Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T12:20:03.100Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Slot and frame patterns and the development of the determiner category

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Julian M. Pine  and
Elena V. M. Lieven
Julian M. Pine*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
Elena V. M. Lieven
Affiliation:
University Of Manchester
*
Julian M. Pine, Department of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

There has been a growing trend in recent years toward the attribution of adultlike syntactic categories to young, language-learning children. This has derived support from studies which claim to have found positive evidence for syntactic categories in the speech of young children (e.g., Valian, 1986). However, these claims contradict the findings of previous research which have suggested that the categories underlying children's early multiword speech are much more limited in scope (e.g., Braine, 1976). The present study represents an attempt to differentiate and test these models of early multiword speech: focusing on the syntactic category of determiner, we investigated the extent to which 11 children showed overlap in the contexts in which they used different determiner types in their early multiword corpora. The results demonstrated that, although children do use determiners with a semantically heterogeneous collection of different noun types, there is very little evidence that they know anything about the relationship between the different determiner types, and thus there is no real case for the attribution of a syntactic determiner category. Indeed, this pattern of determiner use seems perfectly consistent with a limited-scope formula account of children's early multiword speech, as proposed by Braine (1976). These findings suggest that the development of an adultlike determiner category may be a gradual process, one involving the progressive broadening of the range of lexically specific frames in which different determiners appear, and are broadly consistent with a number of recent constructivist models of children's early grammatical development.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , April 1997 , pp. 123 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bowerman, M. (1973). Structural relationships in children's utterances: Syntactic or semantic? In Moore, T. E. (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Bowerman, M. (1985). What shapes children's grammars? In Slobin, D. I. (Ed.), The cross-linguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 2. Theoretical issues. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Braine, M. D. S. (1976). Children's first word combinations. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 41 (1, Serial No. 164).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, M. D. S. (1987). What is learned in acquiring word classes – A step towards an acquisition theory. In MacWhinney, B. (Ed.), Mechanisms of language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Braine, M. D. S. (1988a). Modelling the acquisition of linguistic structure.In Levy, Y., Schlesinger, I. M., & Braine, M. D. S. (Eds.), Categories and processes in language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Braine, M. D. S. (1988b). Review of Language learnability and language development” by S., Pinker.Journal of Child Language, 15, 189–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braine, M. D. S. (1992). How much innate structure is needed to bootstrap into syntax? Cognition, 45, 77–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooks, P. J., Braine, M. D. S., Catalano, L, Brody, R. E., & Sudhalter, V. (1993). Acquisition of gender-like noun subclasses in an artificial language: The contribution of phonological markers to learning. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 76–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gathercole, V. (1985). He has too much hard questions”: The acquisition of the linguistic mass-count distinction in much and many. Journal of Child Language, 12, 395–415.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gordon, P. (1985). Evaluating the semantic categories hypothesis: The case of the count/mass distinction. Cognition, 20, 209–242.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ihns, M., & Leonard, L. B. (1988). Syntactic categories in early child language: Some additional data. Journal of Child Language, 15, 673–678.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karmiloff-Smith, A. (1979). A functional approach to child language: A study of determiners and reference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Levy, Y. (1983a). The acquisition of Hebrew plurals: The case of the missing gender category. Journal of Child Language, 10, 107–121.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, Y. (1983b). It's frogs all the way down. Cognition, 15, 75–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levy, Y. (1988). The nature of early language: Evidence from the development of Hebrew morphology. In Levy, Y., Schlesinger, I. M., & Braine, M. D. S. (Eds.), Categories and processes in language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Lieven, E. V. M., Pine, J. M., & Dresner-Barnes, H. (1992). Individual differences in early vocabulary development: Redefining the referential-expressive distinction. Journal of Child Language, 19, 287–310.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacWhinney, B., Leinbach, J., Taraban, R., & McDonald, J. (1989). Language learning: Cues or rules? Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 255–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maratsos, M. P. (1982). The childs construction of grammatical categories. In Wanner, E. & Gleitman, L. (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. P. (1988). The acquisition of formal word classes. In Levy, Y., Braine, M. D. S.(Eds.), Categories and processes in language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Maratsos, M. P., & Chalkley, M. A. (1980). The internal language of children's syntax: The ontogenesis and representation of syntactic categories. In Nelson, K. E. (Ed.), Children'S language: Vol. 2. New York: Gardner.Google Scholar
Mills, A. E. (1986). The acquisition of gender: A study of English and German. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ninio, A. (1988). On formal grammatical categories in early child language. In Levy, Y., Schlesinger, I. M., & Braine, M. D. S. (Eds.), Categories and processes in language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Perez-Pereira, M. (1991). The acquisition of gender: What Spanish children tell us. Journal of Child Language, 18, 571–590.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pine, J. M., & Lieven, E. V. M. (1993). Reanalysing rote-learned phrases: Individual differences in the transition to multi-word speech. Journal of Child Language, 20, 551–571.Google ScholarPubMed
Pinker, S. (1984). Language learnability and language development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of verb-argument structure. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Pye, C. (1990). The acquisition of ergative languages. Linguistics, 28, 1291–1330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlesinger, I. M. (1988). The origin of relational categories. In Levy, Y., Schlesinger, I. M., & Braine, M. D. S. (Eds.), Categories and processes in language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1992). First verbs: A case study of early grammatical development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valian, V. (1986). Syntactic categories in the speech of young children. Developmental Psychology, 22, 562–579.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valian, V. (1991). Syntactic subjects in the early speech of American and Italian children. Cognition, 40. 21–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed