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PubMed2002

The development of subject-auxiliary inversion in English wh-questions: an alternative analysis.

Rowland & Pine (2000) present an analysis of the development of subject-auxiliary inversion in wh-questions in the speech of Adam from the Brown corpus. They show that there is an uninversion period in which the child fails to invert the subject and auxiliary in wh-questions, and they argue that this is a function of the frequency of wh-word + auxiliary collocations in the input: the more frequent a particular collocation is in the input, the more likely it is to be inverted in the child's speech. In this note an alternative analysis is proposed: the initial position of the tensed auxiliary signals interrogative illocutionary force, and the auxiliaries which are most reliably inverted are those that are overtly tensed morphologically. This analysis not only accounts for Rowland & Pine's data but also extends to inversion in yes-no questions. The analysis predicts three different patterns for the development of inversion in both types of questions, and it is shown that all three are attested.

Child Language↗
PubMed1997

Children's interpretations of homonyms: a developmental study.

The effect of homonymity on children's use of semantic context to derive word meaning was examined in two studies. Participants were presented with stories that included three types of key words: nonsense words, familiar words used accurately, and homonymous words. Thirty-two preschoolers aged 3;7 to 5;4, 32 second graders aged 7;1 to 8;8, and 16 college students in Study 1 indicated the keys words' meaning by selecting one of six possible illustrations per key word. In Study 2, 16 toddlers aged 2;9 to 3;3, 32 preschoolers aged 4;0 to 4;11, 32 second graders aged 7;0 to 8;11, and 32 fifth graders aged 10;1 to 11;8 indicated key word meanings either by enacting each story with paper dolls or by selecting one of six possible illustrations. Word type and age, but not response mode, affected children's interpretations. Children from all four age groups made fewer contextually based interpretations of homonymous words than of nonsense words. Fifth graders and adults made more contextually based (rather than literal) interpretations of homonymous words than did younger children. The results suggest that homonymity is a powerful inhibitor of children's tendency to derive a meaning for a new word from context.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Subject-verb agreement in Brazilian Portuguese: what low error rates hide.

This study focuses on the acquisition of subject-verb agreement in Brazilian Portuguese. A quantitative analysis of the data produced by a Brazilian child between the ages of 3;02.07 and 3;04.08 is presented. The overall error rate is low. However, a further and more detailed analysis reveals important contrasts both in the frequency of production of different verb inflections (as regards the person/number variables within the verb morphological system) and in the rate of subject-verb agreement errors associated with them. Our findings not only suggest that subject-verb agreement may be acquired piecemeal, but also that the learning of particular verb inflections may itself be a gradual process. Alternatives to the idea of rule-governed production--such as the child's reproducing frozen subject-verb strings previously produced by adults and blending different frozen strings into novel combinations--are discussed as processes which can shed some light on the pattern of both erroneous and correct production shown by this child.

Brazil↗
PubMed1999

The learning of first and second person pronouns in English: network models and analysis.

Although most English-speaking children master the correct use of first and second person pronouns by three years, some children show persistent reversal errors in which they refer to themselves as you and to others as me. Recently, such differences have been attributed to the relative availability of overheard speech during the learning process. The present study tested this proposal with feed-forward neural networks learning these pronouns. Network learning speed and analysis of their knowledge representations confirmed the importance of exposure to shifting reference provided by overheard speech. Errorless pronoun learning was linked to the amount of overheard speech, interactions with a greater number of speakers, and prior knowledge of the basic-level kind PERSON.

Child↗
PubMed1999

Different rates of pronoun case error: comments on Rispoli (1998)

Rispoli (1998) presents data to motivate a model of pronoun case errors in child English. His data consist of relative rates of occurrence of errors involving particular forms in the study of twenty-seven English children between the ages of 2.6 and 4.0. I show that his claim that overextensions of he and him are antagonistic cannot be maintained. I argue that his explanation for why her subjects are more frequent than other errors is insufficient, and suggest an account in terms of relative input frequencies. Finally, I demonstrate that the fundamental assumption underlying Rispoli's model is untenable, and that his findings are not counterevidence for developmental syntax models such as that of Schütze (1997).

Child Language↗
PubMed1978

Response bias in children's phonological systems.

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which auditory and visual stimuli influence certain sound productions of children. Grade level and position of the target sound were the two variables studied. Children were shown a meaningful picture and were asked to repeat the name of the picture as spoken by the experimenter who misarticulated one phoneme in the word. It was found that children in the lower grades tend to repeat the word as it should be articulated, whereas children in higher grade levels tend to repeat the word as it was spoken. Position of the phoneme in the word was not found to be a relevant variable. Support is given to the use of nonmeaningful instruction material as stimuli when teaching new sounds to young children.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1978

Comprehension strategies in two and three year olds: animate agents or probable events?

Preschoolers may prefer themselves, the handier toy, the smaller toy, the more probable toy, the animate noun, or the first-mentioned noun as agent in interpreting semantically reversible sentences prior to adult performance. This study asked whether individual children consistently showed preferences and, if so, which preference. Twenty-five children, aged two years, two years and six months, or three years and six months, acted out 36 semantically reversible sentences containing one animate and one inanimate noun with toys. Three separate presentations were made of each of 12 sentences, with relative toy size varying on each. The 12 sentences, which varied in presumed probability of the animate noun as agent, consisted of six simple sentences (for example, The kitty pushes the door) and their reversals (for example, The door pushes the kitty). Two and two and a half year olds showed consistent individual preferences for animate nouns as agents in some sentences but not others. Thus there was evidence only for a sentence-specific probable event strategy rather than a generally applied animate agent strategy. Some two-and-a-half-year-old children also showed consistent position preferences or word order strategies. Children did not confine themselves to a single strategy. Three and a half year olds consistently used a word order strategy. Relative object size was not a significant factor. Age and short-term memory span were more closely related than mean length of utterance to comprehension.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1980

Contrastive stress and children's interpretation of pronouns.

