
16 Background (20)
a.
b.
Ik een keertje doen. I one time do-inf Subj - Obj - Vinf Even buiten kijken. just outside look-inf Adv - Adv - Vinf
De Haan argues that Dutch children do not move the verb from final to second position. Rather, the early Dutch child grammar contains two categories AUX(iliary) and V(erb) that are syntactically, morphologically and semantically distinct. AUX lacks finite as well as nonfinite suffixes. AUX denotes temporal, modal and aspectual meanings and is generated in a leftperipheral position in the sentence. V is marked by the infinitival suffix -en, denotes ‘act’ and ‘change’ and is generated in sentence-final position. Why would children hypothesize a classification that differs from the adult classification, and how do they unlearn the ‘wrong’ classification? According to Pinker (1984, 1989), children apply semantic bootstrapping to detect syntactic categories, and attach categorical features on the basis of semantic primitives such as ‘action’ or ‘motion’. Through linking rules, these primitives are linked to the syntactic category V. From this perspective, it is understandable that children end up with two different categories: The predicates that denote tense, aspect and modality (nonaction predicates or - in terms of De Haan - members of the category ‘AUX’) are assigned a different categorical feature than action-denoting predicates (members of the category ‘V’). To arrive at one category V that contains all verbal predicates, AUX and V must be merged, for instance on the basis of finite inflectional morphology. In that case finite inflection would be the feature that generalizes over the categories AUX and V.
4.2. Optional Infinitive Hypothesis Poeppel and Wexler (1993) argue against De Haan’s observation that there is a no overlap stage. They report that out of the 28 verbs that are used by the German-speaking boy Andreas twice or more, 8 verbs appear in finite as well as nonfinite form. The 20 remaining verbs that show no overlap do not fit De Haan's classification: The finite verbs are not only modals such as können ‘can’ and mögen ‘want’ or the copula sein ‘be’, but they denote also activities like fliegen ’fly’ or umkippen ‘fall over’. The nonfinite
No overlap versus optional infinitives
17
forms are nearly all verbs that denote actions. The only ambiguous predicate in nonfinite form is stehenbleiben ‘stay’. Poeppel and Wexler (1993: 12) conclude: “... the argument that there is no syntactic similarity between verbs used in second position and verbs used in final position is hard to defend in this context. Moreover, the claim that there is no semantic overlap between sets is difficult to maintain...”. Poeppel and Wexler (1993) and, in later work Wexler (1994, 1998) argue that children have full-fledged syntactic knowledge from the earliest observable stage in syntactic development. They conclude that Andreas has, at the age of 2;01, full mastery of verb movement and agreement. Their conclusion is backed up with data showing a correlation between finite/nonfinite suffixes and initial/final position, Verb Second in topicalization structures, lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitives and correct agreement. With regard to agreement, Poeppel and Wexler (1993: 6) observe that: “Andreas used predominantly singular subjects with correct agreement morphology on the verb”, which they interpret as support for the claim that children have full mastery of agreement from early on. Although the data presented by Poeppel and Wexler seem in full support of their claims, it is questionable whether or not their claim is really falsifiable on the basis of spontaneous speech data from the earliest developmental stages (Polišenská forthcoming). For one thing, the early correct agreeing verbs may be stored in Andreas’ lexicon as such. If Andreas knows agreement morphology, we expect him to use correct agreement with subjects that differ in person and number (ideally on more than one occasion). Unfortunately, data that give insight into the variation of agreeing verbs in Andreas’ speech are not provided.
4.3. Summary Two contrasting analyses have been discussed i.e. the No Overlap Hypothesis and the Optional Infinitive Hypothesis. At this point, none of the two is unequivocally supported by empirical observations. The two contrasting empirical generalizations that go with these hypotheses are summarized in (21) and (22) below:
18 Background (21)
There is no lexical overlap between infinitival verbs used in root infinitives and finite verbs used in co-occurring finite sentences. The predicates of root infinitives belong to a different class than the predicates of co-occurring finite sentences (based on De Haan 1987; Jordens 1990; Ferdinand 1996; Wijnen 1997, 2000).
(22)
The same lexemes appear as infinitival and finite verb in respectively root infinitives and co-occurring finite sentences (based on Poeppel and Wexler 1993).
5. Underspecification and full competence Suppose that Poeppel and Wexler are right and that Andreas indeed knows all about verb movement: Why doesn’t he move the verb? Wexler (1994, 1998) and various others (Hoekstra and Hyams 1995; Rizzi 1992, Rizzi 1994; Schütze 1997; Schütze and Wexler 1996) explain this in terms of ‘underspecification’. The notion of underspecification was already mentioned in relation to the Lexical Learning Hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, children start out with only one underspecified functional category and specify the other functional categories of the ambient language on the basis of grammatical morphemes in the input. In contrast, the underspecification accounts discussed in this section combine underspecification with the premise that children have full grammatical competence from early on.
5.1. Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis Wexler claims that children have the option to use root infinitives, because Tense is underspecified. Thus, verbs do not move to Tense; the only trigger for verbs is Agreement. In finite sentences, the verb is raised, resulting in a correctly agreeing form (Poeppel and Wexler 1993). In root infinitives, the verb is lowered, resulting in a form that is not agreeing.5 Wexler illustrated his claims with data from French (Pierce 1989, 1992). Young Frenchspeaking children have moved or raised the finite verb, while the verb in root infinitives is unmoved (or lowered, in terms of Wexler). The French examples below illustrate that a verb that precedes the negation pas (hence
Underspecification and full competence
19
moved) is finite, while a verb that follows pas (hence unmoved) is an infinitive (examples are from Pierce 1992). (23)
a. b.
(24)
a. b.
Marche pas. walk-fin not Ça tourne pas. this turn-fin not Pas not Pas not
casser. break-inf rouler en roll-inf on
vélo. bike
Root infinitives do not occur anymore as the acquisition of forms to mark temporal distinctions (that is, present versus past) leads to obligatory marking of tense. With respect to the cross-linguistic pattern of root infinitives, Wexler (1994, 1998) generalizes that null subject languages (like Italian or Spanish) do not exhibit an Optional Infinitive stage. The Optional Infinitive stage does occur in non null-subject languages (such as Dutch, German and English). This correlation has been supported by Hebrew data showing that Hebrew children only use root infinitives in contexts in which adult Hebrew does not license null subjects (Rhee and Wexler 1995).
5.2. Underspecification of Number Hypothesis Hoekstra and Hyams (1995) and Hyams (1996, 1999) proposed that not Tense but Number is underspecified. Cross-linguistic patterns are presented in support of this claim. In Germanic languages, such as Dutch, German and English, root infinitives are frequent, whereas root infinitives are infrequent in a Romance language such as Italian. The two language types differ in the richness of their inflectional paradigms. Italian has person as well as number agreement in the present tense paradigm, whereas the Germanic languages only mark Number i.e. the difference between singular and plural. Hyams (1999: 402) states that in German-type languages “number is the morphosyntactic reflex of tense binding”. If in these languages Number is underspecified, Tense cannot be bound: Hence a verb
20 Background form that has no morphological tense features surfaces, namely the infinitive. Underspecification of Number prevents children (acquiring languages that have Number agreement) from using finite sentences. As long as Number is underspecified, root infinitives surface. To explain the Optional Infinitive stage itself and to account for the shift to a finite stage, Hyams (1999) gives an additional explanation. In the Optional Infinitive stage, children have two ways to bind Tense. In root infinitives, they bind Tense deictically to speech time. In finite sentences, Tense is bound grammatically through a tense chain. Children escape from the Optional Infinitive stage when they learn that Tense, being anaphoric, must be bound grammatically. As long as the general pragmatic principle that prescribes grammatical binding is not acquired or has not matured, finiteness is optional for children. Bar-Shalom and Snyder (1998) contrast the Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis (which was discussed in the previous section) with the Underspecification of Number Hypothesis. They address the question whether or not Russian has an Optional Infinitive stage, since Russian can be analyzed as a non pro-drop language that has rich verbal morphology (Franks 1995). Hoekstra and Hyams hence predict that child Russian should not display an Optional Infinitive stage, whereas Rhee and Wexler (1995) predict that Russian children do pass through an Optional Infinitive stage. The findings reported by Bar-Shalom and Snyder are in favor of the second approach: A comparison of child data from Russian and Polish – which form, according to Bar-Shalom and Snyder a near minimal pair with respect to their pro-drop status - reveals that Russian children do use root infinitives whereas root infinitives are nearly absent in the Polish data (see also Brun, Avrutin, and Babyonishev 1999). Both languages have rich verbal morphology.
5.3. Agreement and Tense Omission Model The gist of the Agreement and Tense Omission Model is that in root infinitives, Agreement and/or Tense is/are underspecified (Schütze 1997; Schütze and Wexler 1996). The Agreement and Tense Omission Model extends the analysis of adult infinitival clauses to child root infinitives. It is argued that the dropped subject in root infinitives is a null subject, and that this null subject is identified as the empty category PRO (‘big pro’). Why
Underspecification and full competence
21
is the subject PRO and is the child not allowed to simply drop the subject? Chomsky (1986) argued that Universal Grammar contains a principle stating that all sentences must have subjects. This principle, known as the Extended Projection Principle, explains (among other things) the insertion of the expletive subjects in sentences like (25): (25)
a. b.
There is a man in the garden. It is fun for Jane to play badminton.
The Extended Projection Principle makes direct predictions for the analysis of subjectless sentences. To obey the Extended Projection Principle it must be assumed that (26) contains a null subject: A subject that is structurally present but does not have a phonetic representation. (26)
It would be wrong [ NULL SUBJECT to leave now ].
As the null subject in (26) has a syntactic function but is not spelled out, it is an empty category. In generative theory, there are different types of empty categories, each with their own licensing conditions. According to Chomsky (1981), there is only one empty category that must remain ungoverned, namely PRO.6 Infinitival clauses lack a finite verb, hence the head of the Inflection Phrase is empty and its specifier position (the canonical subject position) is ungoverned. Thus, PRO is licensed in this position. According to the Agreement and Tense Omission Model, Tense licenses overt subjects, underspecified Tense licenses PRO, and the overt subject’s Case is assigned by Agreement. As a result, subjects are dropped if Tense is underspecified. If Agreement is underspecified, and Tense is not, the subject is assigned default Case. This may result in incorrect Case if the default Case is nonnominative, as in English. As accusative is the default Case in English, it is correctly predicted that English children use root infinitives with accusative subjects. The examples in (27) are from Schütze (1997): (27)
a. b.
Him fall down. Her have a big mouth.
Nina 2;3.14 Nina 2;2.6
22 Background Thus, the Agreement and Tense Omission Model explains optional use of subjects in root infinitives as well as the occurrence or Case errors in English child root infinitives.
5.4. Truncation Hypothesis The central tenet of the Truncation Hypothesis is that children underspecify the Root Principle in (28) and, as a result, lack the knowledge that the Complementizer heads every sentence (Haegeman 1994, 1995; Rizzi 1992, 1994; Weissenborn 1994): (28)
Root Principle The Complementizer Phrase is root.
Underspecification of the Root Principle results in (29):7 (29)
Verb Phrase or Tense Phrase or Complementizer Phrase is root.
The effect of (29) is that children do not necessarily project the entire adult structure, though they have to obey the canonical order of projections that is given by Universal Grammar. In the resulting, truncated, trees the root of a sentence can be the Complementizer Phrase or any projection below this phrase. Thus, children cannot omit material from the middle of a syntactic tree; only top nodes can be dropped.8 The optional use of infinitives follows from the optional projection of the Tense Phrase and the Complementizer Phrase. In the case of root infinitives, children take the Verb Phrase as root: (30) Spec
VP ru V' ru V
In the case of finite utterances, either the Tense Phrase or the Complementizer Phrase is root. Truncation hypotheses focus on the absence of a Complementizer Phrase in child language. According to these accounts, the
Underspecification and full competence
23
dropped subject in child language is not PRO, but it is a null constant, which is allowed to be antecedentless by virtue of the absence of an antecedent position. The specifier of the Complementizer Phrase is an antecedent position, thus absence of the Complementizer Phrase leads to absence of an antecedent position and hence allowance of the null constant. Truncation accounts predict that root infinitives have a null subject, while finite sentences can have null subjects and overt subjects.
5.5. Summary Full competence approaches generally assume that children pass through a stage in they use both finite sentences and root infinitives, the Optional Infinitive stage. Optional use of infinitives is explained via underspecification of Tense, Number, Agreement or the Root Principle. The proposals focus on the relation between finiteness and subject use and crosslinguistic differences in the use of root infinitives. The empirical observations that they account for are summarized in (31) and (32): (31)
In root infinitives, children drop subjects significantly more frequently than in co-occurring finite sentences (based on Haegeman 1994, 1995; Hamann and Plunkett 1998; Krämer 1993; Rizzi 1994; Sano and Hyams 1994; Schütze 1997, amongst others).
(32)
Null-subject languages do not have an Optional Infinitive stage, whereas non null-subject languages do have an Optional Infinitive stage (based on Bar-Shalom and Snyder 1998; Guasti 1993/94, 2002; Rhee and Wexler 1995; Torrens 1995; Wexler 1994, 1998).
6. Aspects of meaning Poeppel and Wexler (1993) rejected the No Overlap Hypothesis proposed first by De Haan (1987) on the basis of observed lexical overlap in the Optional Infinitive stage. Yet, a number of findings on the semantics of root infinitives are consistent with the No Overlap Hypothesis. Ferdinand (1996) has shown that there is evidence for an early dichotomy between finite sentences and root infinitives, based on evidence from
24 Background early child French. Following Vender (1967: 106), she formulates this in terms of states and events. The generalization approximates De Haan’s (1987) distinction between auxiliary-like finite verbs and infinitives that denote actions: States are, like the reference of most auxiliaries, not dynamic whereas events (comprising activities, accomplishments and achievements) are dynamic.9 Wijnen (1997) confirms Ferdinand’s observation for early child Dutch, on the basis of a study of spontaneous speech data of four children. He makes use of the distinction between stage-level predicates that denote temporal properties and individual-level predicates that denote permanent properties (Carlson 1979; Kratzer 1989). Eventive verbs are thus a subset of stage-level predicates while state verbs are a subset of individual-level predicates. Gavruseva (2001, 2002) draws the line between predicates that are inherently specified for telicity - these occur in finite sentences - and predicates that are not specified for telicity these appear in root infinitives -. Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) follow the state-event contrast, but point out that there is a cross-linguistic difference in this respect: The asymmetry holds for languages like Dutch and German, but not for child English: English root infinitive do contain state-denoting predicates.
6.1. Underspecification of Tense Hypothesis Ferdinand (1996) argued that root infinitives are eventive because they contain a deontic modal auxiliary (see, for details, section 3.3). On her view, the underspecification of Tense in the early child grammar accounts for the stativity of finite sentences in the Optional Infinitive stage. Underspecified Tense is valued as [+Tense] and lacks further specifications for [-past] or [+past]. The value of the underspecified Tense is determined by speech time S, yielding a here-and-now or present tense reading. Ferdinand (p. 88) crucially assumes that only stative predicates can survive when Tense is underspecified: “Non-eventive verbs lack internal temporal structure, they denote states. This entails that they can be [ +tense ] without being linked to a specific part of the time axis. Eventive verbs, on the contrary, have internal temporal structure; they denote changes taking place in time. For this reason, whenever an eventive verb is marked for [ +tense ] it must be linked to a specific moment in time.”
Aspects of meaning
25
Wijnen (1997), conversely, claims that only eventive predicates can survive if Tense is underspecified. Following Kratzer (1989), Wijnen assumes that stage-level predicates (i.e. events) contain an event-variable while individual-level predicates (i.e. states) do not. According to Kratzer, there is a syntactic difference as well: Subjects of stage-level predicates (i.e. events) originate in the specifier of the Verb Phrase while subjects of individual-level predicates (i.e. states) are generated in the specifier of the Inflection Phrase. Wijnen argues that there are two ways to bind the event variable: By means of a temporal operator (Tense) and by means of a deictic operator. If Tense is present, the event variable is bound by Tense. In root infinitives, the alternative, deictic, strategy is applied. Stative predicates do not have an event variable, and, therefore, a temporal interpretation cannot be assigned deictically.10 As a result, stative predicates are (necessarily) overtly marked for Tense while eventive predicates can remain untensed. Two objections can be raised against Wijnen’s analysis. First of all, if a deictic operator binds the event variable in root infinitives, we expect that root infinitives receive a present tense interpretation because the event variable will be bound to speech time. The data suggest that most root infinitives are modal, however (Ferdinand 1996; Ingram and Thompson 1996; Wijnen 1997). Secondly, if the assignment of a temporal interpretation via grammar is achieved through binding of a variable to Tense, it is still unexplained how states can receive a temporal interpretation. They do not have an event variable and, hence, there is nothing that Tense can bind.
6.2. Underspecification of Telicity Hypothesis Gavruseva (2001, 2002) argues that the eventivity of root infinitives follows from aspectual underspecification, in particular, underspecification of the functional head Telicity. Verbal predicates differ with respect to their telicity value. Some predicates are telic and have an inherent endpoint e.g. close, die, arrive. Other predicates are nontelic and do not have an inherent endpoint e.g. dance, walk, eat. There are also verbs that are transient: They can be telic as well as nontelic. For instance, the event denoted by eat an apple has finished when the apple is eaten. However, eat by itself is not telic. As the addition of an object influences the telicity value, telicity is argued to be compositionality derived (Verkuyl 1972). Gavruseva claims that children lack the ability to compute the telicity value. Thus, if a tran-
26 Background sient predicate is used the telicity value of the Verb Phrase remains undetermined in child language. As the Verb Phrase must be specified for telicity to establish a tense chain, the chain is blocked.11 The effect is that an untensed form surfaces. Stative predicates are inherently specified for telicity: They are nontelic. Punctual events are telic. In both cases, a tense chain can be established and a finite sentence is used. Gavruseva’s account makes a cross-linguistic prediction. In languages with rich aspect morphology, telicity does not have to be computed via syntax. The claim is that these languages do not have an Optional Infinitive stage. In this respect, the results of the study conducted by Bar-Shalom and Snyder (1998) are problematic for Gavruseva’s account: Both Russian and Polish have rich verbal morphology, encoding aspectual distinctions, but Russian children use root infinitives whereas in child Polish, root infinitives are rare.
6.3. Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) do not focus on the question as to why children’s finite sentences are stative while their root infinitives are eventive, but they rather concentrate on the question as to why root infinitives in certain languages are eventive (obey an “Eventivity Constraint”), whereas root infinitives in other languages do not. The crucial contrast here is between languages that have a morphologically marked infinitive (such as Dutch, German and French) and languages that do not have a morphologically marked infinitive (English). Although English has no distinct infinitival form, it has been argued that English children do go through an Optional Infinitive stage, just like Dutch, German, French, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish children (Harris and Wexler 1996; Wexler 1994): Uninflected verb forms, illustrated in (33), are actually infinitives. In English, these infinitives happen to be indistinguishable from stems in the entire simple present tense paradigm except third person singular contexts: (33)
a. b. c.
Eve sit floor. Where penny go? That truck fall down.
Eve 1;7 Adam 2;4.30 Nina 2;0.24
Aspects of meaning
27
This morphological difference between English and other root infinitive languages is important for Hoekstra and Hyams’ (1998) explanation of cross-linguistic differences in predicate selection in root infinitives. Pursuing the idea that the infinitive itself has a modal meaning, instantiated in the infinitival suffix, Hoekstra and Hyams predict that the modal restriction is absent in English root infinitives, simply because English root infinitives do not contain an infinitival suffix. Referring to the work Giorgi and Pianesi (1996), Hoekstra and Hyams assume that the English bare verb form has an inherent meaning which differs from the meaning of the infinitive, namely [+perfective] (see, for further discussion, Blom 2002). In later work, Hyams (2001, 2002) assumes that the English bare form has no particular meaning, however. Hoekstra and Hyams substantiate their analysis with Dutch data from Wijnen (1997) who found over 80% modal root infinitives in the Dutch data.12 Deen (1997) and Madsen and Gilkerson (1999) report the reverse for English. Like Ferdinand (1996) - this chapter, section 3.3 -, Hoekstra and Hyams relate eventivity to modality. They argue that because English root infinitives are not restricted to modal meanings, they also do not have to obey the eventivity constraint. This prediction is borne out: Deen (1997) reports that 75% of the root infinitives in the English data he studied are eventive, Madsen and Gilkerson (1999) found that only 60% of the English root infinitives they examined are eventive (data reported by Hyams 2001, 2002). This contrasts strongly with the Dutch results, reported by Wijnen (1997).
6.4. Summary We have discussed three hypotheses on semantic properties of finite clauses and root infinitives in the Optional Infinitive stage. Wijnen’s proposal and Gavruseva’s proposal make predictions on root infinitives that are not borne out by the data. The empirical inadequacy of these two accounts leaves us with Hoekstra and Hyams’s proposal. Their proposal can account for the following empirical generalizations: (34)
Root infinitives express modal meanings, whereas co-occuring finite sentences are nonmodal (based on Ferdinand 1996; Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Ingram and Thompson 1996; Van Ginneken 1917; Wijnen 1997).
28 Background (35)
Root infinitives that contain a distinct infinitival suffix (Dutch, German, French) are modal, whereas ‘bare verb’ root infinitives (English) are not restricted to modal meanings (based on Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002).
(36)
Root infinitives that contain a distinct infinitival suffix (Dutch, German, French) are restricted to event-denoting predicates, whereas ‘bare verb’ root infinitives (English) contain also statedenoting predicates (based on Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002).
7. Summary In this chapter we gave an overview of various accounts of root infinitives, and summarized seven relevant empirical generalizations on morphological, syntactic, semantic and typological properties of root infinitives. We related existing accounts and assessed them on the basis of available empirical data. Some hypotheses have been refuted; with respect to others the data are either indecisive or available data seem to support them. One of the aims of this book is to provide additional empirical data in order to further assess the last two types of hypotheses on root infinitives. A second aim is to propose an alternative analysis of root infinitives that can account for known facts and is able to explain any new findings. In the next chapter we will introduce our analysis.
Chapter 3 Theoretical framework
1. Assumptions In this book we will analyze children’s use of root infinitives as a phenomenon at the lexicon-syntax interface. The analysis proposed in this book assumes the basic premises from the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993; Harley and Noyer 1999). In this chapter we will first introduce the relevant background assumptions, followed by a summary of our analysis and hypotheses. Within Distributed Morphology, insertion of vocabulary items is postsyntactic, and there is an independency between affixes and their functions. This premise goes back to Beard’s Separation Hypothesis (Beard 1982, 1995). On this view, affixes are not the source of semantic and syntactic distinctions (DiSciullo and Williams 1987), but rather spell-out morphosyntactic features. For this reason, Distributed Morphology is often referred to as a late-insertion theory. Post-syntactic lexical insertion works as follows. When syntactic checking has been finished, syntactic slots are occupied by bundles of features (‘morphemes’). In order to spell-out the morphemes, the lexicon is searched for the most appropriate vocabulary item (i.e. a relation between a phonological string and information about the position of this string). Selection of the most appropriate vocabulary item can be seen as a competition in which the Elsewhere Principle determines the winner. Formally, the Elsewhere Principle states that: “if there are two rules, A and B, and (i) A (the specific) case includes B (the general case) and (ii) the application of rule A yields a distinct result from the application of rule B, A is applied first. If A takes effect, B is not applied” (Kiparsky 1982: 8). If applied to related vocabulary items in the mental lexicon, the effect of the Elsewhere Principle is that the vocabulary item that matches most features in the syntactic target slot wins out; this vocabulary item is inserted (Anderson 1992; Halle and Marantz 1993). If for whatever reason the most specific affix cannot be inserted, the next specific affix comes into play and so on, until
30 Theoretical framework the last affix, often referred to as ‘the default’ or ‘elsewhere form’, will be inserted. Insertion is furthermore determined by the Subset Principle (Halle (1997: 428); see also Harley and Noyer (1999: 5)), which states the following: “The phonological exponent of a vocabulary item is inserted into a morpheme if the terminal string of the item matches all or a subset of the grammatical features specified in the terminal morpheme. Insertion does not take place if the vocabulary item contains features not present in the morpheme. Where several vocabulary items meet the conditions for insertion, the item matching the greatest number of features specified in the terminal morpheme must be chosen.”
Thus, it is not only the case that a selected vocabulary item is the most specific vocabulary item that is available, but the features of this vocabulary item are also identical to or a subset of the features in syntax, i.e. the features of the terminal morpheme. From the Elsewhere Principle it follows that an underspecified vocabulary item will only be selected if a more specified and appropriate form is not available. An example, which accounts for finite inflection in Dutch, illustrates the basic idea. In Dutch, the bare verb is inserted if the subject is the speaker, whereas the affix -t occurs in nonspeaker, singular contexts. The affix -en shows up in plural contexts. Finite –en is homophonous with the infinitival form in Dutch. Table 1 illustrates the Dutch present tense indicative paradigm: Table 1. Dutch present tense indicative paradigm Person-Number
Inflection
Example (lopen ‘to walk’)
1-SG
Stem + Ø
Ik loop ‘I walk’
2-SG
Stem + t
Jij loopt ‘You walk’
3-SG
Stem + t
Hij loopt ‘He walks’
1/2/3-PL
Stem + en
Wij/jullie/zij lopen ‘We/you/they walk’
The contexts in which the different verbal affixes appear can be formalized as in (1), which can be seen as a set of disjunctively ordered vocabulary items in the lexicon, with the most specific vocabulary items ordered first.13 In (1), the features on the right-hand side trigger insertion of the
Assumptions
31
affix on the left-hand side. The features [±past], [±sp] and [±plur] stand for tense, speaker and number, respectively: (1)
/t/ /en/ /ø/ /en/
↔ ↔ ↔ ↔
[-past, -sp] [-past, +plur] [-past] []
Post-syntactic lexical insertion of the vocabulary items in (1) is regulated through underspecification and disjunctive ordering of rules according to the Elsewhere Principle. Because of the Subset Principle, it is allowed to insert underspecified vocabulary items (such as, for instance, the nonfinite affix –en) in many different syntactic positions (this follows from the Subset Principle). However, the Elsewhere Principle will prevent insertion of a default affix if a more specified alternative is available (that obeys the Subset Principle). Note that in Dutch the infinitival form and finite plural forms are syncretic. As (1) shows, we assume that these two syncretic forms have a different underlying representation, hence are two different vocabulary items. Motivation for this assumption is provided by Dutch dialects, showing that this syncretism does not exist throughout the Dutch language system (Aalberse 2007; A. MacLean, personal communication). Therefore, it is likely that the two suffixes –en in standard Dutch are a case of accidental homophony. This assumption is in our analysis represented by the two different vocabulary items in (1) that share their phonological form /en/ but differ in morphosyntactic feature specification (see also Wexler, Schaeffer, and Bol 2004).
