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EGH215 Weeks 6-11 - Coggle Diagram
EGH215 Weeks 6-11
7 Root infinitives
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Non-finite verb forms: do not mark tense or person/number; not anchored in time e.g. I want Jane to cook pasta
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RIs in French
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Finite verbs always occur before negation, and children have some sensitivity to this when producing root infinitives; French 2-year-olds place finite verbs above negation as adult speakers would
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9 Childhood bilingualism
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Bilingual children are valued in language acquisition studies as they are considered a 'perfect matched pair' and allow non-linguistic factors e.g. maturity/ cognitive development to be factored out
Simultaneous bilingual development follows the same pattern and milestones as monolingual development in the early stages e.g. babbling and the telegraphic stage
Note that first words may be slightly delayed, although still within the expected age range. On the other hand, they might not be delayed, but result from differences in the lexicons, or preferences for a word in one language than another, for example
Bilingual development differs from that of monolingual children because they display code switching and language mixing
Code switching: a speaker alternates between two or more languages in a conversation or discourse, typically at the sentence or discourse level. It involves a more deliberate and conscious choice (not confusion) to switch between languages based on factors like social context, audience, or emphasis
Code-switching suggests that although the bilingual's language systems are separate, there is some interconnection between the two systems
Language mixing: a speaker alternates between two or more languages within a single sentence or utterance, incorporating elements from one language into another. This mixing may occur because of a lack of vocabulary in one language, cultural influence, or stylistic purposes
9 Childhood L2
Successive/sequential bilingualism: the second language is introduced when the first language acquisition is already well underway (after around 3 years)
It takes a child much less time to acquire L2 than L1; children reach the level of their monolingual peers after around one year (3-7 years-old)
There is a transfer from the L1 to L2, meaning that L2 acquisition is influenced by the first
Interlanguage grammars: second language learners (children and adults) construct intermediate grammars of the target second language
Instead of trying to imitate native speakers, L2 learners try to uncover the rules of the target language
Older children may have some advantages in learning an L2 and progress more quickly than an L1-acquiring infant
E.g. vocabulary learning in older L2 children benefits from greater cognitive skills and pre-existing labels in L1. Older children may also start learning an L2 using more complex and longer sentences
However, being older, L2 learners may be disadvantaged to attaining native-like proficiency such as pronunciation and inflectional morphology
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7 Small Clause Hypothesis (Radford, 1986)
Children's grammars (to ~2 years) have the structure of adult small clauses i.e. subject + predicate with no overt tense
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SCH predicts that children should entirely lack all functional material, only producing lexical categories
It posits that functional categories either
(1) mature at a later point
(2) are projected when children learn the function words, which they don't learn initially as they are not phonetically or semantically salient
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Cons:
- Posits a gross discontinuity with adult grammar
- Assumes maturation of functional material, or lexical learning
- There is evidence for the presence of functional categories, and when they are used they are used correctly
7 Early syntax
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~ 2 years
More complex syntax, including embedding and movement; morphosyntax continues to develop
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Truncation Hypothesis (Rizzi, 1994; 2004)
This posits that children can optionally truncate their syntactic representations i.e. trees, and explains the omission of function words since functional material is the highest part of the tree
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Pros:
- Explains why the omission of functional material is optional and variable because specification of the top node is variable
- It accounts for the omission of subjects if children are said to truncate below the TP
- It helps to explain correlations in child productions
Cons:
- Can't explain why English children produce RIs in wh-questions
- Can't explain why RIs don't occur in all languages e.g. Italian
8 Null subject parameter
Hyams (1983, 1986) proposes a mis-setting of the NS parameter, meaning that all children are born with the +NS option for the NS parameter, and around age 3, children acquiring non-NS languages switch to the -NS option
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However, there is substantial empirical evidence that children acquiring non-NS languages don't behave like +NS children (e.g. Italian)
E.g. Italian children produce NSs 70% of the time compared to 30% for English children
NSs appear in finite embedded clauses in Italian, but not English, Dutch or German
NSs with modals in Italian, but not in English
NSs in finite wh- questions in Italian but not in English, Dutch or French
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9 Single System Hypothesis (Leopold 1939, Volterra & Taeschner 1978
Suggest that children initially develop a single grammar and lexicon, gradually transitioning through three stages to attain an adult-like separation between their languages
Stage one: up to about 1;8, characterised by one lexicon and one primitive set of rules, evidenced by the lack of translation equivalents (only one word is used for one thing/concept) and the mutual exclusivity constraint (avoids synonyms with children using one term if languages aren't perceived to be separate)
Stage two: from 1;8-2;8, characterised by two lexicons and one set of syntactic rules. This is evidenced by the presence of TEs, using different words in language A and language Alpha. One grammatical system is used across languages
Stage three: from 2;9, characterised by two lexicons and two sets of syntactic rules
Problems with the Single-System Hypothesis:
- TEs can appear in early bilingual utterances
- Utterances can be produced with target-like word order despite reverse ordering occurring between languages
- Different languages have different developmental paths e.g. RIs
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