Abstract: This article examines phonological development and its relationship to input statistics. Using novel data from a longitudinal corpus of spontaneous child speech in Polish, we evaluate and compare the predictions of a variety of input-based phonotactic models for syllable structure acquisition. We find that many commonly examined input statistics can make dramatically different predictions, as do different assumptions about the representational units over which statistics are calculated. We find that development is sensitive to multiple abstract units of phonological representation, supporting a crucial role for feature-based generalization. We also identify departures between the predictions of the best phonotactic models and children’s production patterns that indicate that input sensitivity alone cannot fully explain the developmental patterns. We discuss the role of universal markedness and phonetic difficulty and argue that a full explanation requires reference to these biases.

Abstract: This study investigates whether young heritage speakers, either simultaneous or sequential bilinguals, have limited vocabulary knowledge in their family language compared to matched monolingual counterparts and, if so, what factors help to account for this difference. These factors include age, age at emigration, length of emigration, frequency of heritage language use, and parents’ attitude toward heritage language acquisition and maintenance. Thirty young Persian-English bilinguals (aged 6–18) living in New Zealand took a productive and a receptive vocabulary test. These tests were also administered to thirty monolingual speakers of Persian who were matched with the bilinguals for age, gender, number of siblings, and their family’s socioeconomic status. Information about the heritage speakers’ language use and their parents’ attitude toward heritage language maintenance was collected through semistructured interviews. The results showed that the heritage speakers were outperformed by the monolin...

Abstract: This article proposes that second language learners can use indirect positive evidence (IPE) to acquire a phonological grammar that is a subset of their L1 grammar. IPE is evidence from errors in the learner’s L1 made by native speakers of the learner’s L2. It has been assumed that subset grammars may be acquired using direct or indirect negative evidence or, in certain L1–L2 combinations, using direct positive evidence. The utility of IPE is tested by providing native speakers of English with indirect evidence of the phonotactic constraints holding of word-initial clusters in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), which are a subset of those in English. Participants were tested on the well-formedness of BP-like words, and the results indicate that approximately one-third were able to use the IPE to make appropriate BP-like judgments. This suggests that IPE may be another source of evidence that learners can use to build a grammar that is a subset of their own L1 grammar.

Abstract: We compare the predictions of two different accounts of first language acquisition by investigating the relative contributions of abstract syntax and input frequency to the elicited production of main and embedded questions by 36 monolingual English-speaking toddlers aged 3;00 to 5;11. In particular, we investigate whether children’s accuracy rates across different interrogative structures (main vs. embedded, yes/no vs. wh-, argument vs. adjunct) can be explained by difference in terms of input frequency in parental speech or whether abstract structural factors are needed to account for such asymmetries. In main-clause questions, children correctly invert the order of the subject and auxiliary more often with yes/no than wh-questions, despite a higher input frequency of uninverted yes/no questions. Furthermore, in main-clause wh-questions, inversion rates are higher for argument than adjunct wh-questions, independent of input frequencies. Finally, in embedded-clause questions, children correctly a...

Abstract: An evaluation measure (EM) guides a learner’s choice of grammar when more than one is compatible with available input. EM must be universal, so children receiving comparable input acquire comparabl...

Abstract: It has long been recognized that there is a natural dependence between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition, with the idea that the right knowledge representation enables acquisition to happen as reliably as it does. Given this, a reasonable criterion for a theory of knowledge representation is that it be useful for acquisition, particularly in nontrivial learning situations. We propose quantitative learnability metrics meant to capture how useful a representation is for acquisition. We then apply these metrics to the case study of English metrical stress, a language that is notorious for having nonproductive aspects in its grammar and so being nontrivial to learn a productive grammar for. We examine three theories of metrical stress representation, assessing their learnability via these metrics from English child-directed speech at different stages of linguistic development. We find that while all three theories are only somewhat useful at the initial stages ...