2. Hypotheses Various basic assumptions of the framework of Distributed Morphology will play an important role throughout this book (e.g. post-syntactic lexical insertion, Elsewhere Principle, Subset Principe, underspecification). This section introduces the most important ideas of this book, which provide alternatives for the hypotheses discussed in this chapter. Elsewhere Hypothesis. With regard to the meaning assigned to root infinitives, it will be proposed in Chapter 4 that infinitives in child language can
32 Theoretical framework be analyzed as underspecified vocabulary items (elsewhere forms) that lack specific information, contra the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis. Other proposals discussed in this chapter also make use of the notion of underspecification, but assume that syntactic knowledge is underspecified (e.g. children’s knowledge of (certain) functional categories or principles). The focus of this work is on underspecification in the lexicon, because this analysis is able to account for the observed variation. Support for the Elsewhere Hypothesis for root infinitives is provided by naturalistic (Chapter 4) and experimental data (Chapter 5). Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. In the field of second language acquisition it has been argued that children learning English (L2) drop finite inflection (Haznedar 2001; Haznedar and Schwartz 1997; Ionin and Wexler 2002; Prévost 2003). According to this analysis, the ungrammatical bare verbs in third person singular contexts that lack a final suffix -s in child L2 English are underlyingly finite. Brown (1973) gave a similar analysis for the bare verbs produced by monolingual children learning English, but, later on, Harris and Wexler (1995) refuted this analysis, arguing that the ungrammatical bare verbs in child English are nonfinite. We will argue in Chapter 5 that both analyses are right, and that the ungrammatical bare verbs in child English are partially finite, partially nonfinite. This accounts for the observation that root infinitives in child English denote more often modal meanings ánd contain more often stative predicates than the Dutch child root infinitives. Modal Bias Hypothesis. In previous studies it was concluded that Dutch root infinitives are more often modal than English root infinitives. Arguing that children drop of inflectional markers, we agree with this conclusion. However, we will also show in Chapter 5 that previous studies overestimated the cross-linguistic difference in meaning. According to the Modal Bias Hypothesis, root infinitives in which speaker (first person singular) or addressee (second person singular) are the subject are more often modal than root infinitives with third person singular subjects. The exclusion of root infinitives with first and second person singular subjects in studies on English root infinitives and the inclusion of such root infinitives in studies on Dutch root infinitives will therefore contribute to the cross-linguistic difference in meaning.
Hypotheses
33
Growing Overlap Hypothesis. Chapter 6 is dedicated to variation over time. It will be argued that two, apparently contradictory, observations in the literature concerning lexical overlap between verbs used in early finite sentences and verbs used in root infinitives (De Haan 1987 versus Poeppel and Wexler 1993) hold for two different phases in the language development of Dutch children. Thus, under a longitudinal analysis of the Optional Infinitive stage, the contradictory observations turn out to complete each other. On the basis of analyses of Dutch input data, it will be argued that the initial absence of lexical overlap is caused by input distributions. Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. According to the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis (Chapter 6), finite inflection is a clue for Dutch children to merge the finite and infinitival verb lexicon. This will allow them to pass the No Overlap stage. The consequences for the acquisition of the syntactic aspects of finiteness are twofold. Firstly, inflectional morphology provides Dutch children with the necessary information to acquire Verb Second. Secondly, because inflectional morphology bears a close relation to subject use, the acquisition of inflectional morphology helps Dutch children to treat subjects in a way that is consistent with the target grammar.
Chapter 4 Form and meaning
1. Introduction We begin this chapter with the observation in (1): (1)
Root infinitives express modal meanings, whereas co-occuring finite sentences are nonmodal (based on Ferdinand 1996; Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Ingram and Thompson 1996; Van Ginneken 1917; Wijnen 1997).
Already in 1917, Jacques van Ginneken found support for the generalization in (1): He reported that Dutch children tend to use root infinitives to express wishes and desires. Almost a century later, this observation has become the starting point for various theories on root infinitives. The impossibility to generalize the specific modal meaning of not only Dutch, but also German and French root infinitives, to English child language led researchers to the proposal that infinitival morphology, which is present in Dutch, German and French but not in English, carries the modal meaning that is assigned to root infinitives. Although this theory provides an attractive explanation for various different observations, we will argue that the basic assumption - encoding of the modal meaning in the infinitival suffix - leads to a model that is too rigid to account for the variability in the meaning of root infinitives. According to our hypothesis, the Elsewhere Hypothesis, root infinitives contain an underspecified, or elsewhere, form. In this chapter it will be shown that the Elsewhere Hypothesis accounts for the differences in the interpretations assigned to co-occuring verbs in the Optional Infinitive stage. In addition, the hypothesis makes the correct predictions for developmental changes in the meaning carried by root infinitives. Section 2 specifies the use of the notion ‘modality’ in this chapter. This is followed in section 3 by a brief explanation of the most promising explanation for the meaning of root infinitives to date (Early Morphosyntac-
A working definition of modality
35
tic Convergence Hypothesis) and a proposal for an alternative account (Elsewhere Hypothesis). Section 4 discusses naturalistic data on the meaning of Dutch root infinitives, whereas section 5 deals with the meaning assigned to various types of finite sentences used in the Optional Infinitive stage. Section 6 focuses on changes in the meaning of root infinitives. Section 7 summarizes the main findings and conclusions of this chapter.
2. A working definition of modality In this section, we will formulate a working definition that is applicable to modality in early child language. We will start with discussing a number of basic modal distinctions developed for adult language. This will then be narrowed down to the types of modality that are relevant for children between ages two and three, which is the age of children in the Optional Infinitive stage. One of the most well known distinctions is that between epistemic and deontic (also: Root or circumstantial) modality. Obligation, requirement and permission are deontic modal notions, which always involve a morally responsible agent that acts necessarily or possibly (Lyons 1977). Epistemic modality is speaker-oriented and refers to a speaker’s beliefs or judgments. Often, reasoning is involved. Palmer (1986) makes a distinction between deontic and dynamic modality (both can be considered as root or circumstantial modalities). Dynamic modality is subject-oriented, as opposed to deontic modality. Palmer uses the label ‘dynamic modality’ for wishes or abilities, which refer to a necessity or possibility that is somehow internal to the subject (also: Volition or boulemaic modality). The distinction between dynamic and deontic modality can be illustrated with the sentence in (2) - the example is taken from Kratzer (1991) - : (2)
I can play the trombone, but I cannot play the trombone now ‘I know how to play the trombone, but I am not allowed to play the trombone now’
The first clause of (2) expresses dynamic modality. The subject tells us that he has learned to play the trombone, hence (s)he is able to play the trombone. The second clause expresses deontic modality. The subject announces that he is not allowed to play the trombone at the time he utters
36 Form and meaning (2), because he is not permitted to do so, maybe because he is in a place where silence is required. Note that the paraphrase in (2) is not the only accessible interpretation. Other possible interpretations are: ‘I am allowed to play the trombone, but I am not in the physical condition to play the trombone’ or ‘I know how to play the trombone, but I am not in the physical condition to play the trombone’, etc. For assigning a particular interpretation, the utterance situation must be taken into account (Kratzer 1991: 42). Because the use of the full range of modal expressions requires cognitive maturity, it is expected that modality in adult language is crucially different from modality in child language. Deontic and dynamic modality are, for instance, expected to be present in children’s utterances from very early on. Lyons (1977: 826), whose use of the term ‘deontic modality’ includes dynamic modality, says on this issue: “The origin of deontic modality, it has often been suggested, is to be sought in the desiderative and instrumental function of language: That is to say, in the use of language, on the one hand, to express or indicate wants and desires and, on the other, to get things done by imposing one’s will on other agents. It seems clear that these two functions are ontogenetically basic, in the sense that they are associated with language from the earliest stage of its development in the child. It is equally clear that they are very closely connected. It is a small step from a desiderative utterance meaning “I want the book” to an instrumental utterance meaning “Give me the book”; and parents will commonly interpret the child’s early desiderative utterances as mands, thereby reinforcing, if not actually creating, the child’s developing awareness that he can use language in order to satisfy his wants and desires.” (Lyons 1977: 826).
By contrast, epistemic modality is used by children at a later age. In studies that concentrate on children’s cognitive development, it has been argued that this ‘delay’ of epistemic modality is due to the absence of a Theory of Mind (cf. Carey 1985; Wellman 1990; Wimmer and Perner 1983). Because young children lack a concept of the mind, they neither talk about or understand their own mental states nor talk about or understand those of others. As epistemic modality concerns knowledge of beliefs, and hence of mental states, children will not use epistemic modality before they have a Theory of Mind. In the literature, the emergence of a Theory of Mind is described as a sudden change that takes place halfway during the third year. (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, and Frith 1985).
A working definition of modality
37
What may play a role in the developmental dissociation between epistemic modality, on the one hand, and deontic/dynamic modality on the other, is that mental states like beliefs are categorically different from mental states such as intentions and desires. In order to describe this difference, Gopnik (1993) makes use of Searle’s (1983) distinction between a mind-toworld and a world-to-mind direction-to-fit. In the case of a mind-to-world direction-to-fit, the mind is altered to fit the world, whereas in the other case, a world-to-mind direction-to-fit, the world is altered to fit the mind. Beliefs are examples of the first, whereas intentions/desires exemplify the latter. There is evidence that young children perform better on tasks that involve world-to-mind direction-to-fit such as intentions and desires than on experimental tasks that require a concept of mind-to-world direction-tofit such as belief (Astington and Gopnik 1991; Flavell et al. 1990; Wellman and Woolley 1990). Flavell et al. (1990) found for instance that three-yearolds perform better on desire tasks than on belief-tasks, but the proportions of errors that occurred when talking about the desires of others were still considerable (between 30% and 40%). Available data on children’s linguistic development corroborate the cognitive dissociation: Markers of dynamic and deontic modality appear before the age of three while epistemic modal markers appear after three. Boland (2006) provides an extensive cross-linguistic overview of children’s production data, confirming that the above generalization holds across different language and, hence, that it relates to cognitive rather than linguistic factors. The understanding of epistemic certainty by Englishspeaking children begins during the fourth year (Gonsalves 1998; Hirst and Weil 1982 Thus, in adult language, the notion modality refers to a range of different denotations and is divided into many ‘submodalities’, based on subtle interpretative differences. For children in the Optional Infinitive stage, who are roughly between ages two and three, the class of modal expressions is much more restricted. Because of their cognitive immaturity, children’s modal utterances predominantly refer to intentions and desires. This is reflected in the definitions that try to capture the modal meaning of children’s root infinitives. Ferdinand (1996) calls children’s root infinitives deontic (but includes in her analysis root infinitives that denote volition and inchoative aspect). Ingram and Thompson (1996: 102) define modality in root infinitives as “that some activity will, can or should occur” and Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) as denoting events “that have not been realized”. In aspectual rather than in modal terms, Lasser (1997: 46) concludes
38 Form and meaning that “the predicate of a root infinitive cannot refer to a completed event”. Note that Hoekstra and Hyams’ “not yet realized” and Lasser’s “noncompletedness” generalization are crucially different: The former excludes ongoingness/present tense - making “not yet realized” rather “not yet started” - whereas the latter includes ongoingness/present tense. The working definition of modality used in this book combines the definitions given in previous studies on root infinitives: An utterance is modal if it does not denote present or past tense. Thus, modal utterances describe events or states that do not take place simultaneous to speech time or that happened prior to speech time: (3)
Working definition of modality Modal utterances describe events or states that do not take place simultaneous to speech time or that happened prior to speech time.
3. The Elsewhere Hypothesis The hypothesis proposed in this chapter, the Elsewhere Hypothesis, provides an alternative for the representation of infinitival forms as stated in the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis (Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002). Before introducing the Elsewhere Hypothesis, we will first explain the constrasting hypothesis in some more detail. Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) and Hyams (2001, 2002) assume that the modal/nonmodal distinction is a grammatical primitive that is operative in the child grammar from a very early age on (“Early Morphosyntactic Convergence”). In the grammar, this primitive is instantiated by the Mood projection and the morphosyntactic feature [±realis]. Guided by the opposition between nonmodal and modal, or realis and irrealis mood, children search the ambient language for appropriate morphophonological forms that can be mapped onto the feature [±realis]. The opposition is realized in morphosyntax through the specification or underspecification of inflectional categories. In Dutch child language, irrealis is expressed through infinitival verb forms; the Dutch infinitival suffix –en is specified as [-realis]. This feature is checked in the Mood Phrase, yielding the modal meaning in Dutch root infinitives. This effect is absent in simple finite sentences; since finite sentences stand in opposition to root infinitives, they express realis mood.
The Elsewhere Hypothesis
39
English root infinitives differ from Dutch root infinitives in four ways: They are less often modal, are not restricted to event-denoting predicates, they lack an infinitival suffix and the nonfinite verb immediately follows the subject. In (4) three Dutch root infinitives are given, in (5) three examples of English root infinitives are given: (4)
a. b. c.
(5)
a. b. c.
Vrachtwagen truck Koppie cup-dim Bob op Bob on
emmer basket thee tea bank couch
Eve sit floor. That truck fall down. He bite me.
doen. do-inf pakken. get-inf liggen. lie-inf
Matthijs 2;04.24 Abel 2;03.02 Peter 2;00.28
Eve 1;7 Nina 2;0.24 Sarah 2;9
The English bare stem has no carrier for [-realis]. English root infinitives contain, therefore, no modal feature that yields a modal interpretation. By implication, English root infinitives have a free temporal and modal reference. As it is assumed that the modality children use, correlates with eventivity (see Chapter 2, section 3.3), it is argued that the absence of the modal restriction in English child language correctly predicts the possibility of state-denoting predicates in this language. According to the above, the modality of root infinitives follows from the infinitival suffix, which spells out [-realis]. In the following, an alternative analysis will be formulated according to which the infinitival suffix does not carry specific semantic features, but is underspecified: (6)
Elsewhere Hypothesis Root infinitives contain an underspecified verb form.
Recall that Hoekstra and Hyams argued that the difference in meaning between Dutch and English root infinitives is directly related to a morphological difference between the two languages, namely the presence of an infinitival suffix in Dutch and its absence in English. Contrary to this, we believe that there is no inherent difference in meaning between the Dutch infinitive and the English bare verb.
40 Form and meaning If a feature can be valued as [+realis] or [-realis] or can be unspecified, it can be assumed that, according to Hoekstra and Hyams, Dutch infinitives are represented by the vocabulary item in (7), with phonological information on the left-hand side of the arrow and morphosyntactic information on the right-hand side: (7)
/en/
↔
[-realis]
According to the Elsewhere Hypothesis in (6), (8) provides a more appropriate description of Dutch infinitives, however: (8)
/en/
↔
[]
In the adult Dutch system, (8) is part of the ordered list of vocabulary items in (9). The three relevant features in (9) are [±speaker], [±plural] and [±past]: (9)
/t/ /en/ /ø/ /en/
↔ ↔ ↔ ↔
[-past, -sp] [-past, +plur] [-past] []
Recall that the effect of the Elsewhere Principle is that the most specific vocabulary item will be inserted. The Subset Principle holds that the specification of the inserted vocabulary item equals the specification of the syntactic position, or is a subset thereof (see Chapter 3 for more explanation on the two principles and further motivation of (9)). On the basis of (9), the interplay of the Elsewhere Principle and Subset Principle can be nicely illustrated. The Subset Principle prohibits insertion of the suffix -t in first person singular contexts since the value for the speaker feature is not in accordance with the morpheme, i.e. the syntactic features in this position. The Subset Principle also prohibits insertion of specified –en in first person singular contexts. Insertion of the unspecified suffix –en would not violate the Subset Principle, but would imply a violation of the Elsewhere Principe, since a more specified alternative, i.e. the zero-suffix, is available. In first person singular contexts, the bare verb is thus the vocabulary item that will be inserted. The basic difference between Hoekstra and Hyams’ approach and the Elsewhere Hypothesis is that the former does not allow variation in the
The Elsewhere Hypothesis
41
meaning of Dutch root infinitives, whereas the latter predicts variation. The Elsewhere Hypothesis predicts that modal and nonmodal root infinitives are allowed, and hence, are expected to occur. In addition, developmental changes are compatible with the Elsewhere Hypothesis. Obedience to the Elsewhere and Subset Principles require that a child is forced to insert the most specific and appropriate vocabulary item that is available. In native adult Dutch, we can assume that the full list of (9) and many more vocabulary items - also specified modal vocabulary items - are available. It is, however, unlikely that this holds for each developmental stage in Dutch child language since it is part of language development that children acquire different verb forms. If the acquisition of modal and nonmodal specified alternatives for underspecified suffix –en develops in an asymmetric fashion and modal alternatives are available earlier (more frequent) than nonmodal alternatives, or vice versa, we expect that this is reflected in the meaning of root infinitives. If modal vocabulary items are, for instance, acquired prior to nonmodal vocabulary items, verb forms ending on the suffix -en will be left over for nonmodal contexts until specified nonmodal vocabulary items are acquired; hence the prediction that there are relatively many root infinitives with a present tense interpretation. In sections 4, 5 and 6 we will study the meaning properties of root infinitives, with a special focus on the degree of variation in the meaning of root infinitives and how this variation relates to other available verb forms. A significant amount of variation in the meaning of root infinitives is incompatible with the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis (and compatible with the Elsewhere Hypothesis), whereas a fixed meaning would plead for the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis and against the Elsewhere Hypothesis.
4. Root infinitives 4.1. Method Transcriptions of spontaneous speech data of six monolingual Dutchspeaking children have been analyzed in order to determine whether or not root infinitives in Dutch child language are modal. All analyzed data are available through the Child Language Data Exchange System or CHILDES (MacWhinney 2000).14 The data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter are part of the Groningen Corpus. Laura’s data are part of the Van
42 Form and meaning Kampen Corpus. The transcriptions in these corpora are based on audiotape recordings made at home, in an unstructured home setting. The children’s age ranges are given in Table 1. This table shows furthermore the total number of utterances produced by each child in the selected files. Laura's sample contains files from an older age (above three) than the samples from the other children (under three). As Laura suffered from recurrent ear-infections, her development is delayed. Otherwise, Laura developed normally (Van Kampen 1997). Table 1. Children’s age ranges and the total number of utterances in the selected files that are used for analysis, data from all six children Child Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter
Age range 1;10.03 - 2;07.29 1;08.21 - 2;09.10 2;00.07 - 2;08.18 1;09.04 - 3;04.06 1;09.30 - 2;11.19 1;07.18 - 2;03.21
Total number of utterances 2890 4859 3340 4241 4624 2349
From the corpus of each child, a number of files have been selected to represent four developmental stages (Table 2). Each selected cluster of files corresponds with a different frequency of finite verbs. The right-most column of Table 2 gives the average MLU (Mean Length of Utterance) of the six children in a certain stage. Table 2. ‘Stages’ in the development of finiteness: Frequency of finite sentences per stage (as a percentage of the total number of sentences that contain a verb), average MLU per stage Stage I II III IV
Frequency of finite sentences 0 < 30% 50% > 80%
Average MLU 1.125 1.387 1.972 2.607
The selected files per child are listed in Appendix 1. Appendix 2 contains detailed information about the numbers of root infinitives and finite sentences in the four stages and the average MLU per child per stage. Note that children do not jump from 0% to 30% to 50% to 80% finite sentences.
Root infinitives
43
Rather, the increase of finite sentences is gradual, and the stages are snapshots taken from this gradual development. These files were annotated with modal/temporal and aspectual interpretations by two independent researchers on the basis of a coding scheme (Appendix 3). In case of disagreement, an utterance was excluded from further analyses. All available information from the transcripts was used in order to assign interpretations. Utterances labeled ‘modal’ had to meet one of the following criteria: Preceding or subsequent parental utterances suggested a modal interpretation, or the context suggested a modal interpretation. Ambiguous utterances were not included in the analysis. For finite sentences this happened only in a few cases, for the root infinitives this led to exclusion of 317 root infinitives out of a total number of 1565. The usual morphosyntactic criteria were applied to single out root infinitives, more specifically, we included those clauses in which the main verb appeared in infinitival form, that is, with the suffix –en in sentencefinal position, and a finite verb was lacking. In line with other, recently reported findings for Dutch and German child language, we found that cases of incorrect use of the suffix –en in finite position were virtually absent (Blom 2008; Blom and Polišenská 2005, Blom, Polišenská, and Weerman 2007; Prévost 2003). Since plural subjects in Dutch select the suffix –en, this implies that none of the six children investigated here used verbs ending on –en followed by object, negation, adverb or particle in the context of a singular subject (illustrated in (10)). (10)
Hij he
pakken een get a
unattested
bal. ball
In two-word utterances with plural subjects and without object, negation, adverb or particle (that is indicative of the verb’s position), the underlying structure can be finite or nonfinite; compare (11a) to the finite example in (11b) and the nonfinite example in (11c): (11)
a. b. c.
Wij we Wij we Wij we
pakken. get pakken een get-fin a een bal a ball
bal. ball pakken. get-inf
44 Form and meaning All such ambiguous utterances have been excluded. Because use of –en as a finite substitute is unattested in child Dutch (and German), two-word utterances with a verb ending on the suffix –en with singular subjects and without object, negation, adverb or particle have been analyzed as root infinitives. The rationale of this decision is based on analogy: If children do not use the suffix –en as a finite substitute in sentences with object, negation, adverb or particle, we do also not expect them to do this in sentences without object, negation, adverb or particle. One-word utterances were excluded, as were parasitic root infinitives that are used to give an answer to a question (Wat doe je? Fietsen. ‘What are you doing? Cycling.’).
4.2. Results All six children use more modal root infinitives than nonmodal root infinitives, but nonmodal root infinitives are not excluded. On average, more than one quarter of the interpretable root infinitives is modal, as shown in Table 3: Table 3. Number of interpretable root infinitives, number of modal root infinitives and percentage of modal root infinitives, data from all six children Child
% modal root infinitives
Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter Mean/Sum SD
76 73 73 64 78 80 73 6
N modal root infinitives/N root infinitives 91/120 115/157 150/206 200/314 199/254 157/197 912/1248
Examples of modal and nonmodal root infinitives are given in (12) and (13), respectively: (12)
a.
Peter bal pakken. Peter ball get-inf context: Peter wants to get the ball.
Peter 2;01.27
Root infinitives
b.
c.
(13)
a.
b.
c.
45
Vrachtwagen emmer doen. Matthijs 2;04.24 truck basket do-inf context: Matthijs wants the investigator to put the truck in the basket. Op kist zitten. Josse 2;08.04 on box sit-inf context: Josse wants his mother to sit on the box. Ah mij bril vallen. Abel 2;05.27 ah my glasses fall-inf context: His glasses are falling. Poffie ginke [= koffie drinken]! Daan 2;01.21 coffee drink-inf context: People on television are drinking coffee. Boot svaje [= varen]. Laura 2;04.01 boat sail-inf context: Refers to a picture with a sailing boat.
Nonmodal root infinitives refer nearly always to events that take place simultaneously to speech time (in 95% of the cases they are ongoing and denote present tense; the remaining 5% have a past reference). The results show a modal preference, but they do not reflect a modal restriction. A chi-square test shows that the observed distribution differs significantly from the expected distribution if there is a modal restriction (χ2 = 28.17). Analyses of the spontaneous speech of six Dutch-speaking children indicate that root infinitives are not restricted to a modal denotation and that present tense denotating root infinitives are allowed. A significant number of root infinitives could not be interpreted.
4.3. Discussion Do these results differ from other observations reported in the literature? Hoekstra and Hyams base their conclusions on data reported by Wijnen (1997) who finds a range of 73.2% – 94.3% modal root infinitives in the interpretable (i.e. either future, present or past) root infinitives in the data of four Dutch boys, with a mean percentage of 86. A considerable amount of data, ranging between 11.6% - 26.3%, could not be interpreted. Haegeman’s (1995) case study of the Dutch child, Hein (2;4-3;1), shows that
46 Form and meaning 56% (50/89) of Hein’s root infinitives have a modal interpretation, 7% (6/89) are nonmodal and the rest (i.e. 37%) is ambiguous. German has, like Dutch, an infinitival –en suffix. Thus, for child German it is expected that all root infinitives are modal, as in Dutch. Behrens (1993) studied six German-acquiring children and reports that the temporal reference in their root infinitives is free (e.g. past, present and future). Behrens finds moreover overlap between the temporal reference assigned to root infinitives and bare stem forms, which is unexpected if the infinitival suffix denotes a particular meaning. She concludes that: “temporal reference functions are not distributed across forms in a complementary fashion” (p. 157). Lasser analyzed data from two German-speaking children, Simone and Andreas, and found that respectively 73% (N = 130) and 69% (N = 108) of all interpretable root infinitives in these data were modal. The rest received nonmodal - present (predominant) or past (rare) tense - interpretations. Finally, Ingram and Thompson (1996) classified root infinitives in the spontaneous speech data of four German-speaking children as ‘Missing modal’ and ‘Possible modal’. In the first category, which is the most reliable one, the percentage of modal root infinitives ranges from 20% to 70%, with a mean of 47%. The German data are very similar to the Dutch data in that there is possibly a modal preference but certainly not a modal restriction; the number of nonmodal root infinitives is considerable.
4.4. Conclusion Returning to the hypothesis that the infinitival suffix denotes [-realis], we conclude from the results discussed in this section that while in most studies the majority of root infinitives is modal, it is certainly not the case that all root infinitives are modal. A proposal that links the presence of modality to the presence of infinitival morphology cannot explain this nontrivial proportion of nonmodal root infinitives. By contrast, a model that assumes that the infinitival suffix is not restricted, because it is underspecified (e.g. the Elsewhere Hypothesis), can account for the observed variability.
Other verb constructions 47
5. Other verb constructions The Elsewhere Principle predicts that specified vocabulary items will be inserted at the expense of underspecified vocabulary items. During the Optional Infinitive stage, children do not only use infinitives, which we interpret here as underspecified forms, but they also use other verb forms. The question arises how specific the denotation of these other verb forms is. Is the observed variability in meaning prototypical for clauses containing an infinitival verb form? In other words, are infinitives true elsewhere forms, and hence underspecified in comparison to other verb forms?
