Issue
description
Transcript of Issue
![Page 1: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
04/22/23 1
Issue
• Claim: acquisition of discourse integration is an extended process
• Even up to 6 yrs of age children may fail in correct discourse-linking:– Pronouns– Definite articles– Tense
(Karmiloff-Smith 1981; Avrutin 1999; & others)
![Page 2: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
04/22/23 2
But…
• In ordinary everyday language use, children do no seem to have much trouble with phrases that rely on discourse integration, notably ellipses, neither in production nor comprehension.
![Page 3: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
04/22/23 3
Examples (Sarah corpus)
*CHI: I drink it all up .*CHI: give me some more .*CHI: a lot .*MOT: I don't see any more .*CHI: yes you do .*MOT: want a little milk ?*MOT: want some ?*CHI: (a)n(d) shake it all up .*CHI: a bigger one ?*MOT: mmhm .
![Page 4: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
04/22/23 4
Question
• How do children understand such expressions?
![Page 5: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
04/22/23 5
Proposals
1. Heavy reliance on discourse context (nonverbal and visual information)• discourse context dominates syntax
2. Children are in fact capable of reconstructing ellipsis• syntax dominates discourse context
![Page 6: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
04/22/23 6
Our hypothesis
• Ellipsis reconstruction, and, hence, discourse linking through ellipsis, is a very early attainment in language acquisition.
• Reason: ellipsis reconstruction depends on syntactic configuration (in contrast to discourse anaphors such as pronominals and determiners).
• Syntax is (very) early and can support the interpretation of ellipsis.
![Page 7: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
04/22/23 7
Hypothesis:
The acquisition of ellipsis should simply follow in the footsteps of the initial acquisition of grammar. As each new level is constructed, the child can construct a parallel level in silence.
![Page 8: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
04/22/23 8
Aims
• To show that children understand ellipsis at an early age
• To show that they do so by linguistic reconstruction, not deixis or, more generally, reliance on (nonverbal) context.
![Page 9: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
04/22/23 9
Means
• Three experiments probing children’s understanding of nominal ellipsis1. preferential looking (English)
[NP some ___ ]2. Sentence-picture matching task (English and
Dutch) [NP two ___ ]
3. Truth-value judgment task (Dutch) [NP two ___ ] & effect of there-insertion
![Page 10: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
04/22/23 10
Experiment 1(Jones, Hirsh-Pasek & Roeper, in preparation)
• Can young children infer the object of noun phrase ellipsis?
• Subjects: 18 3-year-olds, range = 36.00 - 46.99 months, M = 40.78
• Procedure:– Two labeled transitive action sequences, each
followed by one test trial– Participants asked to point to the video clip best
representing the noun phrase elliptical sentence.• Conditions counterbalanced for target order
![Page 11: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
04/22/23 11
“John has socks”
“Kate is cooking pancakes.”
Can you find: “John wants to eat some.”
Can you find: “John wants some.”
![Page 12: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
04/22/23 12
Experiment 1: Results
• Initial analyses show that 3-year-olds pointed to the target action 77.78% of the time, a result significantly different from chance, t(17) = 3.82, p = .001.
• No effects of gender or target order.• Tentative conclusion:
3-year-olds reconstruct the missing element in the elliptic expression ‘some __’.
![Page 13: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
04/22/23 13
Experiment 2(Wijnen, Roeper & Van der Meulen, 2004)
• Participants:a. 28 American English-speaking children; mean
age 53.6 months (4:6, range 40-69)b. 47 Dutch-speaking children, mean age 41.5
months (3;6, range 28-57)• Task: sentence-picture verification• Materials
– 15 short stories, ending in pertinent questions, combined with different pictures
![Page 14: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
04/22/23 14
(introductory phrases)Some kids are playing in the sandbox.Are two upside down?
kids = argumentIn the sandbox = adjunct
Control Adjunct mism.
Arg+Adj mism.
![Page 15: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
04/22/23 15
Reconstruction
Some kids are playing in the sandbox.Are two upside down?
Two = two [kids]ARG [in the sandbox]ADJ
![Page 16: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
04/22/23 16
Experiment 2 - Results
0102030405060708090
100
Control Adj mismatch A+A mismatch
EnglishDutch
![Page 17: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/17.jpg)
04/22/23 17
Experiment 2 - conclusion
• Results indicate adequate discourse integration.