Abstract: This article suggests a method to deal with cross-linguistic differences in children with Specific Language Impairment. The differences in vulnerable structures reflect typological properties of the surrounding language (e.g., Leonard 2014a, 2014b). This article adds a developmental perspective to the discussion by interpreting the vulnerable structures through the framework of Processability Theory (PT; Pienemann 1998, 2015) and placing them along a developmental continuum. Studies focusing on production of grammatical structures in children with SLI from 19 different language backgrounds are examined. The results of the analyses suggest that the major grammatical problems in children with SLI belong to the later stages of the PT hierarchy. PT gives an alternative interpretation to earlier accounts by offering a developmental perspective and a metric that allows us to measure both languages in bilingual children.

Abstract: Generative approaches to language have long recognized the natural link between theories of knowledge representation and theories of knowledge acquisition. The basic idea is that the knowledge representations provided by Universal Grammar enable children to acquire language as reliably as they do because these representations highlight the relevant aspects of the available linguistic data. So, one reasonable evaluation of any theory of representation is how useful it is for acquisition. This means that when we have multiple theories for how knowledge is represented, we can try to evaluate these theoretical options by seeing how children might use them during acquisition. Computational models of the acquisition process are an effective tool for determining this, since they allow us to incorporate the assumptions of a representation into a cognitively plausible learning scenario and see what happens. We can then identify which representations work for acquisition and what those representations need ...

Abstract: This study investigates the knowledge of unaccusativity in Japanese native, heritage, and second/foreign language speakers with respect to licensing of floating numeral quantifiers (FNQs) by unaccusative and unergative subjects (the FNQ diagnostic). Two acceptability judgment experiments were conducted to examine (i) whether and how judgments of the three populations differ with respect to the FNQ paradigm and (ii) whether and how manipulations of agentivity of subjects and telicity of events affect their judgments of the FNQ diagnostic. Our findings show that (i) the native and heritage speakers’ knowledge about the FNQ diagnostic are largely indistinguishable from each other, (ii) some L2 speakers’ judgments show signs of initial development of the knowledge of the FNQ diagnostic, and (iii) telicity shows clear effects on the FNQ diagnostic with all three groups, while the effects of agentivity are subtle and detectible only with the native and heritage speakers.

Abstract: The findings of the four studies show that Korean-speaking children find the antecedents of the two types of reflexives—caki and caki-casin—differently in intra-sentential binding and extra-sentential discourse binding, which in turn suggests that Korean-speaking children know the different properties of the reflexives.

Abstract: When again modifies an English goal-PP construction, the sentence is ambiguous between a repetitive and a restitutive reading. Interestingly, languages vary in whether their counterpart to English ...

Abstract: This study investigates relationships between acquisition of exhaustivity in single and multiple wh-questions, mastery of semantic and pragmatic aspects of quantifier comprehension, and general skills in receptive grammar The participants of the study were 25 Polish monolingual typically developing children aged 4;02–6;02, who were administered a set of tasks including the Exhaustive Wh-Questions Task, the Test for Reception of Grammar, version 2, and the Comprehension of Quantification Task The selection of the tasks was motivated by the major linguistic accounts of exhaustivity We found significant predictive relationships between single exhaustive wh-questions and both semantics of quantifiers and receptive grammar In contrast, the scores in multiple wh-questions were predicted only by age, showing their delayed acquisition with respect to single wh-questions However, this age-related difference was not accounted for by any of the linguistic variables tested Crucially, the analyses reveal

Abstract: This article shows that the Korean Extrinsic Plural Marker (EPM) may be acquired by children on the basis of very little evidence. The EPM marks distributivity, unlike the Instrinsic Plural Marker, which marks plurality. Thirty monolingual learners of Korean aged 5;03 to 6;09 (mean age 6;01) were tested using a series of Truth Value Judgment Tasks (Crain & Thornton 1998). The children were split into three groups: Experimental-1, Experimental-2, and Control. All children received a pretest, establishing that they are unaware of the properties of EPM. Children in the two experimental groups then received two interventions, each employing a single instance of a felicitous interaction between a child and a mother involving the EPM. One intervention presented positive evidence of the meaning of the EPM, and the other presented negative evidence. Each intervention was followed by an assessment of the effect of the intervention (using TVJT tests similar to the pretest). The experimental groups differed ...