5.1. Past participles The first relation discussed here is that between infinitives, and another nonfinite form, past participles. Lasser (1997) observed that German root infinitives do not denote completed events. The data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter confirm this observation for Dutch child language. The nonmodal root infinitives in Table 3 nearly always - in 95% of the cases - refer to events that are simultaneous to speech time: They are ongoing/denote present tense. Only 17 root infinitives denote an event that took place prior to speech time and that could be completed at speech time (which is the only criterion that can be used for past/completed interpretations). These 17 root infinitives are included in the nonmodal root infinitives and comprise 5% of the nonmodal root infinitives and 1% of all interpretable root infinitives. Some examples of nonmodal past root infinitives are given in the fragments in (14) below and (15) on the next page: (14)
*MAT: *MOT:
Ieke Ieke Ging went
spugen. throw-inf up Ieke spugen ? Ieke throw-up
Matthijs 1;11.24
48 Form and meaning (15)
*MOT: *LAU: *MOT: *LAU:
Vond find Ja. yes In in met with
leuk ? Laura 3;04.06 nice
je you
dat that
grote big mij me
zwembad swimmingpool emmertjes spelen. baskets-dim play-inf
The Elsewhere Hypothesis accounts for the free interpretation of root infinitives, and their use in modal as well as ongoing contexts. As will be explained below, this hypothesis also explains a limitation of the meaning of root infinitives, namely the absence of root infinitives that denote completed events. According to the Elsewhere Hypothesis, root infinitives are vulnerable because their frequency is immediately reduced as an effect of the availability of specified verb forms. If children learn [+completed] forms early, it is therefore expected that completed root infinitives do not occur. Jordens (1990) reported that participles appear very early in Dutch child language. In the same period that root infinitives are used, children also use nonfinite clauses that contain a sentence-final participle (root participle) instead of a sentence-final infinitive. Some examples of Dutch root participles are given in (16). Note that many of the early participles have an omitted participial prefix (ge-). The participial suffix (-t or –(e)n) is expressed, though. In the example in (16d) the participle can be identified because this is indicated by the form of the stem (wees): (16)
a.
b.
c.
d.
Jij ook maakt. you also make-part ‘You have made it as well.’ Afvalt. off-fall-part ‘It has fallen off x.’ Ape poept. monkey defecate-part ‘The monkey has defecated.’ Die ook in bad wees. that also in bath be-part ‘That one has also been in bath.’
Abel 2;02.19
Daan 2;04.14
Josse 2;00.21
Laura 2;05
Other verb constructions 49
e.
f.
Boer daan. burp do-part ‘I have done a burp.’ Peter emmer daan. Peter basket do-part ‘Peter has done it in the basket.’
Matthijs 1;11.24
Peter 1;10.03
In the data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter, participles appear early as well. The first unambiguous examples appear in stage II. When root participles are used, they have a very specific denotation (unlike root infinitives): All 102 interpretable root infinitives in our data receive a completed aspect denotation.15 The absence of completed root infinitives thus appears to go hand-in-hand with the early availability of root participles. Because (past) participles are specified for completed aspect, completed root infinitives are nonexistent.
5.2. Finite verbs Table 4 summarizes the results for root infinitives, sentences with finite main verbs and sentences with periphrastic verbs (auxiliary + infinitive): Table 4. Percentages modal root infinitives, modal sentences with a finite main verb and modal sentences with periphrastic verbs, data from all six children
Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter Mean/Sum SD
% modal root infinitives 76 (91/120) 73 (115/157) 73 (150/206) 64 (200/314) 78 (199/254) 80 (157/197) 73 (912/1248) 6
% modal finite main verbs 7 (9/119) 15 (43/289) 9 (12/137) 11 (17/157) 5 (5/95) 2 (7/424) 8 (93/1221) 5
% modal periphrastic verbs 86 (68/79) 85 (92/108) 83 (90/108) 65 (102/156) 86 (128/149) 35 (32/91) 73 (512/691) 20
50 Form and meaning Sentences with modal finite main verbs often contain verbs like passen ‘fit’ or gaan ‘to go’. Although these verbs do not belong to the class of modal verbs, inherently they may be modal as passen can express (im)possibility and gaan may denote future events. Examples of sentences with modal finite main verbs are in (17), and nonmodal finite main verbs are in (18): (17)
a.
b.
c.
(18)
a.
b.
Past niet ijsbeer in niet. fit-fin not ice bear in not ‘The ice bear does not fit in here.’ Ik ga ook naar de I go-fin also to the ‘I will go to the doctor too, isn’t it?’ Oh, valt bijna om. oh fall-fin almost down ‘Oh, it almost falls down.’ Ik hoor paatje I hear-fin horse-dim ‘I do not hear the little horse.’ Daan ligt in de Daan lie-fin in the ‘Daan is lying in the crib.’
Matthijs 2;04.24
dok. Laura 3;04.06 doctor Abel 2;07.15
niet. not
Laura 2;04.15
wieg. crib
Daan 2;04.14
The periphrastic verbs are as frequently modal or nonmodal as the root infinitives. However, the crucial difference with root infinitives in that in the first case it is one and the same suffix/vocabulary item that appears in modal and nonmodal contexts. In the case of periphrastic verbs there are various different auxiliaries, most of which are restricted to either a modal or a nonmodal denotation. Examples of sentences containing modal periphrastic verbs, containing modal auxiliaries, are in (19), whereas (20) illustrates sentences with nonmodal periphrastic verbs: (19)
a.
b.
Ik moet daar I must-fin there ‘I have to sit there.’ Mag ik grote blok may-fin I big block ‘May I build the big block?’
zitten. Matthijs 2;10.22 sit-inf bouwe? Abel 2;07.15 build-inf
Other verb constructions 51
(20)
a.
b.
c.
Hij gaat zo hoepla he go-fin so hoopla ‘He is doing hoopla like this.’ Doet Paulien huisje do-fin Paulien house-dim ‘Paulien is building a house.’ Sijn de soep ete. are-fin the soup eat-inf ‘They are eating the soup.’
doen. Peter 2;03.21 do-inf maken. Daan 2;04.28 make-fin Laura 2;04.01
The nonmodal auxiliaries in (20a-c) are interesting for they show that children allow the auxiliaries gaan, doen and zijn in contexts in which they are not allowed in standard Dutch. The example in (20a) illustrates that Dutch children use the auxiliary gaan ‘go’ for denoting actions that are taking place in the here and now. In standard Dutch, the auxiliary gaan ‘go’ is used to denote inchoative aspect (Het gaat regenen ‘It’s starting to rain.’) or when referring to a future event (Het gaat morgen regenen ‘It’s going to rain tomorrow.’), but it is not used to refer to an event that takes place at the moment of speaking (Haeseryn et al. 1997: 966-1048). The sentence in (20b) exemplifies ‘do-support’ in early child Dutch: Insertion of doen ‘do’ in present tense contexts. In adult Dutch, use of doen as an auxiliary that selects an infinitival complement is described as belonging to ‘regional’ or ‘informal’ variants of Standard Dutch. The combination of doen ‘do’ and an infinitive is restricted to questions in these variants (Wat doe je zeggen? ‘What do you say?’) and habitual sentences (Ze doen altijd kaarten ‘They always play cards.’) (Haeseryn et al. 1997: 9661048). Children exposed to standard Dutch allow this construction in regular declarative sentences to describe an ongoing action, however (Hollebrandse and Roeper 1996; Jordens 1990; Van Kampen 1997; Zuckerman 2001). The example in (20c), finally, also contains an auxiliary used by children in a way that is different from standard Dutch. The verb zijn ‘be’ occurs in standard Dutch as an auxiliary in progressive sentences. In these sentences, however, zijn takes an obligatory prepositional infinitival complement (zijn aan het + infinitive ‘be on the + infinitive’ e.g. Hij is aan het dansen ‘He is dancing.’). The construction without the preposition aan and the definite determiner het is informal and more frequently used in the western part of the Netherlands, where it is generally used with a rather
52 Form and meaning specific denotation, namely to express that someone left his usual location to perform an activity elsewhere (Waar is hij? Hij is dansen ‘Where is he? He is out dancing.’) (Haeseryn et al. 1997: 966-1048). The use of auxiliaries in (20a) and (20c) by Dutch children, also referred to as use of ‘dummy auxiliaries’, has been found in both spontaneous speech data and experimental data. The utterances is (20a) and (20c) are usually analyzed as a form of ‘do-support’ (illustrated in (20b)) (Hollebrandse and Roeper 1996; Jordens 1990; Van Kampen 1997; Zuckerman 2001). Of all verb constructions, gaan + infinitive is the only denoting both modal and nonmodal meanings.16 All other forms have a specific denotation. In sum, the percentage of modal root infinitives in Dutch spontaneous speech data ranges between 64% - 80% (M = 74%) modal root infinitives in the interpretable data of six Dutch children, 20% - 36% nonmodal. 20% of all root infinitives were ambiguous. This differs significantly from the sentences with a finite main verb: These are hardly ever modal (M = 8%). Nearly all periphrastic verbs have a specific denotation (either modal or nonmodal). These results are consistent with the Elsewhere Hypothesis, because they show that infinitives can have modal as well as nonmodal denotations, whereas other verb forms have specific denotations. The only exception is the periphrastic verb gaan + infinitive, which allows, like root infinitives, both modal and nonmodal readings in early child Dutch. The light verb gaan could be underspecified, like the Dutch infinitive. It is also possible that there are two vocabulary items gaan with different specifications, like the nonfinite suffix –en and the finite suffix –en.
6. The modal shift The Elsewhere Hypothesis predicts that the usage of root infinitives is dependent on the acquisition and availability of other, specified, vocabulary items. The Elsewhere Principle requires insertion of the most specific vocabulary item and, hence, as soon as a more specified alternative for the infinitive is acquired, the infinitival form will not be selected anymore. This scenario predicts that the decreasing proportion of root infinitives, as reported repeatedly in studies of different children (De Haan 1987; Gillis 2003; Haegeman 1995; Van Ginneken 1917; Verhulst-Schlichting 1985; Wijnen and Bol 1993), is a function of an increasing specified verb lexicon. Initially, infinitives are the only vocabulary items available to
The modal shift 53
denote events, and, hence, inserted across the board. The early availability of infinitives could be related to input properties such as frequency and saliency (Freudenthal, Pine, and Gobet 2006; Wijnen, Kempen, and Gillis 2000). Later on, when specified tensed and modal vocabulary items are acquired, infinitives compete with specified vocabulary items and, as a consequence of the Elsewhere Principle, loose increasingly. This scenario predicts fluctuations in the meaning of root infinitives, since it is not expected that children acquire specified past, present tense and modal alternatives for root infinitives at the same time. Asymmetries in the acquisition and availability of specified finite constructions - simple finite verbs and periphrastic verbs denoting past tense, present tense and various modal meanings – are expected to induce changes in the denotation of root infinitives. Recall that the data described in the previous sections represent four developmental stages, delineated on the basis of the average percentage of root infinitives: Stage I – nearly 100% root infinitives; stage II - 70% root infinitives; stage III - 50% root infinitives; stage IV - 20% root infinitives and less (section 4.1). A breakdown of the results discussed in section 4 reveals a developmental effect: In stages III and IV, root infinitives are used significantly more often to denote modality than in stages I/II. In earlier work, we referred to this development as the ‘modal shift’ (Blom 2002; Blom and Wijnen 2000). Table 5 gives the observed difference: Table 5. Modal root infinitives, average and standard deviations; a comparison between stages I/II and III/IV, data from all six children Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter Mean/Sum SD
% modal in stages I/II 58 (14/24) 63 (31/49) 52 (44/84) 56 (33/59) 68 (82/120) 78 (96/123) 63 9
% modal in stages III/IV 80 (77/96) 78 (84/108) 87 (106/122) 65 (167/255) 87 (117/134) 82 (61/74) 80 8
A permutation test (Appendix 4) shows that the modal shift is statistically significant. The ‘Jack knife technique’ (Appendix 5) indicates that omission of one particular child from the group of six does not lead to a differ-
54 Form and meaning ent outcome. Table 6 gives the p-values that give an estimation of the probability that our observations can be found by chance. Table 6. Probabilities that the observed average difference between modal use in stages I/II and modal use in stages III/IV is due to chance. The probabilities are calculated over the entire group of six children and over 6 groups of five children, with one specific child omitted at a time (Jack knife method) All children Omitted child Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter
p-value 0.004 0.007 0.014 0.018 0.003 0.005 0.01
The first value (p = 0.004) is the probability when the average from the total sample of six children is taken; the rest are the values when one of the children is left out from the statistical analysis. Given that the probability is below the critical value of 0.05 in all cases, we may be confident that the modal shift is a statistically reliable change over time that takes place between stages II and III.
6.1. Overall increase of modality? It was found that Dutch children’s root infinitives become more strongly associated with modal interpretations over time. According to the Elsewhere Hypothesis, the modal shift is an effect of a relatively extensive increase of finite main verbs in early child Dutch. One could think of an alternative explanation, however. The simplest explanation would be that the modal shift in root infinitives is a corollary of an across-the board increase of the use of modality. This idea does not work, however, as shown by the results in Table 7. Table 7 gives the proportions of modal and ongoing interpretations of all sentences in stages I to IV - finite as well as infinitive - that contain an eventive main verb. We restrict our test to eventive verbs, because, in contrast to noneventive verbs, these occur both relatively frequently in finite
The modal shift 55
sentences and root infinitives. If the modal shift in root infinitives would be the effect of an overall increase of modality, then we should see an increasing percentage in the third colon. The overall percentage of modal utterances drops, however: Table 7. Frequencies and proportions of utterances (finite and nonfinite) containing eventive verbs that have modal denotations, and frequencies and proportions of root infinitives containing eventive verbs that have modal denotations Stage
N eventive
N modal (%)
I II III IV
80 436 999 2621
46 (57%) 268 (62%) 552 (55%) 767 (29%)
N eventive root infinitive 75 383 518 271
N eventive modal root infinitive 43 (57%) 256 (67%) 402 (78%) 210 (77%)
The proportion of sentences with a nonmodal interpretation remains stable in the first three stages and it increases slightly after stage III. Consequently, for these data, the modal shift in root infinitives cannot be ascribed to an across-the-board increase of modal denotations.
6.2. The elsewhere effect In earlier work we proposed that the modal shift reflected children's discovery of the infinitival suffix and hence the mapping of the morphosyntactic feature [-realis] to the morphophonological form /–en/ (Blom 2002; Blom and Wijnen 2000; Deen and Hyams 2002). It was argued that this discovery was caused by the acquisition of finite forms: The contrast between finite and infinitival forms enabled morphological analysis (Pinker 1984). In the remainder of this section it will be shown that the Elsewhere Hypothesis provides a better fitting model for the whole range of observations. The Elsewhere Hypothesis predicts that in the early stages Dutch children only have root infinitives at their disposal. By effect, root infinitives appear in a wide range of contexts. If the child learns specified finite forms and constructions, root infinitives become more and more infrequent (as an effect of the Elsewhere Principle). An asymmetric growth of specified finite vocabulary items and constructions, which happens if specified mo-
56 Form and meaning dal forms are learned earlier than specified ongoing forms (or vice versa), is expected to have impact on the interpretation of root infinitives. In this view, the modal shift in root infinitives takes place because specified ongoing alternatives for root infinitives are relatively frequent earlier than specified modal alternatives. The twelve figures below show for each of the six children the relative frequencies of root infinitives, sentences with periphrastic verbs consisting of finite auxiliary and lexical main verb (PV for “periphrastic verb”) and sentences with finite lexical main verbs (SF for “simple finite”) that denote respectively modal and ongoing events as a function of stage (stages are on the x-axis); corresponding raw numbers can be found in Appendix 6. Because past events are infrequent, we excluded them from the analysis. Because of the infrequency of state-denoting root infinitives, state-denoting simple finite verbs are no alternative for root infinitives. For this reason, we have excluded states. A comparison between the constructions that each individual child uses to describe modal events on the one hand, and ongoing events, on the other hand, leads to six similar results: For ongoing events, the children use earlier specified finite constructions than for modal events. = RI
= PV
= SF
(a) Abel; modal
(b) Abel; ongoing
1
1
0,8
0,8
0,6
0,6
0,4
0,4
0,2
0,2
0 1
2
3
4
0 1
2
3
4
Figure 1. Proportions of root infinitives (RI), Sentences with single finite main verbs (SF), and sentences with periphrastic verbs consisting of a finite auxiliary and a lexical main verb (PV), either denoting ongoing events or modality, as a function of stage I – IV(1 to 4); individual data
The modal shift 57
(c) Daan; modal
(d) Daan; ongoing
1
1
0,8
0,8
0,6
0,6
0,4
0,4
0,2
0,2 0
0 1
2
3
1
4
(e) Josse; modal
1
0,8
0,8
0,6
0,6
0,4
0,4
0,2
0,2
0 2
3
4
3
4
3
4
3
4
0
4
1
(g) Laura; modal
1
0,8
0,8
0,6
0,6
0,4
0,4
0,2
0,2
0 2
2
h) Laura; ongoing
1
1
3
(f) Josse; ongoing
1
1
2
3
0
4
1
(i) Matthijs; modal
2
(j) Matthijs; ongoing
1
1
0,8
0,8
0,6
0,6
0,4
0,4
0,2
0,2 0
0 1
2
Figure 1. Continued
3
4
1
2
58 Form and meaning (k) Peter; modal
(l) Peter; ongoing
1
1
0,8
0,8
0,6
0,6
0,4
0,4
0,2
0,2 0
0 1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
Figure 1. Continued
Consider, for instance, the two figures of Abel. For Abel, there are no stage I data available. The modal events, stage II, show use of 100% (14/14) root infinitives. Thus, Abel neither uses simple lexical verbs nor periphrastic verbs to describe modal events in stage II. In the same stage, he does use, however, simple lexical verbs (50%, 10/20) to describe ongoing events. In stage III, the proportion of periphrastic verbs to describe modal events goes up (19%, 15/79), but the proportion of root infinitives still predominates (72%, 57/79). Ongoing events show in the same stage a different picture: Only 18% (7/38) root infinitives and 82% simple lexical verbs (31/38). It is not until stage IV that Abel uses a significant number of specified alternatives for root infinitives to describe modal events, whereas for ongoing events this is much earlier (between stages II and III). Not only can the decreasing proportion of root infinitives be described by an increase of specified alternatives, but we can also relate changes in the meaning of root infinitives to asymmetries in increase of specified ongoing alternatives for root infinitives, on the one hand, and specified modal alternatives for root infinitives, on the other hand. The other ten figures show that this asymmetry repeats itself in the developmental patterns of the other five children (who, as expected, all display a modal shift in their root infinitives). If root infinitives are indeed gradually replaced by specified finite alternatives, as we propose, and if this “replacement” causes the modal shift, then it is expected that in all six children root infinitives are first replaced in the ongoing domain before being replaced in the modal domain. Figures 1a-l show the proportions of root infinitives, simple finite verbs, and periphrastic verbs (auxiliary + infinitival main verb) in stages I-IV for each of the children. The average patterns depicted in Figures 2a and 2b clearly demonstrate that between stages II and III, the proportion of sentences with
The modal shift 59
a finite main verb, used to describe an event that is ongoing, increases at the expense of root infinitives (Figure 2a). = RI
= PV
= SF
(a) Ongoing events
(b) Modal events
1
1
0,8
0,8
0,6
0,6
0,4
0,4
0,2
0,2 0
0 1
2
3
4
1
2
3
4
Figure 2. Proportions of root infinitives (RI), sentences with a finite main verb (SF), and with a periphrastic verb (PV) denoting ongoing and modal events, in the four stages; data from all six children collapsed
This increase takes place before periphrastic constructions begin to be used: These constructions increase in number between stages III and IV, and, as indicated by Figure 2b, they are predominantly associated with modality. In stage III, most (69%) utterances describing ongoing events contain a finite verb (either a single main verb or a periphrastic verb). At the same time, sentences with a modal interpretation contain finite predicates in only 21% of the cases. Thus, in stage III, finite forms have replaced root infinitives for the description of ongoing events, while modality is still predominantly expressed by means of root infinitives. In stage IV, periphrastic verbs outnumber root infinitives in sentences with a modal interpretation. Thus, we see that root infinitives are replaced by finite constructions. The modal shift in root infinitives comes about particularly as finite verbs with present tense denotation are acquired and used.
7. Summary In this chapter, semantic aspects of the various verb forms produced by Dutch-speaking children have been discussed. It was argued that the root infinitives contain an underspecified form (the infinitive) which can be
60 Form and meaning used in a wide range of contexts (Elsewhere Hypothesis) because of its underspecified nature. The Elsewhere Hypothesis was supported by semantic properties of root infinitives, by semantic contrasts between root infinitives and other verb forms, and by changes in the meaning of root infinitives. As an effect of development the children learn other verb forms such as past participles, simple present tense verbs and periphrastic present tense and modal verbs. Because the Elsewhere Principle requires insertion of the most specific form (that is appropriate in a given context), root infinitives become less and less frequent. Developmental patterns in the frequencies of present tense and modal verbs were compliant with this analysis, because changes in the meaning of root infinitives could be related to the different frequencies of respectively present tense and modal alternatives for root infinitives in the relevant developmental stages.
Chapter 5 Differences across languages
1. Introduction English-learning children tend to use bare verbs with third person singular subjects for quite a long period of time (Philips 1995). Consider the examples in (1) from the CHILDES database: (1)
a. b.
Eve sit floor. That truck fall down.
Eve 1;7 Nina 2;0.24
In some of the early studies on the first language acquisition of English, it has been suggested that in utterances like in (1) children omit finite surface inflection (Bloom 1990; Brown 1973). Harris and Wexler (1996) argued, however, that the verb forms in (1) are genuine infinitives. One argument that Harris and Wexler (1996) gave in support of this claim is that English children do use (2a) while (2b) is unattested: (2)
a. b.
She not go. *She not goes.
unattested
If the verb form in (2a) is nonfinite, it is predicted that it does not move as there are no finiteness features to check. The fact that go follows negation indicates that this prediction is borne out. English children distinguish untensed verb forms syntactically from tensed verbs; they move the tensed verb to check its features. As expected, (2b) does not appear. Prévost (2003) pointed out that in the field of second language acquisition a similar discussion has taken place. According to the one type of hypothesis, the ungrammatical bare verbs used by learners of English are finite (Haznedar 2001; Haznedar and Schwartz 1997; Ionin and Wexler 2002; Lardiere 1998, 2001), whereas the counter hypothesis states that they are nonfinite (Prévost and White 1999). Prévost’s claim is that the two types of analyses are not mutually exclusive and that each analysis ac-
62 Differences across languages counts for a different set of observations; English is, however, not the appropriate language to show this. The problem of English is that finite verbs and nonfinite verbs are placed in a nondistinct position. In English inflectional features are weak, hence English finite verbs move covertly (at Logical Form) (Ouhalla 1999; Pollock 1989). On the assumption that learners have problems with the spelling out of inflectional morphology, neither the place of the verb nor its form can thus tell us whether the verbs in (1) are finite or nonfinite. In this chapter we will argue that children learning a first language, like children who learn a second language, produce two types of “errors” in the morphosyntactic encoding of finiteness: In their root infinitives, they overuse genuine infinitives in contexts that require finite verbs and they omit finite surface inflection, resulting in frequent overuse of bare verb stems (Philips 1995). This claim has immediate repercussions for the meaning assigned to Dutch and English root infinitives. The hypothesis according to which cross-linguistic differences in meaning are a side-effect of the omission of surface inflection will be introduced in section 2 (Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis), and contrasted with the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, which seems the most promising account of crosslinguistic difference in the meaning of root infinitives to date. In section 3 naturalistic empirical data on the cross-linguistic comparison of root infinitives will be discussed. We present the Modal Bias Hypothesis, which predicts that the analysis of naturalistic data in order to compare the meaning of Dutch and English root infinitive introduces a methodological artifact. It will be shown that this artifact emphasizes the differences in meaning between root infinitives in the two languages. Additional experimental data on the cross-linguistic differences in meaning between Dutch and English root infinitives will be discussed in section 4. Section 5 recapitulates the findings so far. On the basis of Dutch data, section 6 proceeds with a discussion of the possible representations of bare verbs (that is, the forms that remain after omission of surface inflection) within the framework of Distributed Morphology. The main conclusions and findings are summarized in section 7.
The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis
63
2. The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis Contra Harris and Wexler (1996), we will show that monolingual Englishlearning children omit finite surface inflection, and that their bare stems in third person singular contexts are not restricted to root infinitives. In our view, children learning English as their first language have, like second language learners of English: “unconscious knowledge of functional projections and features including tense and agreement, but have problems with realization of the correct surface morphology.” (Prévost and White 2000: 103). The basic idea of this hypothesis is summarized in (3): (3)
Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis Learners use ungrammatical bare verbs in finite position as the effect of performance problems with the realization of correct surface inflection.
We will discuss three pieces of support for the claim that English-learning children in the Optional Infinitive stage omit finite surface inflection. At the end of this section, we will discuss the implications of (3) for the meaning assigned to English root infinitives. A first piece of support for the occurrence of ungrammatical finite bare verbs in child English comes from utterances as in (4): (4)
Robin don’t play with pens.
Adam 28, 3;4
(4) shows that third person singular subjects occur with uninflected do in negative sentences. Placement of do before negation indicates movement to the higher part of the Inflection Phrase, and hence, that do is finite, albeit uninflected (Guasti and Rizzi 2000). Secondly, English root infinitives contain more often state-denoting predicates than Dutch root infinitives: Less than 10% of the root infinitives in Dutch child language is stative (Wijnen 1997), whereas 25% - 40% of the root infinitives in English child language denotes a state (respectively Deen 1997; Madsen and Gilkerson 1999). Given that not only the finite sentences of Dutch children are predominantly stative (Wijnen 1997) but also the finite sentences of English-acquiring children (Boland 2006), this cross-linguistic difference in predicate selection in root infinitives is precisely what we expect if the ungrammatical bare verbs of English children are, at least partially, finite.
64 Differences across languages A third relevant observation concerns the subjects of English root infinitives. In the data from eight normally-developing English children, Loeb and Leonard (1991) found that case errors with third person singular subjects are rare if the verb is overtly inflected. Case errors occur with uninflected verbs. In (5), an example from Sarah is given (drawn from Schütze 1997). She uses the uninflected verb with an accusative subject: (5)
Her go home.