Contrastive stress signals the hearer that the speaker thinks that certain information is not shared by the speaker and hearer. In the case of stressed pronouns the speaker is signalling the inappropriateness of applying normal interpretive strategies. Children were presented with sentences such as John hit Bill and then he hit Sam. Surprisingly, it was found that when the pronoun was stressed the children performed better than when it was unstressed. It is argued that children are employing an ad hoc strategy for interpreting stressed pronouns, and that they have not initially mastered the interaction of strategies and contrastive stress. It is further argued that prosodic features such as contrastive stress provide children with helpful clues for developing interpretive strategies.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1980

Developmental trends in correct /r/ articulation as a function of allophone type.

Eight normally developing preschool children manifesting incomplete mastery of /r/ articulation repeated three times at four week intervals sentences containing the allophones [3 r 2] embedded in various consonantal contexts. Two judges evaluated /r/ allophone production as correct or incorrect. Children whose /r/ production improved showed greater success with [3 r] articulation than with [2]. Results indicate that normally developing children may be distinguished from more slowly developing children on the basis of differential success with production of various /r/ allophones.

Child Language↗
PubMed1981

Auditory discrimination of voiceless fricatives in children.

Auditory discrimination of the voiceless fricatives magnitude of theta f integral of s was studied in 200 subjects between the ages of four and six and a half years. In the test task the subject was asked to remember one of the sounds and then to indicate each time this sound was presented. Two types of errors were analyzed. An error of omission was a failure to identify the remembered sound, and this type of error did not change with age. An error of commission, a failure to discriminate between the remembered sound and one of the other voiceless fricatives, decreased with age. The results are interpreted as support for a theory of the development of auditory perception of speech in which discrimination of some properties in speech, such as relatively weak spectral cues and second formant transitions, have to be learned by a child.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1982

Developmental disfluency in 2-, 4-, and 6-year-old boys in neutral and stress situations.

Disfluency characteristics of 36 nonstuttering boys aged 2, 4, and 6 were analyzed from tape-recorded speech samples made during free play within neutral and stress situations. Comparisons of frequency of disfluency were made among the different ages within each situation. In the neutral situation, 2-year-olds had significantly higher disfluency frequencies than either 4- or 6-year-olds for word repetitions and phrase repetitions; 2-year-olds also had a higher frequency of disrhythmic phonations than 6-year-olds but not than 4-year-olds. In the stress situation, 2-year-olds had a higher frequency of average oscillation (number of repetitions per instance of disfluency) than either 4- or 6-year-olds and a higher frequency of disrhythmic phonations than 6-year-olds. Comparisons of frequency of disfluency were also made between the neutral and stress situations. The only statistically significant differences were for word repetitions and phrase repetitions for 2-year-olds, with higher means for the neutral situation.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1982

Developmental disfluency and emerging grammar. II. Co-occurrence of disfluency with specified semantic-syntactic structures.

From a corpus of over 47,000 spontaneous utterances from four nonstuttering preschool children who were beginning to use syntax, 4,881 multiword, disfluent utterances were identified. Semantic-syntactic structures were identified among the disfluent multiword utterances and differences in frequency of structures were examined. There was variability in the developmental disfluency of the individual children, but each child's pattern of disfluency was systematic across time. Developmental disfluency shifted across structures systematically for each child and appeared to reflect a "practice effect" for those children beginning to learn syntax. The co-occurrence of disfluency with specific syntactic structures supported the premise that developmental disfluency was more strongly attached to the syntax of utterances than to the production of particular words.

Child Language↗
PubMed1988

Acoustic analysis of correct and misarticulated semivowels.

Four children who produced correct (w,r,l,j), four children with developmental w/r and w/l substitutions, and four articulation impaired children with w/r and w/l substitutions were subjects. They produced sets of minimally contrasted words with (w,r,l,j) in word-initial position with four vowels and with (w,r,l) in two types of consonant clusters. Children's utterances were spectrographically analyzed for three formant frequencies and transition rate of the second formant. Children with correct semivowels produced distinctive formant frequency patterns for semivowels that were similar to those previously reported in the literature for adults and children. Developmental and articulation impaired children produced acoustic features for (j) that were similar to the (j) produced by the control group; but neither group differentiated among (w,r,l) by either formant frequencies or transition rate. Some individuals in both groups produced formant frequency and/or transition rate differences among semivowels in some phonetic contexts. The (w) produced for target (w) and in substitution for (r) and (l) by three developmental children and two articulation-impaired children did not match the acoustic pattern of control (w). These productions had higher second formants, occurring between control (w) and (r,l) or in the range of correct (r,l).

Child Language↗
PubMed1989

Children's categorization of consonants by manner and place characteristics.

Ten normal-speaking 5-year-olds and 10 normal-speaking 7-year-olds were required to categorize consonants as "dripping" (stop) or "flowing" (fricative) and as "tongue" (lingual place of articulation) or "lip" (labial place of articulation). Both groups of children performed more accurately than would be expected on the basis of chance alone. However, 5-year-olds performed more poorly than did 7-year-olds, primarily because 5-year-olds were significantly less accurate than 7-year-olds in categorizing according to manner. Children's ability to categorize was evaluated as an indicator of their awareness of feature characteristics of consonants. Their performance does not unambiguously reflect feature awareness but may be related to other variables such as their use of response strategies or the nature of the task.

Age Factors↗