Abstract: Inspired by Syrett (2013), three experiments explored children’s ability to distinguish attributives (e.g., “three-pound strawberries,” where MPs as adjectives signal reference to attributes) versus pseudopartitives (e.g., “three pounds of strawberries,” where MPs combine with of to signal part-whole relations). Given the systematic nature of the syntax-semantics mapping, we asked whether children are able to use syntax to interpret how entities are quantified. In Experiment 1, four- and five-year-olds were asked to choose between two characters for the one who was selling appropriate items matching an attributive or pseudopartitive expression. In Experiment 2, children of the same age heard items described with a phrase using either an attributive, a pseudopartitive, “each” (“each weighs three pounds”), or “all together” (“all together they weigh three pounds”). At test, with some items removed, children were asked whether the same phrase applied to the remaining items (e.g., “Does Dora still hav...

Abstract: The concept of an output-driven map formally characterizes an intuitive notion about phonology: that disparities between the input and the output are introduced only to the extent necessary to satisfy restrictions on outputs. When all of the grammars definable in a phonological system are output-driven, the implied structure provides significant computational benefits to language learners. An output-driven map imposes significant structure on the space of possible inputs for words, which can allow a learner to efficiently learn a lexicon of phonological underlying forms despite the vast number of possible lexica, as well as contend with the challenges of map/lexicon interactions inherent in phonological learning. This article presents a learning algorithm that exploits the structure of output-driven maps, illustrated with a system of grammars based in Optimality Theory. The algorithm highlights the roles played by contrast and paradigmatic information in phonological learning.

Abstract: Language acquisition has traditionally provided one of the primary explanatory goals of theory construction in linguistics (Chomsky 1965). A theory of grammar aims not merely to provide analyses fo...

Abstract: In this article two dimensions of handshape complexity are analyzed as potential building blocks of phonological contrast—joint complexity and finger group complexity. We ask whether sign language patterns are elaborations of those seen in the gestures produced by hearing people without speech (pantomime) or a more radical reorganization of them. Data from adults and children are analyzed to address issues of cross-linguistic variation, emergence, and acquisition. Study 1 addresses these issues in adult signers and gesturers from the United States, Italy, China, and Nicaragua. Study 2 addresses these issues in child and adult groups (signers and gesturers) from the United States, Italy, and Nicaragua. We argue that handshape undergoes a fairly radical reorganization, including loss and reorganization of iconicity and feature redistribution, as phonologization takes place in both of these dimensions. Moreover, while the patterns investigated here are not evidence of duality of patterning, we conclu...

Abstract: Traditionally we look at learning outcomes by examining single outcomes. A new and future direction is to look at the actual process of development. Imagine an advanced, 17-year-old student of English (L2) who has just finished secondary school in the Netherlands and wants to become an English teacher. He first completes a teacher training programme, and later at age 30, he obtains a university master’s degree in the Netherlands. After high school he is quite advanced already (estimated low B2 level), and when he finishes his MA thesis, he is able to write an academic research paper with the proper academic register (estimated C2 level). The purpose of the present chapter is to gain insight into the linguistic developmental process of his academic writing from a dynamic perspective. Over the course of 13 years (with a gap of five years), he writes many texts, 49 of which are selected to be examined in detail. The analyses show that his writing development is a long, complex, dynamic process, in which different sub-components of the language change in interaction with each other. During his teacher training programme the language develops substantially differently from his development during his university programme, where more of an academic register is expected. As the language develops, longer noun phrases occur, and more academic words appear, as reflected in a longer average word length. The linguistic system becomes more accurate as the process of acquisition continues, at one point quite abruptly, but even at the end of the participant’s studies, the writing still contains some errors. This study not only gives insight into the differences between characteristics of advanced formal writings and academic writing, but also has implications for the assessment and measurement of linguistic development. It turns out that not a single dependent variable develops linearly, and they all may level off during development. However, at the end, we will suggest that the finite verb token ratio is the best overall complexity and sophistication developmental measure, as it correlates highly with all other variables.