Sarah, file 40
Schütze (1997) argues convincingly that the underlying structure of sentences as (5) is [+Tense, -Agreement]: Active Tense requires an overt subject – inactive Tense licenses PRO -, whereas inactive Agreement leads to assignment of the default case, which is, in English, accusative (see also Chapter 2, section 5.3).17 Additionally, Schütze (1997: 230) observes that: “There are plenty of NOM subjects when inflection is absent (as noted also by Pierce 1992)”. An example is given in (6): (6)
He bite me.
Nina, file 13
Presence of a lexical subject that is assigned nominative case suggests that the morpheme in which bite in (6) is inserted, is finite. Thus, subject use in English root infinitives indicates that the set of root infinitives contains finite structures in this language, since overt subjects in English root infinitives are assigned accusative as well as nominative case. Based on the occurrence of uninflected finite do in child English, the relatively high proportion of stative root infinitives in early child English and subject use in English root infinitives, our conclusion is that the set of English ‘root infinitives’ also includes finite utterances with omitted surface inflection. The effect of this omission on the meaning of root infinitives follows straightforwardly. In a language like English, the omission of finite surface inflection will result in a ‘fuzzy’ or ‘heterogeneous’ set of root infinitives that includes genuine nonfinite clauses that (following the Elsewhere Hypothesis) contain a semantically underspecified verb form and, following the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis, sentences with tensed ungrammatical finite bare verbs. The inclusion of the tensed bare verbs in English root infinitives predicts a relatively high proportion of nonmodal root infinitives in this language. In a language like Dutch there is no effect because ungrammatical finite bare verbs and root infinitives will not be confused. In Dutch, grammatical
The Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis
65
finite bare verbs do not have overt morphology and surface at the beginning of the utterance, as illustrated in (7), whereas the infinitives in root infinitive have the suffix –en and appear at the end a sentence, as illustrated in (8): (7)
a. b. c. d. e.
(8)
a. b. c. d. e.
Die heef snor. that has-Ø moustache Audrey slaap nog een Audrey sleep-Ø still for Dese hoor niet that belong-Ø not Zit ook pitten in. sit-Ø also pits in Hij zeg toettoet. he say-Ø toettoet Ik ook een I also one Gerard even doen. Gerard just do-inf Mama ook hier mama also here Druk vuilnis busy garbage Peter bovenop Peter on top
Daan 2;04.28 tijdje. Josse 2;07.20 awhile daar. Laura 3;03 there Matthijs 2;10.21
hebben. have-inf
Peter 2;03.07
Daan 2;09.10 Josse 2;04.11
zitte. sit-inf ophalen. up pick-inf vallen. fall-inf
Laura 2;06.10 Matthijs 2;11.03 Peter 2;00.27
In short, our claim is that the differences in meaning between Dutch and English root infinitives can be analyzed as a side-effect of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. This explanation contrasts with the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, according to which the infinitival suffix encodes a modal meaning (Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002). This, in turn, predicts that root infinitives in Dutch child language are modal whereas they are not restricted to modal meanings in English (see, for a more extensive discussion of the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, Chapter 2, section 6.3). Like the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis we predict that English root infinitives are more often nonmodal than Dutch root infinitives. Unlike the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, our prediction is that Dutch
66 Differences across languages root infinitives are not restricted to a modal meaning. We assume that in both languages root infinitives contain underspecified elsewhere forms (Chapter 4, section 3) and therefore denote modal as well as nonmodal meanings. In the following two sections, various types of empirical data will be assessed in order to determine whether or not the prediction that English root infinitives are more often nonmodal than Dutch root infinitives holds. If there exists a difference, is this more in line with Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis or with the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis?
3. Naturalistic data Naturalistic Dutch (and German) data discussed in the previous chapter indicate that there is quite some variation in the meaning of root infinitives. In addition, many root infinitives could not be interpreted by the researchers because of a lack of information in available corpora. The general tendency is, however, that the majority (more than 50%) of the root infinitives is modal in these languages, but that nonmodal root infinitives are not excluded. Hoekstra and Hyams (1998) report data based on analyses of English spontaneous speech data based on studies conducted by Deen (1997) and Madsen and Gilkerson (1999). Deen finds 22% (59/264) past tense root infinitives, 65% (171/264) present tense root infinitives and 13% (34/264) modal root infinitives in the data of Adam and Eve. The percentages of Madsen and Gilkerson are respectively 31% (36/116), 60% (70/116) and 9% (10/116) for the data of Nina and Naomi. Harris and Wexler (1996) interpreted the bare stems of English children in spontaneous speech data – transcripts of ten children ranging in age from 1;6 to 4;1 - and compared their temporal reference to forms ending with the suffix -s. They found a clearly dominant present tense (‘ongoing’) use of the bare stems of 82% (771/938), 14% (128/938) denoted past tense whereas only 4% (39/938) was assigned a future/modal interpretation. Table 1 provides an overview of the percentages of modal root infinitives in Dutch, German and English naturalistic data:
Naturalistic data
67
Table 1. Overview of percentages of modal root infinitives in Dutch, German and English in various studies Language Dutch
German English
Study Haegeman (1995) Wijnen (1997) Blom (Chapter 4, this book) Ingram and Thompson (1997) Lasser (1997) Harris and Wexler (1996) Deen (1997) Madsen and Gilkerson (1999)
% modal root infinitives 56% 86% 73% 47% 71% 4% 13% 9%
Please bear in mind that the percentages in Table 1 are averages, and that there are differences between the children in the studies that analyze data from more children. In addition, there were many ambiguous utterances and the criteria applied may differ across studies. Nevertheless, the overview gives an idea of the extent to which the meaning of Dutch, German and English root infinitives differ in meaning.
3.1. The Modal Bias Hypothesis The general impression of the observations in naturalistic speech is that there is a huge difference in the meaning of root infinitives across languages. In this section it will be shown that this cross-language comparison based on analyses of corpus data is methodologically flawed and that the difference is smaller than the percentages in Table 1 suggest. In English, root infinitives can only unequivocally be identified in third person singular contexts. Therefore, root infinitives in the above studies on English child language are restricted to clauses with third person singular subjects. In the studies on Dutch root infinitives based on naturalistic data, this is not the case. In contrast to English, Dutch makes a positional distinction between finite and nonfinite verbs. If morphology is ambiguous which happens if the clause contains a plural subject -, final placement of the verb indicates that we are dealing with a root infinitive whereas placement of the verb before object, particle or negation indicates that the clause is finite. Thus, Dutch root infinitives contain various different subjects. In this section, we will argue that it is this methodological difference between
68 Differences across languages Dutch and English root infinitive studies that leads to a higher proportion of modal root infinitives in Dutch than in English. Why is the asymmetry in subjects of English and Dutch root infinitives relevant for the meaning assigned to root infinitives in the two languages? In the previous chapter, we have pointed out that the class of modal root infinitives contains root infinitives that express wishes or desires (volitional root infinitives), root infinitives that announce something that is going to happen (intentional root infinitive) or root infinitives to give commands (deontic root infinitives). Crucially, these kinds of modality are tied to speaker, here the child, and addressee in the discourse context. In other words, young children’s modal root infinitives can be paraphrased as ‘I want + infinitival main verb’, ‘I am going to + infinitival main verb’ and ‘you must + infinitival main verb’. This correlation between the types of modality and subject use presumably has its roots in cognitive development. Because young children lack a concept of the mind - they do not have a Theory of Mind -, they neither talk about or understand their own mental states or understand those of others (Carey 1985; Wellman 1990; Wimmer and Perner 1983). According to Gopnik (1993), children between two and three do not have a full grasp of intentions and desires and their concept of these states is simple nonrepresentational and hence limited to the child herself in the here-and-now. This idea is confirmed by the data in Table 2, which show that nearly all instances of the modal verb willen ‘to want’, which expresses a wish or desire, are with first person singular subjects: Table 2. Percentages of first person singular subjects (1SG) with the modal verb Willen ‘want’ Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter
% 1SG subjects in willen-sentences 84 97 100 97 68 100
N 1SG/N willen-sentences 49/58 31/32 33/33 83/86 9/13 5/6
Likewise, it is expected that the deontic utterances (‘you must’) correlate with second person singular subjects. The correlation between person features of the subject and modality as it would apply to root infinitives is expressed by the Modal Bias Hypothesis in (9). The basic idea is that root
Naturalistic data
69
infinitives with first/second person subjects are biased towards a modal interpretation: (9)
Modal Bias Hypothesis Root infinitives in which speaker (first person singular) or addressee (second person singular) are the subject are more often modal than root infinitives with third person singular subjects.
The implication of the Modal Bias Hypothesis is that exclusion of first and second person subjects in English root infinitives wil lower the proportion of modal root infinitives in this language. The prediction of (9) is that if the subject of root infinitives is kept constant across languages, say to third person singular subjects, the difference in meaning between Dutch and English root infinitives becomes smaller than previously assumed.
3.2. A reanalysis of Dutch corpus data One way to test the effect of exclusion of root infinitives with first/second person subjects on the meaning of root infinitives is to compare within one language the meaning of the set of root infinitives that includes all subjects to the meaning of the set of root infinitives that only includes third person singular subjects. Applying this method to the Dutch data, our expectation is that the proportion of modal root infinitives in the data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter is lower if root infinitives are restricted to clauses with third person singular subjects than if they are unrestricted. Table 3 below shows that this is indeed the case: Table 3. % modal root infinitives with all kinds of subjects and % modal root infinitives with third person singular (3SG) root infinitives only Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter Sum SD
All subjects 76 (91/120) 73 (115/157) 73 (150/206) 64 (200/314) 78 (199/254) 80 (157/197) 74 (912/1248) 6
3SG subjects 44 (7/160) 48 (13/27) 69 (18/26) 34 (28/82) 45 (34/76) 72 (67/93) 52 (167/320) 15
70 Differences across languages After exclusion of first and second person root infinitives, the predominance of modal root infinitives in the overall data is not present anymore (M = 52%). The proportion of modal root infinitives in the data from Abel, Daan, Laura and Matthijs is below 0.5. In Peter’s case, the absence of a clear effect in Table 3 may be related to his use of proper names to either address himself (Peter) or his addressee (often Mama, his mother), as exemplified in (10): (10)
a. b.
Peter Peter Mama mama
pakken. get-inf doen. do-inf
Peter 1;11.13 Peter 1;11.13
Although formally these proper names are third person singular - in his finite sentences, Peter uses third person singular inflection in sentences in which he uses Peter to refer to himself -, the denotation of the proper names Peter and mama is similar to the denotation of first and second person singular pronouns i.e. respectively speaker and addressee. Thus, it is expected that root infinitives containing the proper names Peter and mama as subjects also correlate with modality. It is not the case that all children use this strategy. Peter’s use of proper names is disproportional: 44 out of 93 cases, whereas the other children hardly ever do it. Therefore, in order to make Peter’s data more comparable to those of the other five children, we have to exclude his root infinitives with proper name subjects that denote speaker and addressee. Subtraction of root infinitives with Peter as a subject leads to a drop of modal root infinitives from 72% to 62% (32/52) in his data. The average percentage of the six children goes down to 50% (ranging between 34% and 69%).
3.3. Implications of the Modal Bias Hypothesis The modal bias in Dutch in itself does not endanger the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, assuming that the difference between the two languages is still significant. The observations reveal another problem for this hypothesis, though. Under a grammatical view, as exemplified by the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, it is not expected that context has an effect on the meaning assigned to root infinitives. If the infinitival suffix is [-realis] then it is expected that Dutch root infinitives
Naturalistic data
71
are modal irrespective of context. It is certainly not expected that Dutch root infinitives used in first and second person singular contexts are significantly more often modal than Dutch root infinitives used in third person singular contexts. We found that exclusion of root infinitives with a subject that denotes speaker or addressee leads to a significantly fewer modal root infinitives. Therefore our conclusion is that the predominance of modal root infinitives in early child Dutch is related to the contexts in which children use root infinitives rather than to presence of an infinitival morpheme.
3.4. Conclusion Naturalistic data on the meaning of root infinitives in child Dutch and English show that in both languages root infinitives can denote nonmodal meaning and modal meanings. A comparison of the results of previous studies suggests that there is a remarkable difference in the denotation in root infinitives: English root infinitives are infrequently modal, whereas root infinitives in Dutch (and German) child language are very often modal. The outcome of the reanalysis performed in this section provides support for the Modal Bias Hypothesis and leads to a reassessment of this cross-linguistic difference. The implication of restricting the Dutch root infinitives to third person singular root infinitives (as in English) is that the strikingly low percentage of modal root infinitives in the English naturalistic data (illustrated by the overview in Table 1) is the effect of exclusion of first and second person singular root infinitives rather than the effect of properties of English. The observation that the type of subject correlates with the modal meaning assigned to root infinitives provides an additional empirical argument against the hypothesis that the modality in Dutch root infinitives is encoded in the infinitival suffix: If the modal meaning were encoded in the infinitival suffix, it is expected that a root infinitive is modal, regardless of whether the subject is first, second or third person.
4. Experimental data In this section, experimental data on the interpretation of root infinitives in Dutch and English child language will be discussed. It will be shown that data obtained in a controlled experimental setting confirm that in both languages root infinitives can denote modal and nonmodal meanings, but that
72 Differences across languages English root infinitives denote more often ongoing actions than Dutch root infinitives do. Before we turn to the data, we will first briefly summarize the advantages of undertaking an experiment in order to investigate the meaning of root infinitives across languages.
4.1. Why an experiment? For a number of reasons controlled experimental data are more suitable for our purpose than spontaneous speech data as provided by the transcripts in the CHILDES database. In particular cross-linguistic comparisons may profit from more controlled data collection. Results that are based on interpretations of corpus data suffer, first of all, from a high number of excluded utterances. A simple example will illustrate this problem. Assume that a child says bal gooien (‘ball throw’). As long as the interpreter does not know anything about the state or position of the ball, this utterance can be modal as well as nonmodal: The ball could be going to be thrown, could have to be thrown, or could have been thrown (when the child tells a story). In order to avoid any biases in the data, the only way to deal with such cases is to exclude them. In an experiment, however, the contexts can be constrained in such a way that the meaning of the child’s utterances can be determined much more easily. Secondly, in available cross-linguistic comparisons based on existing studies of spontaneous speech comparability is not guaranteed, because for each language, researchers have used their own criteria and definitions. If the same experimental design and data-analysis model is applied across languages, highly comparable data can be collected, however. Finally, the activity performed during the recorded sessions can have an effect on the number of modal utterances. This, in turn, can result in variation in the proportion of modal utterances over sessions and over children. For example, a play situation elicits much modality as the child expresses wishes and gives commands to the adult while playing. When adult and child read a booklet or look at pictures, there is less modality. Presumably, the distribution of situations over transcripts differs when different files are studied. As a consequence, the number of modal utterances may be different per file, and also per language. Through a controlled experiment, this kind of variability can be avoided.
Experimental data
73
4.2. Picture selection Schönenberger et al. (1995) report data from a sentence-picture-matching task carried out with Dutch and English-speaking children. Despite the fact that the design of the experiment causes a nonmodal bias – to be discussed later on - and that the number of English children that is tested is quite low (n = 5), the results of this study are interesting for the purpose of this chapter. The aim of the Schönenberger et al. study was to investigate the interpretation that children assign to root infinitives (modal versus ongoing). In the task, the child functions as an intermediary between puppet Kermit the Frog and the experimenter. The experimenter tells a story involving two pictures: One depicting an ongoing event, the other depicting a modal event. A puppet (Kermit the Frog) is listening to the story as well. After the story has finished, the experimenter asks Kermit which picture he likes best. However, Kermit cannot point. Therefore, he has to explain with a descriptive sentence. The experimenter does not understand Kermit and so the child, who can understand him, has to make Kermit’s choice clear to the experimenter by pointing at the picture that fits Kermit’s description. In the experiment, Kermit uses three kinds of sentences: Either with a finite main verb, a modal auxiliary or a root infinitive. In the English version, the present progressive is used instead of a simple finite main verb as this sounds much more natural. In this way, this experiment elicited the interpretation (i.e. modal or ongoing) of three kinds of constructions. Table 4 below contains the percentages of selection of the picture that depicted the ongoing event for three different sentences: Table 4. Percentages of selections of pictures that depicted ongoing events for respectively finite verbs, root infinitives and modal verbs (Schönenberger et al. 1995) Language Dutch English
Finite verb 91 95
Root infinitive 62 95
Modal verb 43 40
The results in the final colon indicate that children tend to focus on the event that is expressed and ignore the presence of a modal marker: Even for the stimulus sentence with a modal verb (e.g. Koekiemonster wil de koekjes hebben/Cookie Monster wants to have the cookies), both Dutch and English-speaking children point to the picture that shows the ongoing
74 Differences across languages event (thus, to the picture in which Cookie Monster has cookies) in approximately 40% of the cases. Despite this bias for the ongoing, the results in Table 4 do show a crosslinguistic effect that is on par with the naturalistic data. Finite verbs and modal verbs are interpreted similarly in Dutch and English: Finite main verbs are nearly always ongoing, while for modal verbs the modal picture is chosen approximately 60% of the time. Root infinitives yield a different interpretation in the two languages, though. English children tend to point more often to the ongoing picture if the stimulus sentence is a root infinitive than Dutch children do: English children do so in 95% of the cases, whereas Dutch children select the ongoing picture in 62% of the cases. Taking into account the bias for the ongoing we conclude that the real percentages for both languages are lower that 95% and 62%. This bias is not expected to influence the size of the cross-linguistic difference. Hence, it may be realistic to expect a cross-linguistic difference of about 30%.
4.3. Elicited production In Blom (2007), an elicitation technique was described that makes it possible to retrieve information about the meaning of root infinitives on the basis of speech production data. In this section, the focus will be on the results of this experiment (see Blom (2007) for details on the experimental design of the elicitation task). Children that participated in the experiment were confronted with two conditions: A modal and a nonmodal condition. In the modal condition children were ‘shown’ a character’s desire, wish or need to act. The act itself was not depicted. In the nonmodal ongoing condition, the act itself was shown. We made use of human and animal characters, and designed animated movies instead of pictures. Examples of items can be found in Appendix 7. Each movie was shown to the child three times. At the first viewing the child could just sit and watch while the experimenter was telling the story. At the second viewing the experimenter asked the child questions about the movie. At the third viewing, the child herself had to tell the story. Human characters in the movies were given common names such as Peter or Lisa. All characters were third person singular. The same experiment has been conducted on Dutch and English-speaking toddlers. Selected subjects used at least one root infinitive in the pre-test, and were able to
Experimental data
75
understand both conditions. Table 5 provides some more information on the selected subjects: Table 5. Number of children that participated in the production experiment, age range, mean age, MLU range, mean MLU Number Age range Mean age MLU range Mean MLU
Dutch 26 1;11-3;10 2;10 1.57-4.9 2.63
English 29 1;11-3;6 2;7 2-5.62 3.44
The children’s task was to encode auditory and visually presented stimuli into linguistic structures. The introduction and story telling by the experimenter influenced children, but children were not further forced to use certain words or structures in any way. As an effect, children produced various different words to describe a depicted activity. Utterances about swimming, taking a bath, becoming clean and splashing were, for instance, acceptable descriptions for a washing-movie. Although the movies were simple, some movies contained more than one action, especially those in the modal condition: In the modal running-movie a car moved and in the modal drinking-movie a girl walked to her mother. Utterances that described side-activities were included, provided that the criteria for being modal or nonmodal could be applied. Not only did children use different words, they also used different verb forms. Dutch children used infinitives, finite lexical verbs sentences, finite periphrastic verbs and prepositional infinitival complements. The English children used bare verbs, finite periphrastic verbs and bare participles. Appendix 8 contains the distributions of different structures over the two conditions in both languages. To single out root infinitives, we used standard criteria. Included were those clauses in which the main verb appeared in infinitival form, that is, with the suffix –en in sentence-final position, and a finite verb was lacking. Ambiguous two-word utterances were excluded, as were other utterances that did not contain sufficient information on the form of the verb (finite or nonfinite) (see for a more detailed discussion of these criteria Chapter 4, section 4.1). One-word utterances and parasitic root infinitives (used to give an answer to a question) were excluded. In Table 6 the results from all children (that used at least one root infinitive, n (Dutch) = 26 and n (English) = 29) are given, as well as the re-
76 Differences across languages sults from a productive subset, i.e. children that used at least five root infinitives and five finite sentences (n (Dutch) = 9 and n (English) = 12). The rationale for these two analyses is the following. If a child used only one root infinitive and this root infinitive was (accidentally) used in the modal condition, 100% of her root infinitives were classified as modal. Many of such subjects may influence the results. Therefore, a post hoc selection of productive subjects has been performed: The sample of subjects is smaller, but the data are more reliable. Table 6 gives the distribution of modal contexts over the total number of interpretable root infinitives: Table 6. Percentage of modal root infinitives, and standard deviations, in the production experiments; data from all children and data from productive children
Dutch English
All children Modal 68% (101/149) 44% (71/162)
SD 29 31
Productive children Modal SD 61% (53/87) 22 36% (32/90) 17
In line with all observations so far, it turns out that Dutch root infinitives are not restricted to modal contexts. The same holds for English root infinitives. Productivity of subjects does not influence this outcome. Is there a difference between the meaning of root infinitives in the two languages? In order to test if the observed distribution differs significantly from a chance distribution we used a permutation test (Appendix 4). Starting with the sample of all children, we find that if for the Dutch children a chance distribution is simulated and observations are shuffled per subject, it turns out to be unlikely that the observed distribution and the chance distribution are drawn from a single distribution (p = 0.013). Thus, Dutch children show a preference for using root infinitives to denote modal events. If we make a similar calculation for English root infinitives, it turns out that there is no preference (p = 0.62). If the Dutch and English results are compared and the probability is estimated that there is no difference, a p-value of 0.024 is obtained, which is below the criterion value of 0.05: In this dataset, root infinitives in child Dutch are more often modal than root infinitives in child English. But productivity of the subjects does influence this conclusion. The smaller sample of productive children shows neither a modal preference in Dutch root infinitives, nor an ongoing preference in the English root infinitives. The difference between the two languages remains statistically significant (p = 0.006).
Recapitulation
77
5. Recapitulation At the beginning of this chapter we described two accounts that explain the cross-linguistic difference in meaning of root infinitives. The observation that English root infinitives receive more often a present tense denotation than Dutch root infinitives has been analyzed in previous literature as an effect of Early Morphosyntactic Convergence. The prediction of this claim is that the Dutch infinitival suffix encodes a modal meaning, whereas the English bare infinitival verb does not encode a specific meaning. Very early, children are sensitive to this cross-linguistic difference, which is noticeable in the contexts in which root infinitives in the two languages are being used. We proposed, in contrast, that children’s tendency to omit surface inflection (Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis) induces interpretative differences between Dutch and English root infinitives. The corollary of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis is that the set of English root infinitives contains sentences that are finite and sentences that are nonfinite, whereas Dutch root infinitives are strictly nonfinite. Spontaneous speech data (reanalyzed on the basis of the Modal Bias Hypothesis), data collected in a comprehension experiment and data collected in a production experiment confirm that root infinitives in Dutch and English child language can denote modal as well as nonmodal meanings. The English root infinitives are assigned more often a present tense denotation than Dutch root infinitives. This difference is smaller than previously assumed; our findings indicate a difference of about 30%. Both types of accounts can, in principle, account for this cross-linguistic difference. A number of other observations plead for the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis, though. We will summarize these observations here one by one. First of all, the occurrence of uninflected finite do in child English, the relatively high proportion of stative root infinitives in early child English and subject use in English root infinitives confirms that English children do omit the third person singular –s. The implication is that root infinitives in English child language are partially finite. Secondly, one observation that could not be accommodated by the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis was that nonmodal root infinitives are allowed in Dutch child language (see Chapter 4 for extensive discussion). The experimental data described in this chapter confirm that Dutch root infinitives are not restricted to modal meanings. The assumption that root infinitives, in Dutch as well as in English child language, contain underspecified forms can explain this observation, though. A third problem for the Early Mor-
78 Differences across languages phosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis is that the root infinitives with third person singular subjects are less often modal than root infinitives with first or second person singular subjects. This contextual effect is completely unexpected if infinitival morphology were the source of the modality of root infinitives.