• Reconstruction appears to take place (cf. difference control/mismatch conditions)– This is syntactic integration
• Question:Difference Eng-Du ~ related to “er/there”?
![Page 18: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/18.jpg)
04/22/23 18
There ~ Er
• Eng: Some kids are in the sandbox.Are two upside down?
• Du: Er spelen kinderen in de zandbak.Staan er twee op hun kop?
• function of er~there:– expletive/existential, or contrastive– contrastive ‘there’ the bare cardinal will be
taken to denote a parallel (contrast) set, I.e., “two girls somewhere else”
– possibly: contrastive function is acquired earlier than expletive/existential function
![Page 19: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/19.jpg)
04/22/23 19
Experiment 3
• Aims– Replicate previous results with a better design and
slightly different procedure.– Test the er/there-effect without the language
confound.
![Page 20: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/20.jpg)
04/22/23 20
Experiment 3 - method
• Participants: 26 Dutch-speaking children, mean age 4;6 (range 3-6)
• Procedure:– Truth-value judgment (sentence-picture
verification); children were instructed to help a girl robot ‘learn to speak’
• Materials:– 12 stories, paired with different pictures to
instantiate 4 conditions.
![Page 21: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/21.jpg)
04/22/23 21
Control Arg mismatch
Adj mismatch A+A mismatch
Drie jongens spelen in de zandbak, en twee zitten [ER] op een emmertje.
Control Arg. mismatch
Adj. mismatch Arg. + Adj. Mm
![Page 22: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/22.jpg)
04/22/23 22
Experiment 3: expectations
• Control– –ER : yes
+ER: mixed (both subset [full reconstruction] and parallel set [no adj reconstr] reading are o.k.)
• Argument mismatch– no, both in +ER and –ER
• Adjunct mismatch– –ER no
+ER mixed (yes certainly possible)• A+A mismatch
– no, both in +ER and –ER‘yes’ only possible through deixis: ‘two [anything] [anywhere]’
![Page 23: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/23.jpg)
04/22/23 23
Experiment 3: results
• 5+ year-olds have a very strong preference for ‘yes’ answers across the board
• we present results of 3-4 yr. olds only
![Page 24: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/24.jpg)
04/22/23 24
Experiment 3: Results –ER
0102030405060708090
100
Control Argmismatch
Adjmismatch
A+Amismatch
% yes
![Page 25: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/25.jpg)
04/22/23 25
Experiment 3 Summary of –ER results
• ‘yes’ preference is quite strong (task effect?)• Control vs. Arg+Adj-mismatch
– Clear difference as expected• Control vs. Adjunct mismatch
– smaller difference• Control vs. Argument mismatch
– Hardly any difference possibly a materials artefact
![Page 26: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/26.jpg)
04/22/23 26
Experiment 3: Results +ER
0102030405060708090
100
Control Argmismatch
Adjmismatch
A+Amismatch
% yes
![Page 27: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/27.jpg)
04/22/23 27
Experiment 3Summary of +ER results
• Control vs. Adjunct mismatch– in line with expectation; ‘er’ makes ‘parallel’
interpration (i.e., contrast) more acceptable, and suppresses the acceptability of full reconstruction interpretation
• Control vs. A+A mismatch– as expected
• Control vs. Argument mismatch– unexpected; possibly a materials artefact
![Page 28: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/28.jpg)
04/22/23 28
Experiment 3: –ER vs +ER
0102030405060708090
100
control Argmismatch
Adjmismatch
A+Amismatch
-ER+ER
![Page 29: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/29.jpg)
04/22/23 29
Experiment 3 - Conclusion
• Control–A+A-mismatch difference supports the idea that children reconstruct.
• But the difference between Control and partial mismatch conditions is less clearcut.– arg.mismatch results may be artefactual.
• The effect of +/-ER is marked – including ‘er’ renders the full reconstruction interpretation (control cond.) less acceptable, and favors contrastive interpretations.
![Page 30: Issue](https://reader036.fdocuments.us/reader036/viewer/2022062501/56816330550346895dd3b09e/html5/thumbnails/30.jpg)
04/22/23 30
General conclusions
• Results suggest that children are capable of reconstruction.
• However, the percentage ‘yes’ responses does not drop to zero in the (partial) mismatch conditions ‘deictic leakage’
• Young children are sensitive to the interpretive effects of er/there.– There is (predominantly) contrastive (cf. differences between
younger and older children). It blocks syntactic reconstruction of the original locative. This corroborates our syntactic reconstruction account.