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PubMed1993

Null subjects: comments on Valian (1990)

In this paper, I do not claim that any particular parameter-setting approach is correct, or even provide a characterization of subjectless sentences in children's speech. The only point of this paper is to show that Valian's argument that single-value solutions for setting the null subject parameter have insoluble problems is incorrect. Valian is correct that being able to analyze and interpret triggering data is a prerequisite for setting parameters, but a single-value solution of the sort described in this paper (and implicitly assumed in parameter-setting acquisition theories) is sufficient to do so; there is no need to invoke the dual-value solution that Valian argues is necessary. Furthermore, I argue that the single-value solution should be preferred on the grounds that (i) the mechanism I propose maintains many of the niceties of idealized parameter-setting acquisition theories whereas Valian's approach explicitly gives up on these attractive features of standard parameter-setting models, and (ii) it follows from dual-value theories but not single-value theories (depending on the nature of parameters and how many parameters there are) that parsing and speech production involve over-whelmingly difficult computations for children.

Child Language↗
PubMed1995

The acquisition of the English past tense in children and multilayered connectionist networks.

The apparent very close similarity between the learning of the past tense by Adam and the Plunkett and Marchman model is exaggerated by several misleading comparisons--including arbitrary, unexplained changes in how graphs were plotted. The model's development differs from Adam's in three important ways: Children show a U-shaped sequence of development which does not depend on abrupt changes in input; U-shaped development in the simulation occurs only after an abrupt change in training regimen. Children overregularize vowel-change verbs more than no-change verbs; the simulation overregularizes vowel-change verbs less often than no-change verbs. Children, including Adam, overregularize more than they irregularize; the simulation overregularized less than it irregularized. Interestingly, the RM model--widely criticized as being inadequate--does somewhat better, correctly overregularizing vowel-change verbs more often than no-change verbs, and overregularizing more often than it irregularizes. Although Plunkett and Marchman's (1993) state of the art model incorporated hidden layers and back-propagation, used a more realistic phonological coding scheme, and explored a broader range of parameters than Rumelhart and McClelland's model, their results are farther from psychological reality. It is unknown whether any connectionist model can mimic a child's performance without resorting to unrealistic exogenous changes in the training or input, but it is clear that adding a hidden-layer and back-propagation does not ensure a solution.

Child Language↗
PubMed1996

Red rats eater exposes recursion in children's word formation.

The present study examines noun-noun compounds where the internal noun is pluralized (e.g., new books shelf), contrary to normal constraints that prohibit such constructions. It is proposed that these apparent violations are licensed by a recursive mechanism where world formation passes into Syntax and back into Morphology. Thirty-six 3- to 5-year-olds were tested on their interpretations of compounds fronted by an adjective. When asked to point to a picture of a red rats eater, children preferred a picture where the rats were red over one in which the eater was red. The opposite preference was found when children were asked to point to a red rat eater. These response patterns reflect a recursive-syntactic interpretation when the noun is plural, but a non-recursive interpretation when the noun is singular. The results suggest that children's word formation processes allow complex interactions between grammatical systems from early in acquisition.

Child Language↗
PubMed1979

Children's auditory assembly of present progressive and past tense sentences.

Auditory assembly performance of kindergarten-age children was studied using either present progressive or past tense sentences. Thirty children enrolled in kindergarten repeated six past tense sentences and six present tense sentences. Sentence length was systematically increased from six to 11 words. All responses were tape recorded and analyzed according to total errors, error types, word position, word type, and semantic information. Results indicated significantly more omission errors than substitution, nouns and verbs were best retained, and error rates increased linearly through the nine-word sentences with a greater number of errors occurring in the 10- and 11-word sentences. In addition, there was no significant difference in ability to assemble past or present progressive tense sentences. Finally, in contrast to preschool children, kindergarten-age children retained key items (noun, verb, and object) during assembly performance of all 12 sentences.

Auditory Perception↗
PubMed1982

Comparison of sampling techniques in the measurement of children's morphological development.

Sixty children ranging in age from 66 to 78 months were administered the Berry-Talbott Exploratory Test of Grammar and the Grammatic Closure subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Development. The verbal responses obtained of each child from each sampling technique were compared on matched grammatical items. A correlation coefficient between the two test group means indicated only moderate correlation. An analysis of the matched grammatical items (40 comparisons) showed a higher correct response frequency for the Grammatic Closure items than for the Berry-Talbott items. However, children who did achieve correct responses to the Berry-Talbott items almost always achieved success with the Grammatic Closure test items. Success on the Grammatic Closure items did not assume success with the Berry-Talbott items. Various hypotheses are offered to explain differences in response patterns.

Child↗
PubMed1985

More and more and more about more.

Three experiments explored the development of three linguistic aspects of more in children's speech. Subjects were 56 children between the ages of 2;6 and 6;0. Experiment 1 addressed the nature of the early semantic content of more. Experiment 2 examined the child's differentiation of mass more from count more. Experiment 3 explored the child's use of more as a comparative marker on adjectives. The results suggest, first, that the child initially stores the meaning of more with a prototype, rather than with some more systematic, featural representation. In addition, children's linguistic understanding of the dual use of more as a quantifier of mass amounts and count amounts does not appear to develop until long after they have been using more appropriately in unambiguous contexts. Finally, children learn to use more as a marker on comparatives only after they have acquired -er as a comparative marker, and some time after they have been using more successfully in nonadjectival constructions.

Child↗