6. Incorrect bare verbs We have shown that English children omit finite surface inflection and use bare verb stems in third person singular contexts. In addition, some examples of ungrammatical finite bare verbs in Dutch child language have been given. From the literature we know moreover that in various other languages children tend to use bare verbs in contexts that require inflected verbs (Bittner, Dressler, and Kilani-Schoch 2003). So far, we have been vague with respect to the precise representation of ungrammatical bare verbs. In this section, we will discuss two types of analyses of bare verbs that are both in accordance with the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis: Children’s ungrammatical finite bare verbs may be the result of inserting morphosyntactically underspecified elsewhere forms, or, analogous to the Modal Drop Hypothesis (Chapter 2, section 3.3) they could be the result of phonological drop. The two analyses are not mutually exclusive. As a starting point we will take the utterances of Josse in (11). The equivalent in standard Dutch would contain the verb slaapt instead of slaap. (11)
Audrey slaap nog Audrey sleep-Ø still
een for
tijdje. awhile
Josse 2;07.20
Suppose that Josse has all vocabulary items in (12) available. (12)
/t/ /en/ /ø/ /en/
↔ ↔ ↔ ↔
[-past, -sp] [-past, +plur] [-past] []
One possibility is that he substitutes the underspecified (in comparison to the suffix –t) zero suffix in (12). In this case, the representation of his ungrammatical finite bare verb in (11) would be (13):
Incorrect bare verbs
(13)
/ø/
↔
79
[-past]
Selection of (13) can be interpreted as application of a morphosyntactic default rule, because an underspecified verb form (namely underspecified for φ-features) is inserted. This would be compliant with proposals according to which children do not use incorrect inflection, but make use of default rules (a.o. Clahsen 1991; Clahsen and Penke 1992). It is also in line with Prévost’s (2003) analysis of the ungrammatical finite bare verbs of a child that learns German as a second language. As the relation between phonological form and morphosyntactic features is arbitrary, it is not expected that the bare stem is a finite default across languages. In addition, it is expected that use of the bare verb by children is, within a language, insensitive for the phonological properties. Another possibility, inspired by the (Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis (Boser et al. 1992; Ferdinand 1996), may be that ungrammatical finite bare verbs are phonological defaults. Such an analysis has been proposed for bare verbs in sentence-final position in Dutch (Taelman 2004; Taelman, Martens, and Gillis 2005). In (11), Josse may have selected the correct vocabulary item ending on the suffix –t but dropped, during spell-out, the final /t/. The representation underlying (11) would be as in (14), which represents phonological drop with the strike-through: (14)
/t/
↔
[- past, -sp]
From studies on phonological development, it is known that young Dutchspeaking children truncate forms and reduce coda clusters (Fikkert 1994; Taelman 2004; Taelman, Martens, and Gillis 2005); (11) would exemplify coda cluster reduction, whereas finite bare verbs in plural contexts would exemplify truncation, i.e. drop of the final syllable /en/. If children overuse bare verbs because they want to reduce the coda cluster, it may be expected that the distribution of incorrect finite bare verbs within a language is determined by phonological principles.18 It is also predicted that the bare stem functions as a default across languages. Ungrammatical finite bare verbs may thus either be underspecified or they may be fully specified forms. Closely related to the question what ungrammatical bare verbs are, is the question why children insert these bare verbs. It may be that the underspecified vocabulary item in (13) is acquired prior to more specified vocabulary items in (12). In this case, it is simply the temporary absence of more specified vocabulary items that
80 Differences across languages leads to selection of the finite bare verb. A second possibility would be that a child has the full list in (12) at its disposal, but that the interference of nonlinguistic factors (e.g. the interaction between processing demands and available processing capacity) explains use of the bare verb. Spelling out the bare verb instead of an inflected verb form reduces the phonological substance and hence the processing costs, and may for that reason be preferred by small children (Bloom 1991; Leonard 1998). It may also be that the bare verb is easier to access (because it has, for instance, a higher information load) than the other forms in the paradigm.19 The basic idea would be that if the processing load exceeds a certain threshold, a default form will be inserted. Our data contain a number of observations that are relevant with respect to the representation of incorrect bare verbs. One observation is that Josse and the other five children do not only incorrectly use finite bare stems, but they also incorrectly use finite verbs ending on –t in first person singular contexts (see, for other observations confirming the co-occurrence of incorrect bare verbs and incorrect –t suffixation in child Dutch: Blom and Polišenská 2005). (15) illustrates incorrect use of the suffix –t: (15)
a. b. c
Ik I Als if Ik I
gaat go-fin ik I valt fall-fin
muziek maken. music make zwemt. swim-fin niet om. not part
Josse 2;08 Josse 2;11 Josse 3;00
The example illustrates that there is variation within a language, and even within children. On the hypothesis that the ungrammatical finite bare verbs are underspecified default forms, this kind of variation is unexpected. It may compatible with the hypothesis that incorrect bare verbs result from phonological drop, however, as explained above. Consider now (16): (16)
Die that
heef snor. has-Ø moustache
Daan 2;04
Table 7 gives the paradigm for the Dutch verb hebben ‘have’:
Incorrect bare verbs
81
Table 7. Dutch present tense indicative paradigm of hebben ‘to have’ Person-Number
Example
1-SG
Ik heb ‘I have’
2-SG
Jij hebt ‘You have’
3-SG
Hij heeft ‘He has’
1/2/3-PL
Wij/jullie/zij hebben ‘We/you/they have’
The present tense paradigm of hebben ‘have’ is regular, except for the third person singular form, which shows stem alternation (heef). It can be assumed that in the target system, in third person singular contexts the regular verb form hebt is blocked by the Elsewhere Principle: Heeft being the more specific (namely, word-specific, see (17)) blocks less specific hebt in this context. (17)
/heeft/ ↔
[-past, -sp]
Returning to (16), we may conclude that Daan did not insert a less specified form (hebt) or the least specified form (heb). Instead, he has selected the fully specified form (heeft) and dropped the final /t/.20 Although there may be support for phonological drop, phonological drop is unlikely to be able to account for all ungrammatical finite bare verbs. Reduction of onset clusters is a frequent and persistent phenomenon in child language, but reduction of coda clusters seems less frequent and persistent (Kirk and Demuth 2003; Levelt, Schiller, and Levelt 2000). However, if the majority of finite bare verbs in Dutch results from truncation of the final syllable /en/ - and hence drop of the plural suffix –en -, it is predicted that most finite bare verbs appear with plural subjects. We doubt if this is the case, but future research should point out whether or not this intuition is justified.
7. Summary In this chapter we discussed naturalistic and experimental data on Dutch, German and English child language showing that root infinitives in all these languages denote modal as well as nonmodal meanings, but that Dutch and German root infinitives are more often modal than English root
82 Differences across languages infinitives. We have shown that previous cross-linguistic comparisons of naturalistic data are subject to a modal bias, and the actual cross-linguistic difference is smaller than has been claimed before (Modal Bias Hypothesis). In our view, the observed difference is a corollary of children‘s tendency to omit surface inflection, while their underlying syntactic representation is intact (Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis). Dutch and English root infinitives differ in meaning, because only in English, and not in Dutch, ungrammatical finite bare verbs, that are the result of omission of finite surface inflection, are included in the set of root infinitives. The claim that English children omit inflection was supported by three pieces of independent evidence, namely the occurrence of uninflected finite do in child English, the relatively high proportion of stative root infinitives in early child English and subject use in English root infinitives. At the end of this chapter, we briefly evaluated two hypotheses on the representation of incorrect bare verbs. According to one view, bare verbs are phonological defaults. According to the other view, bare verbs are morphosyntactic defaults. At this point, both analyses fail to account for all observations, and we leave it as an issue for future research.
Chapter 6 Developmental patterns
1. Introduction Literature on the Optional Infinitive stage reports two contradictory claims: (1)
There is no lexical overlap between infinitival verbs used in root infinitives and finite verbs used in co-occurring finite sentences. The predicates of root infinitives belong to a different class than the predicates of co-occurring finite sentences (based on De Haan 1987; Ferdinand 1996; Jordens 1990; Wijnen 1997, 2000).
(2)
The same lexemes appear as infinitival and finite verb in respectively root infinitives and co-occurring finite sentences (based on Poeppel and Wexler 1992).
We will show in section 2 that the observations in (1) and (2) hold for two subsequent developmental stages (Growing Overlap Hypothesis). The observation that in an early stage Dutch children do not generalize over finite verbs and infinitives, whereas in later stages they do is the central observation of this chapter. In section 3 we will examine whether distributional properties of the input cause the initial absence of overlap. In section 4, the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis will be introduced and assessed. According to this hypothesis, inflectional morphology is an important cue for the acquisition of an adult category of verbs. The wider implications of the acquisition of finite verb inflection for the acquisition of syntax, in particular verb movement and subject licensing, will be discussed in sections 5 and 6. Section 7 summarizes the findings and conclusions of this chapter.
84 Developmental patterns 2. Growing Overlap Hypothesis According to recent literature on the development of grammar, young children begin learning in an input-driven and item-based fashion. In this view, verb constructions are initially learned case-by-case (‘verb islands’) without reference to a general verb class (Tomasello 2000). Over time itembased units become more abstract (Borensztajn, Zuidema, and Bod in press). With respect to the acquisition of Dutch finiteness, De Haan (1987) proposed that Dutch children initially lack a generalized category of verbs and use instead to two subcategories, AUX(iliary) and V(erb), which they merge later on into a more abstract category of verbs. De Haan thus claims that finiteness/nonfiniteness is initially word-specific, and children start out with different lexicons for finite verbs and infinitives. The aim of this section is to test whether or not Dutch child data from different developmental phases provide evidence for this type of development. We have formulated this in the “Growing Overlap Hypothesis”: (3)
Growing Overlap Hypothesis At the onset of grammatical development, Dutch children lack a generalized class of verbs; a generalized class of verbs emerges as the children grow older.
We apply the Growing Overlap Hypothesis to finite utterances and root infinitives that Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter use during the Optional Infinitive stage. The prediction of (3) is that in the early stages, the children use in their finite utterances different verb lexemes than in their root infinitives. Our expectation is that overlap between finite and infinitival lexemes is a property of later developmental stages. Table 1 on the next page gives the numbers of overlapping verb lexemes in root infinitives and sentences with a finite main verb in the four subsequent developmental stages in the data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter (see for more details on the analyzed data: Chapter 4, section 4.1). It shows that in stages I/II there is hardly any lexical overlap. The finite verbs used are drawn from a small set, and are mostly modals, aspectual verbs and copulae (see Appendix 9), in agreement with previous observations (De Haan 1987; Jordens 1990; Schlichting 1996; Van Kampen 1997; Wijnen 2000).
Growing Overlap Hypothesis
85
Table 1. Lexical overlap between the verbal predicates in root infinitives and sentences with a finite main verb (types) Child
Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter
Stage I/II N overlap (Ninf/Nfin) 0 (13/2) 2 (24/9) 0 (20/5) 2 (14/8) 0 (36/2) 1 (21/3)
Stage III N overlap (Ninf/Nfin) 3 (34/15) 6 (36/21) 1 (38/11) 6 (45/17) 7 (63/14) 9 (31/18)
Stage IV N overlap (Ninf/Nfin) 10 (46/24) 13 (53/35) 8 (53/21) 8 (55/24) 16 (73/35) 18 (33/33)
As indicated in Table 1, the initial absence of overlap is followed by a steady increase from an average of 4.3 overlapping items in stage III to an average 12.2 in stage IV. One could object that the absence of overlap results from statistical properties of the corpora: Since finite verbs occur very infrequently, the a priori probability of overlap is reduced (Blom and Wijnen submitted). In order to test whether or not initial absence of overlap is the effect of corpus statistics, we calculated the expected verb overlap on the basis of the distributions of finite sentences and root infinitives in each of the four stages. The assumption is that the proportion of finite sentences in a set of relevant utterances, pF, is an estimator of the probability that a verb from the child’s verb vocabulary V will (on any occasion) be realized as a finite form (m.m. for the proportion of nonfinite sentences, which equals 1 - pF). The estimated size of the verb vocabulary is taken to be the number of observed verb types (lexemes), i.e. the number of finite verb types added to the number of nonfinite verb types, minus the number of verbs that appear both as finite and nonfinite forms. Assuming that finite and nonfinite realization of a verb are independent events, the probability that a verb will occur both in finite and nonfinite forms is pF * (1 - pF). The predicted overlap is obtained when we multiply this probability with the set size of the observed vocabulary n(V). In summary, the estimated overlap equals pF * (1 - pF) * n(V). The hypothesis that verb stems can be freely linked to finite and nonfinite inflections will have to be rejected if predicted overlap and observed overlap are significantly different.
86 Developmental patterns Table 2. Predicted overlap between finite and nonfinite verb sets on the basis of proportions of finite sentences and (pF) and root infinitives (1- pF) and observed verb lexicon size (n(V)), and actually observed overlap numbers (totals for the six children)
Stage I/II III IV
1-pF
pF
N(V)
Predicted overlap
Observed overlap
0.83 0.41 0.1
0.17 0.59 0.9
152 311 424
21.7 75.2 38.9
5 32 73
Table 2 gives the totals for the six children per stage. Binomial tests indicate that in stage I/II, given the estimated probability of overlap, the probability of observing a cumulative overlap of five or fewer items is less than 0.0001. For stage III, the probability of the observed overlap or a smaller number is also less than 0.0001. Crucially, only in stage IV, observed overlap is within the expected range (the probability of the observed overlap or a smaller number is 0.99). Thus, overlap is significantly smaller than predicted in stages I/II and III, but not in stage IV. In this section, we evaluated the Growing Overlap Hypothesis, according to which Dutch children initially lack a generalized category of verbs. Lexical overlap data of six Dutch-learning children confirmed this hypothesis because lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitival verbs (used in root infinitives) was initially absent and appeared in later stages. Only in stage IV, the final stage analyzed here, the observed number of overlapping verbs exceeded the predicted number; hence, we conclude that only at this point, the generalization in (2) is adequate. In the previous stages, generalization in (1) gives an appropriate description of the observations.
3. Cause of no overlap De Haan (1987) suggested that young children lack a generalized class of verbs because initially they base themselves on semantic primitives (Semantic bootstrapping; see Pinker 1984, 1989). According to this view, the early categories are semantic in nature, instead of syntactic. More recent accounts emphasize the role of input distributions with respect to early nongeneralized categories (Mintz 2003). The aim of this section is to in-
Cause of no overlap
87
vestigate to what extent the input of Dutch children may lead them to two distinct verb-like categories. To this end, we analyzed all utterances that are directed to Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs or Peter (child-directed speech). The usual criteria have been applied to determine finiteness of a verb, viz. morphology and position in the sentence. Since maximally 10% of all sentences with verbs in the input are root infinitives, infinitives contained in complex verb phrases headed by finite auxiliaries are included as well.21 Assuming that Wijnen’s (1997) distinction between state-denoting predicates and eventdenoting predicates adequately describes predicate selection in finite clauses and root infinitives in early child Dutch, we classified predicate selection in the input along the same lines, hereby using the following definitions of events and states. Events comprise activities, accomplishments and achievements (Vendler 1967).22 The feature that unifies these three classes is dynamicity. By contrast, state-denoting predicates are not dynamic. Comrie (1976: 48) suggested that events, but not states, require an input of energy for the maintenance of the eventuality. Pustejovsky (1991: 56) described a state as “a single event, which is evaluated relative to no other event”. Summarizing various claims in the literature, Wanner (1999) gives the following list of stative verbal predicates: Perception verbs (taste, feel, smell), position verbs (sit, lie, stand), verbs of existence (be, seem, exist), psych verbs (fear, like) and verbs of possession (have, possess, own). In Dutch, modal verbs appear as main verbs. The criteria for stativity, given below, apply to these modal main verbs as well (Wijnen 1997). Several tests distinguish between states and events. The following contexts only allow eventive verbs: Imperatives, sentences with the adverbs deliberately and carefully, and complements of verbs such as force or persuade (Lakoff 1966). Another test that is often applied to distinguish states from events is the present progressive test: States are incompatible with present progressive. Note however that states that can switch their dynamicity value shift in the progressive test from state to event (Dowty 1979; Quirk et al. 1985). Quirk et al (1985: 201 ff.) write: “The definition of stative verbs is not so much that they are incompatible with progressive, as that when they are combined with the progressive, some change of interpretation other than the addition of ‘temporary’ meaning of the progressive aspect is required. This change of interpretation can usually be classified as a transfer, or reclassification of the verb as dynamic, e.g. as having a meaning of process or agentivity.”
88 Developmental patterns Applying the above criteria/tests gives us the results in Table 3: Table 3. Percentages of state-denoting verbs in Dutch child-directed speech Finite verb in simple finite clause Infinitival verb in finite sentences/root infinitives
89% (7922/8915) 3% (89/3500)
In the input there are hardly any infinitival states; infinitives are almost always event-denoting predicates. Finite verbs, by contrast, denote most often states: Predominantly auxiliaries, modals and copulae (N = 5920), and the rest (N = 2002) are verbs of position (liggen ‘lie’, zitten ‘sit’, zijn ‘be’), possession (hebben ‘have’), and mental states (denken ‘think’, vinden ‘find/think’, weten ‘know’, bedoelen ‘mean’, etc.). 23 In sum: An analysis of input distributions in Dutch child directed speech shows that finite verbs in the input denote most frequently states, whereas infinitival verbs are overwhelmingly eventive. Thus, in the input of Dutch children relatively few verbs appear in finite as well as infinitival form. Given this property of the input of Dutch children, it is unlikely that Dutch children are able to establish a generalized category of verbs from early on.
4. Morphological Cueing Hypothesis In the previous section it was shown that Dutch input distributions are expected to lead Dutch children to a separate class of finite and infinitival verbs. One category includes finite state-denoting lexemes, whereas the other contains infinitival event-denoting lexemes. In terms of Distributed Morphology (Chapter 3), the ‘finite verb lexicon’ would be accounted for by (4) while (5) would represent the ‘infinitival verb lexicon’: (4)
/wil/ → /gaat/ → /is/ → Etc...
[-past] [-past] [-past]
(5)
/lopen/ /doen/ /pakken/ etc…
→ → →
[] [] []
Morphological Cueing Hypothesis
89
Because in the target language all phonological strings in (4) and (5) (i.e., the information on the left-hand side) appear in finite and in infinitival form, it is expected that the children merge the two categories at a certain point in their development. In section 2 we have shown that in our set of data this point is between stages III and IV. In this section, we address the question as to how children merge the two categories. It has been suggested that overlap between distributional cues enables children to develop from the initial item-based phase to a phase in which their utterances can be characterized by a higher level of abstraction: Those items that share distributional properties are clustered together (Mintz 2003). Grammatical morphemes are one type of distributional cue that may help children to group items into categories and merge various smaller categories into one large category (Maratsos and Chalkley 1980; De Haan 1987). Because every verb stem can be inflected, finite inflectional morphology may provide children with a clue to acquire a category of verbs that is consistent with the category in the target language. This idea is formulated in the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis: (6)
Morphological Cueing Hypothesis Finite inflectional morphology enables children to acquire a generalized category of verbs.24
One implication of (6) is that children analyze the whole words listed in (4) and (5) into verb stem + inflectional suffix. Once children have this ability, they are able to recognize the items that can appear with finite inflectional morphology, store them together and add new verbs to the generalized category of verbs. Some examples of verb stems are given in (7): (7)
/wil/, /ga/, /doe/, /pak/
The set of Dutch finite inflectional suffixes is given in (8), the infinitival suffix in (9): (8)
/t/ /en/ /ø/
→ → →
[-past, -sp] [-past, +plur] [-past]
(9)
/en/
→
[]
90 Developmental patterns Recall that lexical overlap data indicate that between stages III and IV a generalized category of verbs emerges. The Morphological Cueing Hypothesis predicts that around the same time, Dutch children start to make productive use of the generalized paradigm represented by the vocabulary items in (8) and (9) by attaching (8) and (9) to the stems in (7). Note that in the beginning of the acquisition of finite inflection children may only have a subset of the vocabulary items in (8) at their disposal or may have specified the finite vocabulary items only for [-past], and not for person and/or number features. Data on the paradigmatic variation (i.e., the combination of a particular verb stem with different finite inflectional endings) indicate that in stage I/II, paradigmatic variation is indeed absent and that children only seem to use one finite form with each verb stem. The earliest finite forms typically appear with irregular verbs that have an impoverished inflectional paradigm or they appear with first person singular subjects (which select bare verb stems): Kan ‘can’, moet ‘must’, mag ‘may’, zit ‘sit’. The result is that the collapsed data of the six children give us a total of 116 finite verbs (tokens) in stage I/II, and only 8 of these have an overt suffix (7%). As shown in Table 4, all children begin to display some paradigmatic variation from stage III onwards. They begin to use different inflectional suffixes with the same verbal stem as they start to vary number and distinguish between first and second/third person. Table 4. Number of verb types that appear with more than one different finite suffix in stages III and IV Child Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter
Stage III 4 4 2 3 1 3
Stage IV 6 6 5 5 6 5
In order to test whether or not the occurrence of lexical overlap co-occurs with the acquisition of finite inflection, we will look in more detail at the development of finite verb inflection. Section 4.1 deals with the error patterns in the data of Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter. The rationale underlying this investigation is that errors reveal that children are discovering inflection rules. In section 4.2 we discuss changes in the lexi-
Morphological Cueing Hypothesis
91
cal variation, i.e. type frequency, of finite verbs. It is expected that the acquisition of finite inflectional morphology will result in higher type frequencies.
4.1. Increasing number of errors The process of detecting the ordered list of vocabulary items in (8) and (9) can be divided into two subprocesses: Segmentation and mapping (Bittner, Dressler, and Kilani-Schoch 2003; Peters 1982; Pinker 1984). Different errors are indicative of these processes, and hence, tell us whether or not children are acquiring finite inflectional morphology. One of the children’s tasks is to map arbitrary pairs of phonological forms and grammatical features. Given incremental learning metrics compatible with Distributed Morphology (Adger 2005; Blom and Don 2006; Blom and Wijnen submitted), it is expected that this task involves trial-and-error and leads to mapping errors, such as the ones in (10)-(13): (10)
En jullie heeft ook and you-pl have also ‘And you have a knife too.’
(11)
Als ik zwemt. when I swim-fin ‘when I’m swimming.’
(12)
Tjoeketjoeketjoeke zeg de choochoo say-Ø the ‘The train goes choochoo.’
trein. train
Josse 2;11.09
(13)
Moeder geit gaan boodschapjes doen. mother goat go shoppings do ‘Mother goat is going to do shopping.’
Daan 3;02.25
een a
mes. knife
Abel 3;01.07
Abel 3;01.07
Another type of error is indicative of learning the right segments i.e. the analysis of large chunks extracted from the input. With respect to verbal inflection, unanalyzed chunks are units that are not segmented into V-stem and inflectional affix. As soon as children start to segment verbal chunks, specific errors are expected. A prototypical segmentation error is the selec-
92 Developmental patterns tion of a wrong stem in the case of stem-vowel-changes. The inflectional suffix is in these cases correct and agrees with the subject (unlike the examples just given). Examples of segmentation errors are given in (14-16). (14)
Deze benne ook these-pl are also ‘These are necessary too.’
(15)
Langs maggen komen. by may come ‘(Be) allowed to come by.’
Josse 2;07.20
(16)
Die heef ik that have-Ø I ‘I need that one.’
Matthijs 2;09.15
nodig. needed
nodig. necessary
Abel 2;04.23
In (14), Abel uses the first person singular form ben as the stem, and attaches regular plural morphology (i.e. schwa, as in normal colloquial usage). The correct plural target form here is, however, the irregular zijn and not benne(n). Analogously, in (15), Josse has taken the singular form mag as a basis for the stem. The target plural is mogen. In (16), Matthijs incorrectly selects the nonexistent form heef as the stem, based on the second/third singular form heeft, and attaches a zero-suffix (which is in itself correct). The target form could have been heb. Recall that lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitives starts to occur around stage III, and increases significantly between stages III and IV. Given this observation it is likely that finite inflection becomes productive around stage III, and hence that errors start around this stage (and occur certainly not prior to this stage). In exploring the occurrence and extent of errors, a subset of the data is analyzed, taken from four out of the six subjects of this study: Abel, Daan, Josse and Matthijs. The verb errors produced by these four children have been analyzed in a previous study by De Haan (1996). We rely on this study, since De Haan analyzed the complete corpora of these four children, which gives her data greater density and precision than the selection used here. Her data cover moreover a larger age range as well. Table 5 gives the onset of the two-word stage for the four children, lists the age at which the earliest agreement error was observed for each child, and relates the occurrence of errors to the stages in our study. The first
Morphological Cueing Hypothesis
93
agreement errors were observed 4 to 7 months after the onset of the twoword stage. The number of errors increases as a function of age. To give an impression of the increase: In the last files that are available (approximately age 3;5), third person number agreement was incorrect in 25% of the third person subject contexts (on average): Children used either third person singular subjects with plural inflection (-en) or third person plural subjects with singular inflection (-ø or –t) in 25% of the third person contexts. Table 5. Onset of the two-word stage, occurrence of first agreement errors and stages in this study Abel Daan Josse Matthijs
Onset-2 word stage 1;10.30 1;08.21 2;00.07 1;09.30
1st Agreement error 2;03.02 2;04.01 2;03.28 2;05.01
Onset error stage End stage III Begin stage III Begin stage III End stage III
For Daan as well as Josse, one very early error is found (around 2;1). Both are bare stems used in contexts where a suffix –t is obligatory. We assume that these are outliers resulting from phonological processes (Beers 1995). Daan’s data provide independent support for this diagnosis. At the age of 2;01.21, Daan utters haw lig koekie ‘here lie cookie’ and uses lig instead of third person singular ligt. Of immediate relevance is that Daan at the same age omits /t/ in morphosyntactically different but phonologically comparable contexts, viz. se ach [= is acht] ‘is eight’ and chiechui:ch [= vliegtuig] ‘plane’. The ages given in Table 5 are taken as the onset not only because they seem to be the first real agreement errors but also since they mark the begin of an error-phase: After this age, the number of errors increases.
4.2. Increasing type frequency High type frequency can be viewed as an indicator of the productivity of morphological rules (Bybee 1985, 1995; Clark 1993). In other words, given the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis, we expect that the development from (unproductive) rules as in (4) and (5) to the set of productive rules in (8-9) is signaled by an increasing type frequency of finite verbs.
94 Developmental patterns Table 6. Accumulation of finite verb (i.e. verbal root ending on -ø, -t or –en in first or second sentence position) types in stages I/II, III and IV
Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter
Stage I/II N types finite V 2 9 5 8 2 3
Stage III N types finite V 15 21 11 17 14 18
Stage IV N types finite V 24 35 21 23 35 33
Table 6 gives the accumulation of (correctly used) verb types in first or second position that end on the finite suffixes -ø, -t or –en in the children’s production data. The type frequencies of finite verbs grow steadily from stage I to IV. In stages I/II there is hardly any variation: 2-9 different verbs (types) with finite inflections, whereas stage IV shows a considerable increase in this respect (range from 21-33 types).
4.3. Conclusion In this section, the developmental patterning of finite verbs has been investigated. In particular, we looked at the error patterns and the type frequencies of finite verbs in order to test whether or not the occurrence of lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitives in stage III co-occurs with the acquisition of finite inflection, as was predicted by the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. In brief, the idea is that lexical overlap signals the acquisition of a generalized class of verbs. This acquisition is triggered by the learning of finite inflection. We assume that the learning of finite inflection is reflected in the emergence of errors with finite verbs and an increase of the type frequency of finite verbs. It turned out that all four children started to make systematic errors around stage III, either at the beginning of stage III or at the end of this stage. In stages I/II the type frequency of finite verbs is low. From stage III onwards the type frequency of finite verbs shows an increase. We therefore conclude that both findings are consistent with the claim that inflectional morphology provides a clue for a generalized class of verbs and thus support the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. Note that the observations of this section also corroborate our analysis of the modal shift in Chapter 4, section 6. Reversely, the finding that root
Morphological Cueing Hypothesis
95
infinitive undergo a modal shift can be interpreted as support for the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. It was argued that the modal shift in root infinitives (which takes place around stage III) can be successfully analyzed as an effect of the Elsewhere Hypothesis, that is, the proportion of specified finite verbs increases at the expense of underspecified infinitives. A study of the semantic properties of root infinitives has shown that this development is asymmetric: Specified finite (i.e. present tense) alternatives for root infinitives are earlier more frequent than specified modal alternatives. The result is that later in the Optional Infinitive stage, root infinitives are clearly less frequently used to denote ongoing events than to denote modal events. One of the factors that contribute to the modal shift is the increase of sentences with simple finite verbs. In this section, it has been shown that this increase is related to the learning of the rules for finite verbal inflection, especially the data in Table 6 reveal an accumulation of finite verbs types between stages I-IV.
