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Learning to Predict and Predicting to Learn: Before and beyond the Syntactic Bootstrapper
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Babineau, Mireille; Havron, Naomi; Dautriche, Isabelle; de Carvalho, Alex; Christophe, Anne – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2023
Young children can exploit the syntactic context of a novel word to narrow down its probable meaning. This is "syntactic bootstrapping." A learner that uses syntactic bootstrapping to foster lexical acquisition must first have identified the semantic information that a syntactic context provides. Based on the "semantic seed…
Descriptors: Syntax, Language Acquisition, Vocabulary Development, Language Processing
Finiteness and Modality in Early Child French
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Legendre, Geraldine; Gorashi, Yara; Krasnik, Sarah; Koulaguina, Elena – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2019
We reexamine the distribution of nonfinite root forms (NRFs) in Child French on the basis of two novel spontaneous speech corpora focusing on two issues that have increasingly dominated recent analyses of French on the one hand and NRFs/RIs on the other. First, we argue that the level of NRF production peaking at ~24% is in line with the…
Descriptors: French, Child Language, Language Acquisition, Speech
The Acquisition of "Wh"-Questions: Beyond Structural Economy and Input Frequency
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Nguyen, An D.; Legendre, Geraldine – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2022
We present in this article corpus analyses, two experiments, and a preliminary English-French comparison on children's acquisition of "wh"-in-situ. Our examination of 10,000 "wh"-questions from CHILDES reveals that the reported empirical picture of "wh"-question acquisition in English is incomplete: A type of…
Descriptors: Linguistic Input, Language Acquisition, Questioning Techniques, Preschool Children
Children's Comprehension and Repair of Garden-Path "Wh"-Questions
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Yacovone, Anthony; Rigby, Ian; Omaki, Akira – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2020
Children's sentence interpretations often lack flexibility. For example, when French-speaking adults and children hear ambiguous "wh"-questions like "Where did Annie explain that she rode her horse?", they preferentially associate the "wh"-phrase with the first verb and adopt the main clause interpretation (e.g.,…
Descriptors: French, Phrase Structure, Language Acquisition, Verbs
Unclogging the Bottleneck: The Role of Case Morphology in L2 Acquisition at the Syntax-Discourse Interface
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Lecouvet, Mathieu; Degand, Liesbeth; Suner, Ferran – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2021
The Bottleneck Hypothesis argues that properties of inflectional morphology explain why second-language learners may face persistent difficulties in articulating meaning in target-language forms. In particular, the acquisition task proves even harder when first and second languages differ in the way they organize the mapping of functional features…
Descriptors: Morphology (Languages), Second Language Learning, Native Language, Syntax
Bootstrapping the Syntactic Bootstrapper: Probabilistic Labeling of Prosodic Phrases
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Gutman, Ariel; Dautriche, Isabelle; Crabbé, Benoît; Christophe, Anne – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2015
The "syntactic bootstrapping" hypothesis proposes that syntactic structure provides children with cues for learning the meaning of novel words. In this article, we address the question of how children might start acquiring some aspects of syntax before they possess a sizeable lexicon. The study presents two models of early syntax…
Descriptors: Linguistic Theory, Language Research, Intonation, Suprasegmentals
Autism Spectrum Disorder and Specific Language Impairment: Overlaps in Syntactic Profiles
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Durrleman, Stephanie; Delage, Hélène – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2016
This study investigates syntax in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), its parallelism with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and its relation to other aspects of cognition. We focus on (1) 3rd person accusative clitic (ACC3) production, a clinical marker of SLI hypothesized to relate to WM, and (2) 1st person accusative clitic (ACC1) production,…
Descriptors: Syntax, Autism, Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Language Impairments
A Cross-Linguistic Study of the Acquisition of Clitic and Pronoun Production
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Varlokosta, Spyridoula; Belletti, Adriana; Costa, João; Friedmann, Naama; Gavarró, Anna; Grohmann, Kleanthes K.; Guasti, Maria Teresa; Tuller, Laurice; Lobo, Maria; Andelkovic, Darinka; Argemí, Núria; Avram, Larisa; Berends, Sanne; Brunetto, Valentina; Delage, Hélène; Ezeizabarrena, María-José; Fattal, Iris; Haman, Ewa; van Hout, Angeliek; de López, Kristine Jensen; Katsos, Napoleon; Kologranic, Lana; Krstic, Nadezda; Kraljevic, Jelena Kuvac; Miekisz, Aneta; Nerantzini, Michaela; Queraltó, Clara; Radic, Zeljana; Ruiz, Sílvia; Sauerland, Uli; Sevcenco, Anca; Smoczynska, Magdalena; Theodorou, Eleni; van der Lely, Heather; Veenstra, Alma; Weston, John; Yachini, Maya; Yatsushiro, Kazuko – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2016
This study develops a single elicitation method to test the acquisition of third-person pronominal objects in 5-year-olds for 16 languages. This methodology allows us to compare the acquisition of pronominals in languages that lack object clitics ("pronoun languages") with languages that employ clitics in the relevant context…
Descriptors: Language Research, Contrastive Linguistics, Form Classes (Languages), Morphology (Languages)
Object Clitic Omission in French-Speaking Children: Effects of the Elicitation Task
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Pirvulescu, Mihaela; Hill, Virginia – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2012
In French, the acquisition of object clitics seems delayed, and omissions are documented. In this article, we look at the experimental paradigm traditionally used to elicit object clitics and propose a new elicitation procedure that is closer to how clitics are produced in spontaneous production. We show that under the proposed new experiment, the…
Descriptors: French, Language Acquisition, Child Language, Task Analysis
Syntax at Age Two: Cross-Linguistic Differences
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Phillips, Colin – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2010
The 1990s witnessed a major expansion in research on children's morphosyntactic development, due largely to the availability of computer-searchable corpora of spontaneous speech in the CHILDES database. This led to a rapid emergence of parallel findings in different languages, with much attention devoted to the widely attested difficulties in…
Descriptors: Sentences, Speech, Verbs, Syntax
Morphosyntactic Learning and the Development of Tense
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Legate, Julie Anne; Yang, Charles – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2007
In this article, we propose that the Root Infinitive (RI) phenomenon in child language is best viewed and explained as the interaction between morphological learning and syntactic development. We make the following specific suggestions: The optionality in RI reflects the presence of a grammar such as Chinese which does not manifest tense marking.…
Descriptors: Linguistic Theory, French, Child Language, Language Acquisition
Learnability and Parametric Change in the Nominal System of L2 French
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Anderson, Bruce – Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 2007
In this article I provide evidence that despite frequently cited differences between child first language (L1) and adult second language (L2) speakers in overt behavior (performance) during grammatical development, the nature, source, and limits of implicit knowledge (competence) in native and second language grammars are equivalent (i.e., they…
Descriptors: Epistemology, Syntax, Nouns, French