5. Verb Second The fact that finite inflection generalizes over the state-denoting lexeme hebben ‘to have’ in (17a) and the event-denoting lexeme gooien ‘to throw’ in (17b) is the basis of the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. As (17) and (18) illustrate, both eventive and stative verbs agree with the subject: (17)
a. b.
(18)
a. b.
Jan Jan Jan Jan
heeft has gooit throws
een a een a
bal. ball bal. ball
Jan Jan Jan Jan
en and en and
Piet Piet Piet Piet
hebben have gooien throw
een a een a
bal. ball bal. ball
The assumption underlying this hypothesis is that children use distributional information in order to acquire the grammar of the target language, and, in this particular case, in order to acquire a category of verbs that is consistent with the adult grammar. Our analysis may therefore be interpreted as a form of distributional bootstrapping.25
96 Developmental patterns The result of this acquisition is that children become more flexible. This flexibility, signaled by lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitives, applies to two levels of grammar. On the level of morphology, it shows that children are able to use the same verb stem with finite morphology. They can now use the eventive verb stem loop ‘walk’ with the present tense third person singular suffix –t (loopt) and with the infinitival suffix –en (lopen). Prior to this acquisition they could probably only use it in infinitival form. Also, a stative verb stem like pas ‘fit’ would probably have only appeared in finite form (past), whereas now it can also appear in infinitival form (passen). In terms of syntax, lexical overlap shows that children can use the same verb stem in second position of the sentence and in sentence-final position, hence can apply Verb Second (De Haan 1987; Poeppel and Wexler 1993).
6. Null subjects The aim of this section is to show that the acquisition of finite verb inflection has further syntactic consequences and ties in with the acquisition of target-like patterns of subject licensing. It has been observed that in the Optional Infinitive stage, root infinitives predominantly have empty subjects (i.e. subjects that are not phonetically realized), whereas finite sentences have pronounced, or lexical, subjects: (19)
In root infinitives, children drop subjects significantly more frequently than in co-occurring finite sentences (based on Haegeman 1994, 1995; Hamann and Plunkett 1998; Krämer 1993; Rizzi 1994; Sano and Hyams 1994; Schütze 1997, amongst others).
The generalization in (19) is in accordance with the properties of the target grammar, in which infinitival clauses do not license overt subjects (ignoring Exceptional Case Marking contexts) or, on an alternative analysis, infinitives license the empty category PRO in subject position (Schütze 1997). With respect to finite sentences, rich agreement inflection licenses the empty category ‘pro’ in subject position whereas poor agreement inflection requires an overt subject (Huang 1984; Koeneman 2000; Speas 2004). Hence, in particular in languages with poor agreement inflection, such as Dutch, overt subjects are expected to occur significantly more of-
Null subjects
97
ten in finite sentences than in infinitival clauses (Chapter 2, sections 5.3 and 5.4). Application of this syntactic knowledge is in crucial ways dependent on the morphosyntactic information contained in the vocabulary items in (8) and (9). First of all, the difference between finite and nonfinite verbs is relevant because nonfinite verbs cannot license overt subjects (and do license null subjects). Secondly, given the common assumption that rich agreement paradigms provide a means to identify the reference of the subject and license the occurrence of the empty pronoun ‘pro’ in subject position, the information contained in vocabulary items is relevant for deciding whether or not the subject can remain empty. If children acquire (8) and (9) during the Optional Infinitive stage, it is expected that patterns of subject use change during the Optional Infinitive stage. It is, more specifically, expected that Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter acquire the non pro-drop status of Dutch during the Optional Infinitive stage. Hence, we may expect a decrease of empty subjects in their finite sentences. It is moreover expected that the connection between empty subjects and root infinitives is established during the Optional Infinitive stage as the result of learning the difference between finite and nonfinite sentences. Blom and Van Geert (2004) described the development of subject use in the finite sentences and root infinitives in Abel, Daan, Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter’s data in stages I-IV. The development they describe is repeated in Figure 1 below. The open bullets (---|---) represent the results for finite sentences at a certain stage – this includes simple finite and periphrastic finite predicates – whereas the black squares (------) show the results for root infinitives at this stage; 1-4 stand for the stages I-IV. (b) Daan
100 80 60 40 20 0
%
%
(a) Abel
1
2
3
4
100 80 60 40 20 0 1
2
3
4
Figure 1. Percentages of null subjects in root infinitives and finite sentences in the longitudinal data of six Dutch-speaking children
98 Developmental patterns
(d) Laura
100 80 60 40 20 0
%
%
(c) Josse
1
2
3
100 80 60 40 20 0
4
1
100 80 60 40 20 0 1
2
3
4
3
4
(f) Peter
%
%
(e) Matthijs
2
3
4
100 80 60 40 20 0 1
2
Figure 1. Continued
The coding of subjects in the analyzed files is given in Appendix 10. The raw data are in Appendix 11. At first glance, the development of subject drop in finite sentences and root infinitives appears to differ. In finite sentences, subject drop shows a decrease. This pattern is most clear in the graphs representing the behavior of Josse, Laura, Matthijs and Peter. In Abel’s and Daan’s data the first measure point deviates but the rest of the development shows a similar decrease of subject drop. The most important observation is that initially, subjects can be freely dropped in finite sentences. The acquisition of the knowledge that Dutch is a non pro-drop language is reflected in the development that takes place between the initial stages and the final stage, which shows that null subjects in finite sentences seldom occur. In root infinitives, the development of null subjects shows a similar initial decrease. From stage III onwards the use of null subjects in root infinitives shows an increase. In the final stage, the child data show adult patterning: Finite sentences contain overt subjects whereas root infinitives contain null subjects.
Null subjects
99
So, during the first phase of the Optional Infinitive stage the proportions of dropped subjects in root infinitives and finite sentences decrease in parallel. In the subsequent phase, subject drop in finite clauses continues to decrease, but at the same time it increases in root infinitives. Averaging over the six children, it turns out that during the Optional Infinitive stage the proportion of dropped subjects in finite sentences shows an ongoing decrease from an initial proportion of 91.7% at the onset of the Optional Infinitive stage to a final proportion of 22.8% at the end of the Optional Infinitive stage. The proportion of dropped subjects in root infinitives was initially 100%, then drops to 67.5%, but goes up again to 83.7% at the end of the Optional Infinitive stage. Only at the end of the Optional Infinitive stage, there is a clear distinction between finite and nonfinite clauses, similar to what we see in adult Dutch: Subjects are normally absent in root infinitives and normally present in finite sentences (at the end of the Optional Infinitive stage, 83.7% of the root infinitives contains a null subject and 77.2% of finite sentences contains an overt subject). Thus, what the Figures 1a-f show is a U-shaped developmental pattern for the use of null subjects in root infinitives (see also Gillis (2003) for a replication). The ongoing decrease of null subject in finite sentences is obvious from Figures 1a-f. The crucial question is whether or not the U-shaped development of the proportion of null subjects in root infinitives, indicating reanalysis, is statistically reliable. Along the lines of the statistical procedure specified in Appendix 4, the test statistic (the difference between the average proportion of subject drop in stage III and stages II/IV) has been calculated seven times: Once for the group of six children, and six times for a group of five children, leaving out one specific child at a time (Jack knife technique). If one child indeed determines the p-value over the group, the p-value should increase dramatically if the child is left out of the calculations. Table 7, on the next page, shows the seven p-values obtained in this way. The conclusion is clear: The probability that the observed difference in proportion of subject drop between stage III and stages II and IV is due to chance is very small (p = 0.0015). That is, the difference is statistically highly significant. In addition, the probability is not disproportionately affected by a single child with an extreme difference. That is, we may be confident that the result is characteristic of the sample as a whole and thus, that the p-value applies to the population from which the sample has been drawn.
100 Developmental patterns Table 7. Probabilities that the observed average difference over the six children between subject drop in stage III and subject drop in stages I/IV is due to chance. The probabilities are calculated over the entire group of six children and over 6 groups of five children, with one specific child omitted at a time All six children Omitted child Abel Daan Josse Laura Matthijs Peter
p-value 0.0015 0.0016 0.013 0.005 0.0021 0.0031 0.0014
According to the figures, three of the six children (Abel, Daan and Laura) seem to show a very early asymmetry between the frequency of empty subjects in finite sentences and root infinitives, which – if it were statistically significant - would be inconsistent with the analysis given here. It could indicate that children make the grammatical distinction between root infinitives and finite clauses from early on. However, apart from the fact that this is incongruent with the developmental data from both root infinitives and finite clauses, there are indications that this early distinction has a different cause. This is illustrated by the examples in (20): (20)
a.
b.
Dies dieis gogel. that-is that-is bird ‘That is a bird.’ Weejdikook. want-I-also ‘I also want to have that.’
Abel 1;11.26
Daan 2;00.22
The child utterances in (20) exemplify that some children, in the early stages, tend to treat subject and finite verb as one unanalyzed unit. Due to Verb Second, subject and finite verb are in Dutch adjacent, and hence, can be difficult to segment based on information in the input stream: It may be very unclear where the subject ends and the verb begins, or, in the case of subject-verb inversion (as in (20b)), where the verb ends and the subject begins. Obviously, this segmentation problem does not apply to root infini-
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101
tives because subject and infinitive are usually not adjacent. It is expected that this difference between the position of finite verbs and infinitives will lead to relatively many overt subjects in finite sentences, especially in the early developmental stages when children are still figuring out the segments on a syntactic level, rather than on morphological level. In this section, and the previous one, we focused on the syntactic consequences of the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. One consequence is the acquisition of Verb Second. Another effect is that the acquisition of finite inflectional morphology enables Dutch children to determine that Dutch is a non pro-drop language. It leads to the systematic distinction between finite sentences (which require overt subjects in Dutch) and infinitival clauses (which contain empty subjects). The developmental patterns found in the data of the six Dutch children confirmed the correlation between developmental patterns in the use of finite verbal morphology and the expected emergence of a systematic difference between the use of null subjects in finite sentences and root infinitives.
7. Summary In this chapter we discussed the outcome of longitudinal analyses of Dutch child data that have been collected during the Optional Infinitive stage. A general observation is that the Optional Infinitive stage is anything but a stable stage. It was found that at the onset of the Optional Infinitive stage there is no lexical overlap between the verbs used in finite sentences and root infinitives and that during the Optional Infinitive stage lexical overlap grows. Through the longitudinal approach (Growing Overlap Hypothesis), we could thus accommodate two apparently contrasting empirical observations (e.g. no overlap (De Haan 1987) versus overlap (Poeppel and Wexler 1993)). Analyses of input data corroborated the claim that properties of the input cause the no overlap stage. Fine-grained analyses of child data indicated furthermore a correlation between the acquisition of finite verb inflection and lexical overlap, as was predicted by the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. In the final section, it was shown that finite verb inflection does not only influence the acquisition of Verb Second, but also has an effect on the use of null subjects. Only after Dutch children have acquired finite verb inflection, do they exhibit adult patterns of subject use, that is, systematically use overt subjects in their finite sentences and empty subjects in root infinitives.
Chapter 7 Discussion
1. Introduction According to the theoretical framework in Chapter 3, properties of children’s linguistic output during the Optional Infinitive stage are the result of lexical learning, which is independent from syntactic development, but interacts with syntax at spell-out. We are not the first to suggest that lexical learning and syntactic development are interrelated (see e.g. Bates, Bretherton, and Snyder 1988; Marchman and Bates 1994). In the generative framework, Clahsen (1988) was one of the first to argue that full productivity of verbal agreement morphology is a crucial factor in the transition from a root infinitive type grammar to adult competence, and that attaining productivity depends on lexical learning. We subscribe to this tradition and analyzed form-meaning relations (Chapter 4), cross-linguistic differences in the meaning of root infinitives (Chapter 5) and developmental changes (Chapter 6) in the Optional Infinitive stage as phenomena at the lexiconsyntax interface. The aim of this final chapter is to discuss the direct implications of our findings and analyses, and point out how our account can be applied to other learner groups, other languages and data from modalities other than speech production.
2. Summary Two-year old Dutch children start using various finite and nonfinite verb forms. In Chapter 4 we discussed how, e.g. in which contexts, Dutch children use these different early verb forms. It was argued that the root infinitives contain an underspecified elsewhere form (the infinitive) that lacks specification in the temporal and modal domain and therefore has a free temporal and modal denotation. Hence, the infinitive can be used in a wide range of contexts (Elsewhere Hypothesis). Later in their development the children learn other, more specific, verb forms such as past participles,
Summary 103
simple present tense verbs and periphrastic present tense and modal verbs. Because the Elsewhere Principle requests insertion of the most specific form (that is appropriate in a given context), root infinitives become less and less frequent as an effect of the acquisition of specified verb forms. Changes in the frequencies of present tense and modal verbs provided support for the Elsewhere Hypothesis: Changes in the meaning of root infinitives (referred to as the modal shift) could be related to the different frequencies of respectively specified present tense and modal alternatives for root infinitives. The free temporal and modal reference of root infinitives in languages other than Dutch (e.g. German, English) suggests that the Elsewhere Hypothesis has a wider application. If root infinitives contain an underspecified verb form by definition, cross-linguistic differences in the meaning of root infinitives may seem unexpected. In Chapter 5 we argued that the differences in meaning between Dutch (and German) root infinitives, on the one hand, and English root infinitives, on the other, find a natural explanation in our framework, however. First of all, we have shown that previous cross-linguistic comparisons of naturalistic data are subject to a modal bias and that the actual cross-linguistic difference is smaller than previously assumed (Modal Bias Hypothesis). The remaining difference could be analyzed as a corollary of the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis, because only in English, and not in Dutch/German, are finite verbs with missing surface inflection included in the set of root infinitives. The claim that English children omit inflection was supported by three pieces of independent evidence, namely the occurrence of uninflected finite do in child English, the relatively high proportion of stative root infinitives in early child English and subject use in English root infinitives. Speculating on the representation of the bare verbs in child language, we evaluated two analyses according to which bare verbs are the result of phonological drop or are morphosyntactically underspecified forms. At this point, neither analysis can fully account for all observations. In Chapter 6 we accommodated two apparently contrasting empirical observations with the Growing Overlap Hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, a period of no overlap between the verb types in root infinitives and finite sentences (De Haan 1987) is followed by a period in which children use the same verb types in root infinitives and finite sentences (Poeppel and Wexler 1993). Analyses of input data corroborated the claim that properties of the input induce the initial absence of overlap, which leads to the lack of a generalized syntactic analysis of Dutch verb placement rules
104 Discussion in early development. The occurrence of overlap, and hence the emergence of a generalized syntactic structure, co-occurred with an increase of the type frequency of finite verbs and a growing number of errors with finite verbs. These two observations supported the Morphological Cueing Hypothesis. The effect of learning finite verb inflection on the children’s syntactic performance is twofold: They acquire Verb Second and start to treat subjects in accordance with the target grammar. To the question that led us through this study (Why do young children omit finite verbs, and use root infinitives instead?), our answer is essentially that (Dutch) children learn infinitives before they learn finite verbs. Children’s use of root infinitives can be explained from the absence of productive grammatical rules to form finite sentences. This asymmetry in the acquisition of finite verbs and infinitives is an effect of lexical learning, which, in turn, is related to properties of the input. Our analysis is compatible with several properties of root infinitives and finite sentences and changes in the properties of these two types of sentences during the Optional Infinitive stage. The properties in case are: The meaning of root infinitives, type and token frequencies of finite verbs and root infinitives, lexical overlap between finite verbs and infinitival verbs used in root infinitives, errors with finite verbs and the frequency of null subjects in finite sentences and root infinitives. The relevance of the input was supported by data from Dutch child-directed speech. Please note that we do not rule out that other factors contribute to the omission of finite verbs as well. Young children may lack insight into the pragmatics of finiteness or, from a psycholinguistic perspective, they might use root infinitives as a fall back strategy in case they run out of processing capacity.
3. Implications Our study has empirical, theoretical and methodological implications. In this section, we will discuss these implications one by one, starting with the empirical implications. As a starting point, we take the following six generalizations, described at full length in Chapter 2:
Implications 105
(1)
There is no lexical overlap between infinitival verbs used in root infinitives and finite verbs used in co-occurring finite sentences. The predicates of root infinitives belong to a different class than the predicates of co-occurring finite sentences (based on De Haan 1987; Jordens 1990; Ferdinand 1996; Wijnen 1997, 2000).
(2)
The same lexemes appear as infinitival and finite verb in respectively root infinitives and co-occurring finite sentences (based on Poeppel and Wexler 1993).
(3)
In root infinitives, children drop subjects significantly more frequently than in co-occurring finite sentences (based on Haegeman 1994, 1995; Hamann and Plunkett 1998; Krämer 1993; Rizzi 1994; Sano and Hyams 1994; Schütze 1997, amongst others).
(4)
Root infinitives express modal meanings, whereas co-occuring finite sentences are nonmodal (based on Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Ferdinand 1996; Ingram and Thompson 1996; Van Ginneken 1917; Wijnen 1997).
(5)
Root infinitives that contain a distinct infinitival suffix (Dutch, German, French) are modal, whereas ‘bare verb’ root infinitives (English) are not restricted to modal meanings (based on Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002).
(6)
Root infinitives that contain a distinct infinitival suffix (Dutch, German, French) are restricted to event-denoting predicates, whereas ‘bare verb’ root infinitives (English) contain also statedenoting predicates (based on Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002).
In the literature on root infinitives there is a controversy between studies that report no (or minimal) overlap between the verb types used in finite sentences and root infinitives and studies that argue that finiteness is optional (meaning that the same verb is used by children with finite and infinitival suffixes), as shown by (1) versus (2). Our longitudinal analyses of Dutch child data resolved this controversy, indicating a significant growth of lexical overlap. We concluded that in Dutch child language observations
106 Discussion in both (1) and (2) hold, and that they describe two subsequent developmental stages (Growing Overlap Hypothesis). Longitudinal analyses also shed a new light on (3), because it turned out that (3) applied to Dutch child data from later developmental stages. In the early developmental stages, the difference between subject use in finite sentences and root infinitives was not so pronounced. Focusing on root infinitives, we concluded that subject use in Dutch root infinitives appears to undergo a development that resembles a U-shaped developmental curve. We argued that this development can be understood as an effect of learning inflectional morphology, and hence can be viewed as a development in the lexicon. Dutch root infinitives in both naturalistic and experimental data more often denote modal meanings than co-occurring sentences with finite main verbs (see (4)), but root infinitives in Dutch child language are by no means restricted to a modal meaning. Our (experimental) findings confirm (5): Root infinitives in early child English are indeed more often nonmodal than Dutch root infinitives. This cross-linguistic difference turned out to be smaller than previously assumed on the basis of comparisons of spontaneous speech data. Analyses of spontaneous speech data showed furthermore that root infinitives in Dutch child language are hardly ever stative, in contrast to the early finite verbs. Over time, Dutch children start using more eventive finite verbs, but at the end of the Optional Infinitive stage statedenoting finite verbs still outnumber state-denoting infinitives, and the distributions of eventive and stative predicates are still asymmetric. The same asymmetry is found in the language children hear (unlike the asymmetric distributions of eventive and stative predicates early in the Optional Infinitive stage, which are different from the input distributions). The most important theoretical implication of our study is that it emphasizes that a theory of root infinitives should be able to account for all kinds of variation. In a number of cases, previous explanations turned out to be too rigid. Below we will discuss two relevant examples in case. According to the Optional Infinitive Hypothesis (Poeppel and Wexler 1993; Wexler 1994, 1998), children of about 18 months already have the basic knowledge of verb inflection and know about Verb Second. Given that the six children investigated here are older than 18 months, any developments in the domain of verb inflection and verb placement are unexpected. In the data of these six children we did find, however, a transition from a phase in which children do not have a generalized analysis for finite sentences and root infinitives to a phase in which they generalize over fi-
Implications 107
nite sentences and root infinitives. The Optional Infinitive Hypothesis could not accommodate this kind of variation in longitudinal data. A second example that illustrates the weaknesses of previous explanations with respect to variability concerns the meaning of root infinitives. We singled out the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis (Hoekstra and Hyams 1998; Hyams 2001, 2002) as the most successful explanation for properties of the meaning of root infinitives. Because the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis related the modal meaning assigned to Dutch root infinitives to the presence of an infinitival suffix in this language, it was predicted that all root infinitives in early child Dutch are modal. This prediction was not born out by the data, however: Dutch root infinitives occurred in both modal and nonmodal contexts. We found moreover a change in meaning of Dutch root infinitives and observed that the meaning of Dutch child root infinitives was related to the type of subject. The possibility to use nonmodal root infinitives and the influence of subject use on the number of modal root infinitives rendered the Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis untenable. How did we account for variation in the data? We analyzed infinitives as underspecified vocabulary items that are acquired early but that also ‘disappear’ as an effect of newly acquired more specified verb forms. The underspecified nature of infinitives allows their insertion in various different positions, and their use in various contexts. The implication is that root infinitives appear in modal as well as in nonmodal contexts. The properties of root infinitives not only explain the overall decrease of root infinitives, but also that the decrease takes place in a certain fashion and that nonmodal root infinitives become infrequent earlier than modal root infinitives. The inclusion of lexical development in our analysis provided a ground for the embedding of input effects. According to De Haan (1987), Dutch children start out with two verb-like categories: One with finite verbs (‘AUX’, which contains state-denoting verbs) and the other with infinitives (‘V’, which contains event-denoting verbs). He assumes that this is caused by children’s application of a semantic bootstrapping procedure (Pinker 1984, 1989). In our view, the stativity of early finite verbs and the eventivity of early infinitives is not a specific property of Dutch child language. Instead, it is a direct reflection of the language Dutch children are exposed to. This hypothesis was supported by data from Dutch child-directed speech. In our view, the acquisition of the rules to generate and use finite verbs can explain various changes. Two of these changes are the modal shift in the meaning assigned to root infinitives and the U-shaped development of
108 Discussion the frequency of null subjects in root infinitives. Interestingly, the Agreement and Tense Omission Model, or ATOM (Schütze and Wexler 1996; Schütze 1997; see Chapter 2, section 5.3) might have the potential to explain both developments. The developmental implications of this scenario are counter-intuitive, however, as we will argue below. According to the ATOM, root infinitives are the result of syntactic underspecification, more specifically the syntactic underspecification of Agreement and/or Tense. Underspecification of one of the two functional categories suffices for the infinitive to appear. Thus, the syntactic representation of root infinitives is in this model [+Agreement, -Tense], [-Tense, +Agreement] or [-Tense, -Agreement]. A positive value corresponds to the presence of this position in syntax and a negative value to its absence. If both Tense and Agreement are present in syntax, a finite verb is inserted. Schütze (1997: 232) says that [+Tense] root infinitives have a present tense denotation. These root infinitives are bound by Tense to speech time, which is the default time. This will happen as long as the children cannot distinguish between the present and the past. Unlike the tensed root infinitives, [-Tense] root infinitives are not anchored to a specific point in time; hence we expect them to be modal. The ATOM could thus account for modal shift in root infinitives as the effect of an increase of [-Tense] root infinitives, implying that root infinitives become from specified to underspecified. The second change over time concerns subject use. Theoretically speaking, the ATOM is also capable of explaining this development. According to the ATOM, the difference between root infinitives in which either Tense or Agreement is underspecified is noticeable in properties of the subject of root infinitives. In root infinitives that are underspecified for Agreement, the overt subject receives default Case, as Agreement is responsible for Case. Root infinitives that are [+Tense] provide a licit environment for a null subject (the empty category PRO), as Tense is claimed to be responsible for subject licensing. It follows that specification of Tense leads to the use of root infinitives with overt subjects (and default Case). By implication, the increase of null subjects in root infinitives would mean in this model that Tense becomes underspecified. The representations for root infinitives allowed by the ATOM can thus describe different developmental stages in the meaning assigned to root infinitives and in the frequency of root infinitives with null subjects. Developmentally, the subsequent representations would imply a development from a [+Tense] grammar to a [-Tense] grammar, which would be a reverse
Implications 109
development. This consequence is in contradiction with a basic assumption of the ATOM, which is that the underspecified stage is the initial stage. We therefore conclude that the ATOM is inconsistent with the developmental observations in Dutch child language. The last implications of our study involve methodology. We emphasized that longitudinal analyses are very valuable. Longitudinal analyses revealed the modal shift in root infinitives, the growth of lexical overlap between early finite verbs and infinitives, the changing patterns of subject use, an increasing amount of errors and an increase of the type frequency of finite verbs. These developments show that a study based on data collected at one timepoint are hardly representative for the Optional Infinitive stage and that collapsing data from different timepoints probably obscures interesting developmental patterns. In this study we have taken snapshots of the developmental sequence based on proportions of finite utterances. The advantage of this approach was that in this way we were able to analyze data from more children and determine the extent to which the findings were child-specific or not. The disadvantage was that our data are not conclusive as to the question whether or not the developments found are gradual or take place in a stepwise fashion. In order to answer this question, the periods in between data collection need to be very short. Unfortunately, many of the available CHILDES corpora do not meet this requirement, but the recently developed dense databases are excellent for this purpose (Behrens 2008), albeit that the overall period of data collection of these databases is relatively small. A second methodological issue that we touched upon is the issue of cross-linguistic comparisons. Previous research on root infinitives compared the proportion of modal and nonmodal root infinitives in Dutch and English child language without controlling for the fact that the Dutch root infinitives include utterances with all kinds of subjects whereas the English root infinitives are restricted to third person singular subjects. We have shown that person features of the subject correlate with modality, which supported our hypothesis that a part of the difference in the meaning of Dutch and English root infinitives stems from the exclusion of root infinitives with first and second person singular subjects in English. This example shows once more how important it is to carefully consider all variables in a study that compares two languages in order to avoid any confounding effects.
110 Discussion The third methodological implication of our study is the importance of comparing child production data to adult production data. Previous studies related the eventivity of root infinitives to children’s cognitive immaturity. Briefly, the reasoning was as follows. Deontic modality is incompatible with state-denoting predicates whereas epistemic modality is not. Root infinitives are inherently modal, either because they contain a silent modal auxiliary or because the infinitive is modal. Since children in the Optional Infinitive stage cannot yet use epistemic modality (but do use deontic modality), their root infinitives are restricted to event-denoting predicates (Chapter 2, sections 3.3 and 6.2; Chapter 4, section 2). We found that Dutch children’s infinitives are indeed predominantly eventive. However, it turned out that the same holds for the language Dutch children are exposed to, which is spoken by (cognitively mature) adults. Based on the comparison of child and adult production data, one may thus conclude that the eventivity of root infinitives is an input effect. The presence of an eventivity effect in the language of adult speakers also suggests that cognitive immaturity is not the relevant factor, and that we should strive to find another factor that influences the frequency of stative infinitives in both child and adult language. The fourth methodological point is that one should be careful with making generalizations on child language based on the data of one child only. In order to illustrate this we return to the controversy between De Haan (1987) and Poeppel and Wexler (1993). The first study described data from the Dutch boy Tim in support of the No Overlap Hypothesis. In the second study this hypothesis was rejected, and the Optional Infinitive Hypothesis was confirmed, on the basis of data from the German boy Andreas. Assuming, like Poeppel and Wexler (1993), that Dutch and German child language are structurally very similar and can therefore be compared, we argued that developmental data obtained from six Dutch-speaking children show that Tim and Andreas represent two subsequent developmental stages. The implication is that Andreas is fairly advanced, notwithstanding his young age. Other observations consistent with this conclusion are Andreas’ frequent use of finite sentences (in the file that Poeppel and Wexler (1993) studied Andreas used 231 finite sentences and 51 root infinitives), the observation that Andreas uses many different finite predicates, and his infrequent use of null subjects in finite sentences (180 out of 197 finite sentences contains a null subject). Our expectation therefore is that if Poeppel and Wexler would have analyzed data from other children, and
Implications 111
would have analyzed data from Andreas from an earlier age, their conclusions might have been different. Although the six children in our sample underwent the same developmental changes, they also showed quite some variation. Related to the previous implication, is the fifth and final methodological point. Our study shows once more that age is an unreliable matching criterium in studies that focus on early language development. Singling out the two extremes in our sample, we conclude that the same development differs from child to child: The development from a ‘root infinitive grammar’ to a ‘finite grammar’ takes Peter 8 months (1;07.18 – 2;03.21) whereas it takes Laura 19 months (1;09.04 – 3;04.06). The other four children are inbetween these two extremes. One should thus either use matching criteria other than age (e.g. MLU) or select a large sample of children.
4. Second language learners Our research focused on speech production data of monolingual normallydeveloping Dutch-speaking and English-speaking toddlers. In the previous section we summarized the impact of this study within this field of research. In this section and the two following ones it will be shown that our analysis of these data has a wider application; hence that the impact of this study goes beyond the speech production of monolingual children learning West Germanic languages. In this section, we will show that our analysis can be used to describe patterns in the data of other groups of learners, more specifically second language learners of Dutch. The comparison between monolingual children (L1), children that learn a second language (child L2) and adults that learn a second language (adult L2) is relevant for answering key questions in the field of language acquisition (Unsworth and Blom forthcoming). One particularly relevant topic is the effect of maturation of the brain, and differences between learning grammar at an early and at a later age (a.o. Lenneberg 1967; Penfield and Roberts 1959; see for overviews: Birdsong 1999; Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson 2003). In this section we will discuss our L1 results on the acquisition of finiteness in Dutch in the light of maturational effects. The underlying assumption will be that maturational effects surface in the differences between error-profiles of child and adult learners. Supposing that children acquire morphosyntax by using “learning capacities specific to language” whereas adults make use of “acquisition strategies which may be derived
112 Discussion from principles of information processing and general problem solving strategies” (Clahsen and Muysken 1986: 111; see also Bley-Vroman 1989), we expect differences in the types of errors of children and adults that learn the rules of Dutch finiteness. On the basis of data collected in a sentence completion task, we found that Turkish and Moroccan immigrants who started to learn Dutch after puberty produced a type of error that is unattested in early child Dutch: The adults showed a tendency to use verb forms ending with the suffix –en in finite position with singular subjects. The example in (7) illustrates this type of error (the response is from a Turkish subject): (7)
De the
man man
tekenen zon. draw sun
In a first experiment, it was found that the L2 children (n = 31, age range at time of testing = 5-8 years) hardly ever used the infinitival form in finite position. The Turkish children did this in 0% of the responses (total number of responses = 134), whereas the Moroccan children did this in only 2% of their responses (total number of responses = 272). The Turkish and Moroccan L2 adults (n = 18) did this in 19% (total number of responses 113) and 28% (total number of responses 275) (Blom, Polišenská, and Weerman 2007). The difference in incorrect use of –en in finite position between children and adults remained after the two groups were matched on proficiency. The findings were replicated in a second experiment with more subjects, namely Turkish children (n = 23, age range at time of testing = 4.8 – 8.0 years), Moroccan children (n = 37, age range at time of testing = 4.2 – 8.4 years), Turkish adults (n = 16) and Moroccan adults (n = 20) (Blom 2008). Table 1 on the next page gives the percentages of –en errors in first person singular condition (target response = bare verb), second person singular condition (target response = suffix -t) and third person singular condition (target response = suffix -t). It turns out that the error patterns in L2 Dutch resemble findings of child and adult L2 acquisition of German based on analyses of spontaneous speech (Meisel 1991, 1997; Prévost 2003; Prévost and White 2000).
Second language learners 113
Table 1. Incorrect use of the suffix –en in first person singular, second person singular and third person singular conditions (Blom 2008) Group Turkish children Moroccan children Turkish adults Moroccan adults
-en in 1SG Condition 0% (0/40) 2% (1/59) 12% (6/48) 14% (10/74)
-en in 2SG Condition 0% (0/34) 2% (1/51) 21% (9/43) 18% (13/73)
-en in 3SG Condition 0% (0/113) 2% (4/176) 22% (19/85) 26% (41/158)
Below two examples of typical errors are given that are produced by adult learners of German (Prévost and White 2000: 122). In this context, the finite verb should end on the suffix –t, but the adult learners use a schwasuffix (which was analyzed as being infinitival): (8)
a. b.
Er kaufe he buy Michael Michael
ein a spiele play
Blume. flower hier. here
(Ana, month 4) (Zita, month 10)
According to Prévost and White (2000), (8) represents underspecification of the inflectional suffix –e(n) and, following the framework of Distributed Morphology (Chapter 3), they argue that this provides adult learners with the possibility to insert this suffix not only in nonfinite (final) position but also in a fully specified finite position. On this view, utterances as in (7) or (8) are not indicative of syntactic problems but show that adult learners have other inflectional defaults than children. Prévost and White and, in later work, Prévost (2003) leave the cause of this morphological difference between children and adults unexplained.26 The above analysis implies an asymmetry between morphology and syntax: In the domain of syntax, children and adults have the same knowledge whereas in the domain of morphology there are differences. This asymmetry is not applicable to our L2 data (Blom, Polišenská, and Weerman 2007; Blom in press). In our data, the adult learners had poor knowledge of the Dutch verb placement rules (in contrast to the L2 children) and showed across the board use of subject-verb-object orders, regardless of their first language and the Dutch sentence type they had to complete. Thus, whereas nearly all adults performed very well with respect to the completion of standard main clauses (target order = subject-verb-object), they showed poor performance in the embedded clause condition (target
114 Discussion order = subject-object-verb) and main clause condition with inversion (target order = verb-subject-object). These findings indicate that the late learners we tested did neither know the underlying head-final order of Dutch nor Verb Second (Blom and De Korte submitted). Their erroneous use of the suffix –en does certainly not go hand in hand with impeccable syntactic performance, as was suggested by others (Prévost and White 2000). The Dutch adult data resemble data on the L2 acquisition of German word order. Like Dutch, German requires - due to Verb Second - subjectverb inversion in questions. Felix (1982) demonstrated that in the early stages of development, subject-verb inversion is absent. Meisel, Clahsen and Pienemann (1983) showed that this applies to later developmental stages as well. They found that in the production data of 45 Italian, Spanish and Portuguese late learners of German, the structure of questions varies inter-individually, and even those learners who have been in contact with German for more than ten years do not necessarily use inversion in questions in their spontaneous speech samples (Meisel, Clahsen, and Pienemann 1983: 146): (9)
a. b.
Warum du why you Warum du why you
muss must hier here
schule so school like arbeit? work
so? this
The data show that adults from various L1 backgrounds who learned Dutch and German as a second language overuse the subject-verb-object order in embedded clauses and in main clauses with subject-verb inversion. They also overuse the suffix –en in finite position. Given these two observations, our conclusion is that the morphological as well as syntactic encoding of finiteness are influenced by a learner’s age. Is there a correlation or a causal relation between these two observations? In Chapter 6 we pointed out that in the first language acquisition of Dutch newly acquired information in the domain of inflection (finite paradigm) feeds syntactic development (Verb Second, relation between verb and subject). Further analysis of individual patterns in adult L2 Dutch provides additional support for this causal relation. Although the majority of the adults described above obviously do not know the Dutch verb placement rules, there are three individuals in the group of adult participants who do seem to be aware of the Dutch verb placement rules. Their accuracy on the verb placement task ranges between 67% and 100% correct, and they show high
Second language learners 115
accuracy in all three verb placement conditions. These three individuals are quite accurate with respect to finite verbal inflection, and score between 67% and 89% correct on subject-verb agreement. Moreover, none of these three participants overuses the suffix –en in finite position. The data obtained from these individuals indicate that accuracy in syntax and inflection seem to correlate. Furthermore, verb inflection and verb placement do not only correlate in terms of quantity, but adult learners that do know that Dutch is a head-final language with Verb Second do not overuse the suffix –en in finite position. We note that if one wants to interpret these data more precisely, a methodological difficulty occurs. It is impossible to determine whether or not incorrect –en is inserted by the adults in finite or nonfinite position. Most of the adult word order patterns are compatible with an SVO grammar - and hence inconsistent with the target grammar – but are not compatible with an SOV grammar with Verb Second - which would be consistent with the target grammar - (Clahsen and Muysken 1986; Meisel, Clahsen, and Pienemann 1983; but see DuPlessis et al. 1987; Tomaselli and Schwartz 2000 for a different analysis). The implication is that the adult L2 errors are compatible with various interpretations, as will be shown below. Consider first the representation of the Dutch paradigm, the adult learner’s target paradigm, as it was given in Chapter 3: (10)
/t/ /en/ /ø/ /en/
↔ ↔ ↔ ↔
[-past, -sp] [-past, +plur] [-past] []
Focusing on the representation of the suffix –en in the grammar of the adult L2 participants, one possibility may be that the fact that finite and infinitival –en are homophones in Dutch leads the adult learners to assume only one suffix –en, represented in (11). This suffix can be inserted in finite and nonfinite position. (11)
/en/
↔
[]
Another possibility is that adult learners have underspecified finite –en for number, as in (12). This suffix can only be inserted in finite position.
116 Discussion (12)
/en/
↔
[-past]
On the assumption that adults have an SVO grammar, we cannot use positional information in order to decide whether or not the suffix –en that the adult L2 learners use is finite and is adequately described by (12) or is nonfinite and matches the description in (11), because both forms in (11) and (12) would be inserted in second position. Unfortunately, the responses collected in the sentence completion task do not provide other potential clues that are decisive with respect to finiteness of the verb. In this section we have discussed data from other groups of learners, in particular those of L2 learners of Dutch. We have summarized the results of a sentence completion task (which are reported elsewhere in detail), showing that L2 adults make different types of errors in the morphosyntactic encoding of finiteness than L1 and L2 children make. The results indicate that nearly all adult learners show deficits in the domain of syntax, and lack knowledge of Verb Second, and that, in the domain of morphology, they have either a total lack of a fully specified finite suffix –en or have underspecified this suffix for person features. The results are consistent with the claim that maturation affects the acquisition of morphosyntax.
5. Null subject languages In this book we provide a detailed description of the characteristics of the Optional Infinitive stage in Dutch child language. Some of our claims were explicitly extended to other West Germanic child languages such as German and English child language. Evidence from Romance languages suggests that not all children go through the Optional Infinitive stage, however. In the literature the absence of an Optional Infinitive stage has been related to the null-subject status of a language. This is expressed in generalization (32) in Chapter 2, repeated here as (13): (13)
Null-subject languages do not have an Optional Infinitive stage, whereas non null-subject languages do have an Optional Infinitive stage (based on Bar-Shalom and Snyder 1998; Guasti 1993/94, 2002; Rhee and Wexler 1995; Torrens 1995; Wexler 1994, 1998).
Further investigation showed that in null-subject languages children seem to pass through an Optional Infinitive analogue, producing high numbers
Null subject languages 117
of bare participles (Greek; Varlokosta et al. 1996, 1998; but see Hyams 2003 and Rus and Chandra 2005) or imperatives (Italian; Salustri and Hyams 2003). Recall furthermore that there are languages in which the optional “infinitive” is a bare verb form such as English (Harris and Wexler 1996) or Inuktitut (Crago and Allen 2001). These observations indicate that each child language has an elsewhere form, and that children start of with an underspecified verb form regardless of the target language. This elsewhere form can be an infinitive, an imperative, a bare participle, a bare verb form or any other verb form. It is likely that the choice of the elsewhere form follows from properties of the input that make one verb form more salient than other verb forms. For example, Wijnen, Kempen and Gillis (2001) argued that the early emergence of the infinitival verb form in Dutch child language is the combined effect of the following input properties: (Token) frequency, information load and semantic transparency. Recent modeling studies that make use of an artificial learner have indicated that the position of the verb may play a crucial role in whether or not a language goes through an Optional Infinitive stage, or an analogue default stage (Freudenthal et al. 2007; Freudenthal, Pine, and Gobet 2006). These recent ideas are perfectly well compatible with the analysis given here. We analyzed the overuse of infinitives in Dutch as an effect of the unavailability of other verb forms: If other verb forms are acquired, root infinitives disappear. The asymmetry in the emergence of different verb forms is presumably an effect of the salience of the different forms in the input. Our expectation would therefore be that the elsewhere forms in child language are salient whereas the more specified forms are relatively nonsalient. Because salience is an umbrella term that is used for phonological, conceptual, syntactic and distributional properties (Polišenská forthcoming), and because these ‘determinants of saliency’ may interact in various, sometimes unexpected, ways, we cannot derive any straightforward predictions on root infinitive analogues in different languages at this point.
6. Receptive grammar Our research focused on early production data. It is a very interesting question to what extent the analyses given here are relevant for the receptive grammar. In our view, infinitives in Dutch are elsewhere or default forms that are used by children in case other more specified verb forms are un-
118 Discussion available. This proposal is compatible with our data which show that throughout the Optional Infinitive stage specified verb forms are acquired. This development goes hand-in-hand with a decreasing proportion of root infinitives. If children overuse infinitives because they have not yet acquired the specified finite alternatives, we expect the same for reception/perception and production data. The receptive grammar is expected to allow (or even prefer) infinitival verb forms, because there is no specified finite form available that could induce the blocking mechanism. As soon as specified forms are available, it is expected that the root infinitives are disprefered. Another viewpoint is assumed in a number of studies on the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (Ionin and Wexler 2001; Lardiere 1998, 2001; Prévost and White 2000). In these studies, it is hypothesized that the overuse of elsewhere forms, such as the infinitive, is related to production in communicatively demanding contexts. The specified finite forms are in principle available but it is less costly to insert the underspecified infinitive than to insert more specified finite vocabulary items. In this case we would expect an asymmetry between language reception and language production: A child that produces root infinitives can disprefer root infinitives in perception. These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive. In principle they could represent two subsequent developmental stages. In the initial stage, specified verb forms are not yet learned by the child, whereas in the following stage the specified verb forms are learned but not always inserted because they are more costly than the unspecified infinitive. This second stage could be an accurate description of the final stage. It has been argued that in adult Dutch root infinitives are typically used in contexts that require little processing costs, e.g. headlines (Baauw, Avrutin, and De Lange submitted). What do we know about the receptive grammar? There are no perception data available for Dutch children between (approximately) ages two and three, that is, the age group of our production data. There is, however, an early perception study on younger monolingual Dutch children aged 1819 months (n = 29). Polišenská (forthcoming) conducted a Headturn Preference experiment in which monolingual Dutch-acquiring infants heard grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. The ungrammatical sentences comprised errors with third person contexts, more specifically, use of the plural form in singular contexts, as illustrated in (14b), and use of the sin-
Receptive grammar 119
gular form in plural contexts, as illustrated in (15b). The grammatical equivalents are given in (14a) and (15a): (14)
a. b.
(15)
a. b.
Het it *Het it
regent rain-sg regenen rain-pl
vandaag. today vandaag. today
De the *De the
kleuters children kleuters children
rennen run-pl rent run-sg
in in in in
het the het the
park. park park. park
Polišenská found that the children’s listening times did not discriminate between (15a) and (15b), but that there was a statistically reliable difference between (14a) and (14b). The perception data show that the suffix –t is allowed in plural contexts, but that the suffix –en is not allowed in singular contexts. According to Polišenská, this observation is in line with Dutch production data, because in production incorrect use of the suffix –en in singular contexts (as in (14b)) is unattested. Our framework can account for the early perception data, and for Polišenská’s conclusion, in the following way. Suppose that Dutch infants (who are 18-19 months and thus in a developmental stage prior to the Optional Infinitive stage) have acquired a subset of the target paradigm and make the following paradigmatic distinctions: (16)
/t/ /en/ /en/
↔ ↔ ↔
[-past] [+plur] []
The list of vocabulary items in (16) shows that Dutch infants have specified /t/ for finiteness, namely as [-past]. Because this specified form is available, insertion of underspecified /en/ in finite position will be banned by the Elsewhere Principle. As long as /t/ is underspecified for number, this suffix is allowed in plural contexts. Both /t/ and specified /en/ match the finite plural context and are preferred to underspecified /en/. Because the one is not more specific than the other, it may be expected that there is no differentiation between the two vocabulary items in plural contexts. In
120 Discussion singular contexts, there is one candidate that counts as most appropriate, namely /t/, which may explain the early differentiation in singular contexts. In this section we discussed data from early perception experiments that were obtained from children who were not yet in the Optional Infinitive stage. The early perception data are compatible with data from speech production reported here. The data from the two modalities (reception and production) thus represent two subsequent developmental stages in the acquisition of finiteness in Dutch.
7. Concluding remarks In this book we investigate the acquisition of finiteness and related morphosyntactic properties. An important characteristic of our analysis is that syntax and morphology are viewed as separate components that are acquired partially independent form each other, but that also influence each other. We argue that quantitative and qualitative properties of the verb lexicon, and hence the children’s input data, are crucial for the productive use the morphosyntactic marking of finiteness. The analysis given in this book was developed for speech production data of Dutch monolingual children, but we have shown that it applies to other West Germanic languages such as German and English as well. Our study has various empirical, theoretical and methodological implications. Finally, we note that the analyses and results of this study clearly extend beyond the scope of this book and are compatible with data from other groups of learners (specifically second language learners), other languages (including null-subject languages), and are consistent with what we know of the receptive grammar of young Dutch-speaking infants.
Appendix 121
Appendix
Appendix 1: Selected CHILDES files Table 1. Selected files (age of recording in years; months.days) in four developmental stages (I-IV) Child Abel
I n.a.
II 1;10.30 1;11.12 1;11.26
Daan
1;08.21 1;09.09 1;10.16 n.a.
2;00.22 2;00.19 2;01.21 2;00.07 2;00.21
Laura
1;09.04 1;09.18
2;00.05 2;00.19 2;01.02
Matthijs
1:09.30 1;10.13
Peter
1;07.18
1;11.10 1;11.24 2;00.09 1;09.20 1;10.03
Josse
III 2;01.02 2;01.16 2;02.19 2;03.02 2;04.14 2;04.28 2;05.11 2;03.28 2;04.11 2;04.01 2;04.15 2;05.00 2;05.17 2;06.10 2;04.24 2;05.01 2;00.28 2;01.26
IV 2;05.17 2;07.15 2;07.29 2;08.13 2;08.27 2;09.10 2;07.20 2;08.04 2;08.18 3;02.09 3;03.00 3;03.02 3;04.06 2;10.22 2;11.03 2;11.19 2;03.07 2;03.21
122 Appendix Appendix 2: Properties of selected files Table 2. Frequencies root infinitives (RI), finite sentences (FIN), and mean length of utterance (MLU) in four developmental stages (I-IV) Abel
Daan
Josse
Laura
Matthijs
Peter
Stage I II III IV Stage I II III IV Stage I II III IV Stage I II III IV Stage I II III IV Stage I II III IV
RI (N) n.a 33 84 42 RI (N) 5 54 66 71 RI (N) n.a 99 76 64 RI (N) 18 56 276 65 RI (N) 40 127 112 51 RI (N) 26 114 57 29
FIN (N) n.a. 10 198 275 FIN (N) 2 49 246 621 FIN (N) n.a. 11 98 439 FIN (N) 2 26 348 372 FIN (N) 8 6 85 524 FIN (N) 0 5 95 627
MLU n.a. 1.31 (1041/795) 1.87 (3027/1622) 2.19 (2779/1268) MLU (N/N) 1.10 (423/382) 1.41 (1880/1331) 2.07 (2788/1348) 2.73 (4907/1796) MLU (N/N) n.a. 1.32 (1257/955) 1.98 (1831/926) 2.32 (3386/1459) MLU (N/N) 1.33 (420/315) 1.42 (992/697) 1.87 (4010/2139) 2.84 (3101/1090) MLU (N/N) 1.07 (1021/955) 1.45 (1594/1098) 1.83 (1841/1006) 2.55 (1998/1565) MLU (N/N) 1.00 (46/46) 1.41 (1099/782) 2.21 (965/436) 3.01 (3271/1085)
Appendix 123
Appendix 3: Coding modality In (1), (2) and (3) some examples of interpretations/codes are given. Each $ introduces a new field with different types of codes. In field 1, the modal value is given (modal = M, nonmodal = N). If the utterance was modal, and the kind of modality could be determined, the M is followed by DY for dynamic modality, and by DE for deontic modality. If the modal value could not be determined, this field contained an O. Field 2 gives a specification of field 1. If the utterance was modal, the kind of modality was specified: The coding ‘nes’ for necessity and ‘pos’ for possibility. After the colon, additional information was given as to whether the utterance was desiderative and expressed a wish (‘des’), was regulating and expressed a command (‘reg’) or expressed a capacity (‘cap’). If the utterance was nonmodal, the completedness (‘c’), ongoingness (‘o’) or prospectiveness (‘p’) of the event expressed in the utterance was determined. If this value was unclear, the utterance was assigned a ‘u’ in this field. Field 3 gives information about the verb form (this was a while range of codes for root infinitives, simple finite verb, periphrastic verbs, modal verbs, copula, etc.). (1)
*PET: %mod: %par: *MOT: *MOT: *MOT:
%act: (2)
*LAU: %mod: *LAU: *LAU: %mod:
Peter woef hebben Peter dog have $MDY $nes:des $RI on the verge of crying o wil je even je +... want you part you wil je even je woef hebben ? want you part your dog have ‘Do you want to have your dog?’
kisses PET . die s pakke (= plakken), hoor that glue interjection $N $o $RI die that pakke [= plakken] glue $N $o $RI
Peter 2;00.28
124 Appendix *MOT: *MOT:
(3)
*MAT: *MOT:
*MAT: %mod: *MOT:
*MAT: *MOT:
is dat plakken ["] ? is that glueing? ben je daarmee aan het plakken? are you therewith on the glue ‘Are you glueing with that?’
Laura 2;05.17
mama ! wat is er ? what is there ‘What's wrong?’ Ieke spugen ! Ieke throw up $N $c $RI ging Ieke spugen ? went Ieke throw up ‘Did Ieke throw up?’ ja . Yes oh, getsie oh yuk
Matthijs 1;11.24
Appendix 125
Appendix 4: Permutation test A notorious problem with young children’s linguistic data is that it is difficult to apply statistics: The data are often sparse, and it cannot be determined whether they are normally distributed. To test if the developmental differences and differences between groups as they visually present themselves are statistically significant, we applied a permutation test (Good 1999). This procedure does not make any assumptions on the distribution of the data. We will illustrate the permutation test both for comparisons between stages and between groups, starting with the first type of comparison. The aim is to estimate to what extent the observed differences between the stages are due to chance. In order to do this, the first step is of course to spell out the null hypothesis (“there is no difference between the stages”). More specifically, in the case of the modal shift, the null hypothesis is that there is no difference between stage II and stages III and IV; the results from stage II, on the one hand, and stages III and IV, on the other hand, are drawn from one single distribution. In the case of subject drop, the null hypothesis states that there is no difference between stage III, on the one hand, and stages II and IV, on the other. Then, the null hypothesis will be simulated by randomly shuffling the observations per child over the different stages; recall that there is no difference between the stages, hence this random distribution is the distribution given the null hypothesis. We can now calculate the expected difference if all stages were similar. For the modal shift, the relevant difference is between the proportion of modal root infinitives in stage II and the proportion of modal root infinitives in stages III/IV. For subject drop, the relevant difference is that between the proportion of subject drop in stage II/IV and the proportion of subject drop in stage III. As we are interested in differences between stages and not in differences between children, we will calculate the average difference of the six children in both cases. The above procedure gives us the average simulated difference between the stages given the null hypothesis. In addition, the average observed difference is calculated. This means that for each child the difference between the proportion of modal use in stage II and stages III/IV is calculated. The same procedure is applied to the proportions of subject drop in stages II/IV and stage III. As before, the average difference over the sample of six children will be estimated. We now have two values: A simulated average difference that is expected given the null hypothesis and an observed aver-
126 Appendix age difference. Since the number of all possible permutations and combinations for the six children is very big, we approximate the distribution of the differences based on chance by randomly shuffling the observed proportions 1000 times (or 5000, or more), which provides 1000 values (or 5000, or more) for the test statistic based on chance (Monte Carlo simulation). By counting the number of chance differences that are equal to or bigger than the observed difference, a very close approximation of the probability is obtained that the observed values are based on chance. This probability is the p-value. The p-value can be interpreted as follows. If the value is very small (say lower than a criterion value of 0.05), we consider it very unlikely that the stages are in fact one undifferentiated stage as far as meaning or subject drop is concerned. The null hypothesis is not confirmed; the alternative hypothesis provides a model that fits the observations better. The conclusion is that the changes over time are statistically significant patterns that have to be explained. If the p-value is very big (e.g. p > 0.95), chance will lead to a difference that is bigger than the observed difference in most of the cases. Thus, the difference is much smaller than would be expected on the basis of chance alone. This case is the opposite of the first (i.e. the small p-values). What about group differences? Imagine that we want to know whether Japanese children like round shapes more than English children do. In order to test whether or not there is a difference between children from the two groups, a simple experimental setting is designed and 12 Japanese and 12 English children are tested. The experiment contained 10 test items: Each item consisted of two forms, a round form and a square form, and each child had to choose between the two forms. In Table 3 on the next page the results are given as the proportion of round preferences (number of test items divided by number of round forms that were chosen). The null hypothesis states that there is no difference between Japanese and English children. Another way of putting this is to say that the relation between a particular preference and being Japanese or English is completely accidental. That is, any combination between a particular preference and a nationality (Japanese or English) is just as good as any other. Any such combination will result in a particular average preference for the Japanese and an average preference for the English children. These averages will of course differ, but each of these differences will be accidental.
Appendix 127
Table 3. Results of an imaginary experiment on the preference for round or square shapes with Japanese and English children, mean and standard deviation Subject 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 M SD
Proportion preferences for round shapes in Japanese 0.6 1 0.5 1 0.7 0.9 0.6 0.5 0.8 0.3 0.6 0.5 0.67 0.22
Proportion preferences for round shapes in English 0.2 0.1 0.6 0.4 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.5 1 0.3 0.1 0 0.37 0.27
For differences to be meaningful and to reflect a real distinction between Japanese and English children, it should be bigger than the differences that result from the arbitrary combinations of preferences with nationality labels. In practice, the difference is said to be meaningful if it is bigger than the great majority of such accidental differences (usually set to at least 95%). We will go briefly over the statistical procedure once more. First, the preferences are combined into one group. Secondly, we randomly shuffle the position of the preferences, like randomly shuffling a deck of cards. Third, we assign the first half of the randomly shuffled preferences to the Japanese, the second half to the English group. Fourth, the preferences of the Japanese and the English group are calculated and the difference between these preferences is determined (Japanese difference minus English preference). Fifth, the procedure is repeated many times (1000 or 5000). Sixth, we count the number of times that this difference is bigger than or as big as the difference that we observed in our experiment and divide this by the number of repetitions (1000 or 5000). This results in the p-value, the estimation of the probability that the observed difference is due to chance. This procedure results in p = 0.004, which is clearly below 0.05. We can conclude that the English and Japanese children come from different groups as far as the preference for round shapes is concerned. The Japa-
128 Appendix nese children show a greater preference for round shapes than English children do. Besides the difference between Japanese and English children, the data in Table 3 can also be used to test whether the Japanese children (or English children) show a preference for round shapes (or for square forms). The null hypothesis can be simulated by randomly distributing the proportions of round and square shapes in Table 4 for each child: We observed that child 1 had a proportion of 0.6 preference for round shapes. However, given the null hypothesis, the chance that the preference for square shapes is also 0.6, is large; there is no preference for either the one or the other. In order to simulate the random distribution that is expected under the null hypothesis, the results in Table 4 are shuffled for each child. Table 4. Results of imaginary experiment, proportions of preferences for round and square shapes of Japanese children Subject 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Sum
Proportions of preferences for round shapes 0.6 1 0.5 1 0.7 0.9 0.6 0.5 0.8 0.3 0.6 0.5 8
Proportions of preferences for square shapes 0.4 0 0.5 0 0.3 0.1 0.4 0.5 0.2 0.7 0.4 0.5 4
The sum of the proportion of preferences for round shapes of all children is calculated; the same procedure is applied to preferences for square shapes and then the difference between these two sums is calculated. This value is calculated 1000 times. When the observed difference is compared to the chance distribution, the probability that our observed difference is found by chance is 0.017. This is below the 0.05, hence the difference is statistically significant: The Japanese children choose more often round forms than square forms. If we follow the same procedure for English, an extreme p-value of 0.96 is obtained. Based on this, we can conclude that the Eng-
Appendix 129
lish children do not show a preference for either round or square forms. However, the difference is much smaller than should be expected on the basis of chance alone. How to interpret this unexpected high p-value? We have now tested for a preference of round as compared to square. However, if we had tested for the reverse, that is, for a preference for square shapes as compared to round shapes, the outcome for English would have been 1 0.96 = 0.04 (and for Japanese 1 - 0.017 = 0.983). The conclusion of this test would be that the English children show a preference for square forms, whereas the Japanese children show no preference. The general rule with regard to the extreme values of p is that if p < 0.05 the null hypothesis is confirmed. If p > 0.95 there is support for the hypothesis that states the opposite.
130 Appendix Appendix 5: Jack knife method To what extent can the collapsed results of a group of six children be generalized? The Jack knife method can be used to determine if the obtained p-value for the total sample of children is influenced by the deviating results of one particular child. A simple example will illustrate the technique. Imagine a study in which cultural differences between children's preferences for certain shapes are examined. Assume that Japanese children prefer round forms; we want to know whether or not this preference for round forms within Japanese children develops over time. Four children are tested at the age of 1, 2 and 3 years old to find out if a change occurs and if the preference for round shapes is stronger at an older age than at a younger age. The results in Table 5 suggest a change in preference between the age of two and three. In order to test if this difference is statistically significant, the results from the ages 1/2 are compared to the results from age 3. Table 5. Imaginary results of longitudinal study of preferences for round shapes of four Japanese children at the ages of 1, 2 and 3 Age 1 2 3
Child A 0.3 0.2 0.7
Child B 0.6 0.1 0.9
Child C 0.1 0.3 0.8
Child D 0.4 0 0.7
Average 0.35 0.15 0.78
The null hypothesis states that there is no significant difference between the average preference for round shapes of the four children at the ages 1/2 and the average preference of these four children at the age of 3. With the help of a simulation of the null hypothesis, a p-value of 0.047 is obtained that the observed difference between average preferences for round shapes at the ages 1/2 is drawn from the same distribution as the average preference at the age of 3. Though the difference is not highly significant, it is just below the significance level of p = 0.05. Hence, it can be concluded that there is a change over time. It may be that this value is due to one individual participant, however. This may happen especially since so few children are followed and the results are sparse. To test this, the probability is recalculated four times, each time the results of one particular child are omitted: First Child A is left out and only Child B, C and D are included, then Child B is left out
Appendix 131
and only child A, C and D are included, etcetera. The results are given below: Table 6. Probabilities that the observed average difference between preferences for round shapes at the ages of 1/2 and at the age of 3 is due to chance. The probabilities are calculated over the entire group of four children and over 4 groups of three children, with one specific child omitted at a time All children Omitted child Child A Child B Child C Child D
p-value 0.047 0.041 0.045 0.061 0.037
In most cases, p is still fairly low, i.e. below the criterion value (of 0.05). In one case, i.e. when child C is omitted, the p value is slightly above 0.05. As this is only slightly above the critical value, it is not the case that the data from one particular child influence the obtained p value for the total sample of four children disproportionally. It seems that we can generalize over the children and conclude that the preference for round shapes of Japanese children develops over time. This development occurs when the children are between two and three years old.
132 Appendix Appendix 6: Verb constructions per stage Table 7. Numbers of root infinitives, sentences with simple finite (main) verbs, and finite sentences with periphrastic verbs used to describe ongoing and modal events. Individual data (corresponding to Figures 1a-l, Chapter 4) Abel I II III IV Daan I II III IV Josse I II III IV Laura I II III IV Matthijs I II III IV Peter I II III IV
Root infinitive Modal Ongoing n.a. n.a 14 10 57 7 20 12 Root infinitive Modal Ongoing 0 4 31 14 40 7 44 17 Root infinitive Modal Ongoing n.a. n.a. 44 40 55 11 51 5 Root infinitive Modal Ongoing 2 13 31 13 129 72 38 16 Root infinitive Modal Ongoing 16 15 66 23 77 9 40 8 Root infinitive Modal Ongoing 26 0 70 27 44 10 17 12
Simple finite verb Modal Ongoing n.a n.a. 0 10 7 31 9 82 Simple finite verb Modal Ongoing 0 0 1 23 12 76 24 153 Simple finite verb Modal Ongoing n.a. n.a. 5 2 0 17 9 108 Simple finite verb Modal Ongoing 0 2 0 8 3 33 13 101 Simple finite verb Modal Ongoing 3 0 0 0 12 9 10 116 Simple finite verb Modal Ongoing 0 0 0 1 3 57 7 361
Periphrastic verb Modal Ongoing n.a. n.a. 0 0 15 0 53 11 Periphrastic verb Modal Ongoing 0 0 1 0 17 6 74 10 Periphrastic verb Modal Ongoing n.a. n.a. 0 0 3 1 87 17 Periphrastic verb Modal Ongoing 0 0 4 1 30 25 68 28 Periphrastic verb Modal Ongoing 0 0 0 0 11 5 117 16 Periphrastic verb Modal Ongoing 0 0 0 0 9 6 23 53
Appendix 133
Appendix 7: Experimental material This appendix contains a screenshot of the ongoing and modal condition of the action of washing, and four experimental stories. Ongoing Washing
Modal Washing
Dutch: Dit is het filmpje over een vies varkentje. Het vieze varkentje staat naast het bad. Kijk! Het varkentje springt in bad. Wat doet hij? Hij wast en wast en wast zichzelf totdat hij helemaal schoon is en alle modder weg is. Het varkentje wast zich in bad.
Dutch: Dit is een filmpje over een klein vies hondje dat heel erg veel honger heeft. Hij wil graag naar binnen gaan om te eten. Maar, het hondje mag niet naar binnen, want hij is veel te vies. Eerst moet het hondje zich wassen. Kijk eens hoe vies hij is! Wat is daar, voor het huis? Een badje. Het hondje moet zich in bad wassen. English: This is the movie of the dirty little dog that is very very hungry. He wants to go into the house to eat. But the doggy is much too dirty to go into the house. First, the doggy has to wash himself. Look how dirty he is! What’s that, in front of the house? It is a bath. The doggy has to wash himself in the bath tub.
English: This is the movie of the dirty pig. The little piggy is standing next to the bath tub. See! The piggy jumps into the bath tub. What does he do? He is washing and washing and washing. He washes himself until he is completely clean, and all mud is gone. The piggy washes himself in the bath tub.
134 Appendix Ongoing Running Dutch: Hier is een meisje. Het meisje heet Lisa. Lisa is aan het rennen. Zij rent naar huis omdat het regent. Kijk eens hoe ze rent. Ze rent heel hard.
English: Here is a little girl. She is called Lisa. Lisa is running. She is running home because it is raining. Look how Lisa runs. She is running very fast.
Ongoing Drinking Dutch: Dit is Peter. Peter zit aan tafel. Hij heeft voor zich een groot glas limonade. Zie je hoe hij zijn glas pakt? Peter drinkt de limonade. Hij drinkt en drinkt tot zijn glas helemaal leeg is. English: Here is Peter. Peter is sitting at the table. He has a big glass of lemonade. See how he picks up his glass. Peter is drinking the lemonade. He drinks, drinks, drinks until his glass is empty. Ongoing Calling Dutch: Billie heeft een telefoon en hij is zijn vriend aan het bellen. Hij praat en praat en praat maar door. Zie je hoe Billie zijn vriend belt?
Modal Running Dutch: Dit is de film over het jongetje dat weg moet rennen. Kijk eens, dit is Jan. Kijk eens hoe Jan op straat aan het spelen is. Hij gooit de bal hoog in de lucht, en dan vangt hij hem weer op. Zie je? Maar Jan is erg dom, want het is gevaarlijk om op straat te spelen. Oh jee! Wat gebeurt er! Daar komt een auto. En nu? Jan moet hard weg rennen. English: This is the movie of the little boy who has to run away. Look, this is John. Look how John is playing on the street. He throws the ball high up in the air. And then he catches it again. You see? But John is very silly. It is dangerous on the street. Oh oh! See what happens! A car is coming! And now? He has to run away very fast. Modal Drinking Dutch: Dit is het verhaal over het kleine meisje Julia dat erge dorst heeft. Julia wil erg graag wat drinken maar haar glas is helemaal leeg. Zie je het glas in haar hand? Zie je dat haar glas leeg is? Julia gaat naar haar moeder en houdt haar lege glas omhoog: Ze wil drinken. English: This is the story about a little girl Julia who is very thirsty. Julia really wants to drink, but her glass is empty. Do you see how she is holding the glass? Do you see that her glass is empty? Now Julia goes to her mother and holds up her empty glass: She wants to drink. Modal Calling Dutch: Dit is het verhaal over Sophie die haar oma wil bellen. Sophie’s oma is vandaag jarig. Kijk, daar is Sophie. Ze zit op de vloer. En daar is de telefoon. Sophie probeert de telefoon te pakken. Ze wil haar oma bellen.
Appendix 135
English: Billy has a telephone and he is calling his friend. He talks and talks and talks for a long time. Do you see how Billy calls his friend?
English: This is the story of Sophie who wants to call her grandmother. Sophie’s granny has her birthday today. Look, there is Sophie. She is sitting on the floor. There is the telephone. Sophie tries to reach the phone. She wants to call her granny.
136 Appendix Appendix 8: Verb constructions (experimental data) Table 8. Verb constructions per condition; Dutch-speaking children (n = 26) Form; examples (4)
Total (n)
Root infinitive Simple finite verb Periphrastic verb Prepositional infinitival complement (PIC)
149 487 216 8
Modal condition (n = 298) N % 101 34 42 14 155 52 0 0
Ongoing condition (n = 562) N % 48 9 445 79 61 11 8 1
Table 9. Verb constructions per condition; English-speaking children (n = 29)
(4)
Form; examples (5)
Total (n)
Root infinitive Simple finite verb Periphrastic verb Finite participle Root participle
162 79 153 201 87
a. b.
c. d.
(5)
a. b. c. d. e.
Modal condition (n = 243) N % 71 29 14 6 134 55 13 5 11 5
Ongoing condition (n = 440) N % 91 21 65 15 19 4 188 43 76 17
Het meisje rennen. root infinitive the girl run-inf Het meisje rent. simple finite verb the girl run-fin ‘The girl is running’ Het meisje moet/wil/gaat rennen. periphrastic verb the girl must/wants to/goes run-inf Het meisje is aan het rennen. PIC the girl is on the run-inf The girl run. root infinitive The girl runs. simple finite verb The girl has to/wants to/is going to run. periphrastic verb The girl is running. finite participle The girl running. root participle
Appendix 137
Appendix 9: Finite verb types in stage I/II States Modal: Prospective: Position: Perception: Copula: Other:
Kan ‘can’, mag ‘may’, moet ‘must’, wil ‘wants’ Gaat ‘go’, komt ‘comes’ Lig ‘lie’, zit ‘sit’ Hoor ‘hear’, zie ‘see’ Is ‘is’ Heet ‘is called’, past ‘fit’
Events -
Eet ‘eat’, springt ‘jump’, zingt ‘sings’
138 Appendix Appendix 10: Coding subjects In appendix 3 we described the coding system for modality. Each root infinitive was in addition provided with a code for person of the subject (F(irst), S(econd) or T(hird)), number of the subject (S(ingular) or P(lural)) and overtness of the subject (O(overt) or N(ull)). In (6) and (7) some examples are given with a first person singular overt subject and a null subject respectively: (6)
*ABE:
%mod: (7)
*LAU:
%mod:
ik een hand tekenen I a hand draw ‘I am drawing a hand’ $FSO $N $o $RI
Abel 2;07.15
oto niet neezette car not downput ‘don’t put the car down’ $FSN $N $o $RI
Laura 2;06.10
Appendix 139
Appendix 11: Null subjects Table 10. Null subjects (NS) in root infinitives (RI), raw numbers
I II III IV
Abel RI NS 33 31 84 73 42 35
Daan RI NS 5 5 54 50 52 37 71 58
Josse RI NS 99 94 76 56 64 55
Laura RI NS 18 18 56 36 276 201 65 55
Matthijs RI NS 40 40 127 113 112 85 51 46
Peter RI NS 26 26 114 69 57 22 29 22
Table 11. Empty subjects in finite sentences (FIN), raw numbers
I II III IV
Abel Daan Josse FIN NS FIN NS FIN NS 2 0 10 0 47 14 11 10 197 97 247 50 98 62 285 85 599 92 445 152
Laura FIN NS 4 3 27 8 349 103 373 87
Matthijs FIN NS 9 9 5 5 99 50 568 139
Peter FIN NS 0 0 3 3 97 17 630 41
Notes
1 A syntactic difference is that Tense is located at a high position in the syntactic structure, typically at the level of the Complementizer Phrase. Tense takes scope over the entire proposition expressed in a sentence, that is, subject as well as predicate. Aspect is related to the level of the Verb Phrase. 2 This analysis holds for main clauses. In embedded clauses, the Complementizer position is filled, which blocks movement. The result is that the verb stays in its final base position. 3 In such accounts the idea of invariable V-to-C movement has been abandoned, for instance (Koeneman 2000). The traditional minimalist analysis of Dutch verb placement can be found in Zwart (1997). 4 A problem of the empirical criticism is that both the absence of topicalization facts and WH words in root infinitives can be analyzed as effects of development: Topicalization as well as WH words may surface in root infinitives and not in finite sentences, because root infinitives are acquired before finite sentences come in. Empirical testing of the (Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis would require the analysis of longitudinal data so more can be said about the patterns that emerge over time. 5 Wexler assumed that optionality only occurs if two derivations are equally costly. Therefore, in finite sentences, as well as root infinitives, the verb must move. 6 In the original PRO theorem, PRO is a pronominal anaphor (Chomsky 1981). Alternative accounts have been proposed. It is argued that PRO is a pure anaphor, a pure pronoun or sometimes anaphor/sometimes pronoun. We will not go into the details of this discussion here. 7 One could also hypothesise that the child has different grammars: One with CP = root, one with TP = root and one with CP = root. The difference between this idea and Rizzi's formulation is purely conceptual. Formally, there is no difference between a single grammar that contains the unspecified rule or three coexisting grammars with specified rules. 8 Weissenborn (1994: 216) formulated the Local Well-Formedness Constraint, which requires that the representation of any utterance of the child is locally wellformed with respect to a representation of the adult grammar. According to this view, it is not necessarily top nodes that can be dropped. 9 Comrie (1976: 48) suggests that events, but not states, require an input of energy for the maintenance of the eventuality. Pustejovsky (1991: 56) describes a state as “a single event, which is evaluated relative to no other event”.
Notes 141
10 Most individual-level predicates are stative and most stage-level predicates are eventive, but there are stage-level stative predicates. Dowty (1979) gives the following examples: (i) a. New Orleans lies at the mouth of the Mississippi River. b. ?? New Orleans is lying at the mouth of the Mississippi River. (ii) a. My socks are lying under the bed. b. ?? My socks lie under the bed. 11 Gavruseva assumes the proposal on tense chains in Gueron and Hoekstra (1994). The syntactic licensing condition on tense chains is added by Gavruseva (2001). 12 Wijnen (1997) (see also: Schönenberger et al. 1995; Schütze 1997) proposes that the modality of root infinitives is the direct effect of absence of Tense. The modal interpretation is the unanchored reading that follows if tense cannot be grammatically bound. 13 See, for a rather similar formalization of the Dutch indicative paradigm, Wexler, Schaeffer and Bol (2004). 14 Or consult the following internet address: 15 Note that though the overall number is low, this number must be seen in relation to the number of times that children talk about completed events in general. 16 Does the observation that gaan + infinitive denotes both modal and nonmodal meanings imply that this verb construction is morphosyntactically similar to a root infinitive? Not necessarily. Unlike the infinitive, the auxiliary may function as a marker of subject-verb agreement, and thus be marked for φ-features. The prediction would then be that clauses containing gaan + infinitive do contain overt subjects. To our knowledge, this has not been investigated yet. 17 We prefer to use the notion ‘activation’ here instead of ‘underspecification’, restricting the use of the latter notion to underspecification in the lexicon. 18 Pater and Barlow (2003) argue with respect to onset cluster reduction for “sonority-based onset selection” in which the least sonorous segment of the target cluster is preserved. If the same would apply to coda cluster reduction, it would be expected that drop of the suffix –t does not happen if the verb stem ends on a vowel, glide, liquid, nasal or fricative because these are all more sonorous than the /t/, which is a stop (Blevins 1995). Influence of the sonority scale on cluster reduction is still an issue of ongoing debate, however (Van der Pas 2004). 19 Recent psycholinguistic work has shown that the information load of lexical items - calculated on the basis of the amount of information derived from the average frequency per syntactic function/meaning for a given form within a given paradigm -, forms a good predictor for lexical access (Moscoso del Prado Martín, Kostic, and Baayen 2004). If information load explains children’s selec-
142 Notes
20
21 22
23 24
25
26
tion of finite bare verbs in contexts that require a morphological finiteness marker, it is expected that quantitative analysis of spoken Dutch will show that bare verbs have a higher information load than verbs ending with the suffixes –t or -en. It is beyond the scope of this book to investigate which analysis of ungrammatical finite bare verbs is most supported by the data. If the sonority scale influences phonological drop we would expect heet instead of heef, because in the cluster /ft/ the /t/ is less sonorous than the /f/; hence the /t/ would be preserved (see ft. 17). Inclusion of complex verb phases headed by a finite verb in the child analysis does not make a difference: 130 infinitival states/2375 = 5%. Vendler 1967 (106) gave the following definitions: “For activities: A was running at time t means that time instant t is on a time stretch in which A was running. For accomplishments: A was drawing a circle at t means that t is on the time stretch in which A drew that circle. For achievements: A won a race between t1 and t2 means the time instant at which A won the race is between t1 and t2. For states: A loved somebody from t1 to t2 means that at any instant between t1 and t2 A loved person” We distinguished between the copula be (‘he is mad’) and the verb of location be (‘he is at home’). Note that it does not have to be finite inflectional morphology but that other types of verb inflection may be important as well. In English, progressive inflection may be crucial, for example. This premise is not restricted to (inflectional) morphology and lexemes only but can also be applied to larger units such as words in a sentence. The larger units are in the literature referred to as ‘constructions’ that are listed together in a ‘constructicon’ (Tomasello 2003; Goldberg 2006). One relevant proposal may be the Less-is-More Hypothesis, according to which children are exceptionally good at learning morphology because of their relatively small working memory (Elman 1993; Goldowsky and Newport 1992). The corollary of this hypothesis is that late learners, who are not forced to perceive, remember and use only small pieces in the input, are worse at learning morphology than children are.
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Index
(Modal) Auxiliary Drop Hypothesis, 12–14, 79, 110 addressee, 68, 70 Agreement and Tense Omission Model, 20–22, 64, 108–9 aspectual verbs, 84 auxiliary deontic modal, 24 dummy, 51, 52 modal, 12–14, 15, 73, 88 silent, 12–14 bare verb, 26, 39, 46, 61–66, 78–81, 103 beliefs. See epistemic modality bootstrapping distributional, 89, 95 semantic, 16, 86 boulemaic modality. See dynamic modality circumstantial modality. See deontic modality cluster reduction, 79, 81 cognitive development, 36–37, 68, 110 commands. See deontic modality completed aspect, 47–49 copula, 84, 88 corpus statistics, 85 Danish, 26 default form morphosyntactic, 30, 40, 47, 79, 102, 107 phonological, 79 deictic binding, 20, 25 deontic modality, 12, 26–27, 68
desire. See dynamic modality Distributed Morphology, 88, 91, 113 do-support, 51, 52 dynamic modality, 14, 26–27, 68 dynamicity, 12, 15, 24, 87 Early Morphosyntactic Convergence Hypothesis, 38–41, 65, 107, 110 elicited production task, 74 elsewhere form. See default, morphosyntactic Elsewhere Principle, 30–31, 40, 52, 81, 103, 119 embedded clause, 113 empty subjects. See subjects English, 8, 19, 21, 26, 39, 66, 61–67, 71–76, 103 epistemic modality, 12, 26–27 errors case, 21 mapping, 91 segmentation, 91, 100 subject-verb agreement, 43, 80, 92, 118 Extended Projection Principle, 21 French, 13, 18, 24, 26 Full Grammatical Competence Hypothesis, 18–23 future tense, 12, 50, 51 German, 11, 13, 16, 19, 26, 43, 46, 66, 103 Greek, 117 habituality, 51 Head Turn Paradigm, 118 Hebrew, 19
Index 161
imperative, 87, 117 inchoative aspect, 12, 51 input frequency, 53, 86–88, 103, 106, 107, 117 saliency, 53, 117 intention. See dynamic modality irrealis, 27, 38 Italian, 19, 117 Jack knife technique, 53, 99 maturation, 9–10, 36, 110 methodology, 72, 109–11 modal shift, 53, 52–59, 95, 103 modality, 26–27, 45, 50, 66–71, 74, 84, 106 No Overlap Hypothesis, 15–16, 23, 83, 107 Norwegian, 26 null constant, 23 null subject languages, 19, 117 null subjects. See subjects obligation. See deontic modality ongoing. See present tense Optional Infinitive Hypothesis, 16– 17, 83, 106 overt subjects. See subjects paradigm generalized, 90 word-specific, 89 paradigmatic variation, 90 participle bare, 48, 117 past, 47 past tense, 45, 47 perception verbs, 87 permission. See deontic modality permutation test, 53, 76 picture-matching task, 73
Polish, 20, 26 position verbs, 87 pragmatic development, 20 predicate event-denoting, 12, 24, 25, 27, 39, 87 individual-level, 24, 25 stage-level, 24, 25 state-denoting, 12, 24, 39, 87 prepositional infinitival complement, 51 present tense, 24, 25, 38, 45, 47, 51, 74, 106 pro, 96 PRO, 20, 96, 108 processing, 80, 118 progressive aspect, 14, 51, 73, 87 psych verbs, 87 Reduced Grammatical Competence Hypothesis, 9 requirement. See deontic modality root modality. See deontic modality root participle. See participle, bare Root Principle, 22 Russian, 20, 26 second language acquisition, 61, 111–16 Separation Hypothesis, 29 Spanish, 19 speaker, 68, 70 subject, 13, 20–22, 23, 68, 101 subject-verb agreement, 17, 19, 90, 102 subject-verb inversion, 6, 11, 100, 114 Subset Principle, 30–31, 40 Swedish, 13, 26 telicity, 25 Theory of Mind, 36, 68 topicalization, 6, 13, 17
162 Index truncation phonological, 79, 81 syntactic, 22–23 underspecification lexical, 30, 39, 40, 47, 52, 79, 102, 107 syntactic, 12, 18–23, 24–26
U-shaped curve, 99, 106, 107 verbs of existence, 87 verbs of possession, 87 vocabulary items, 30 volition. See dynamic modality wish. See dynamic modality
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