Abstract categories or limited scope formulae: The case of children’s determiners Abstract: Six tests of the spontaneous speech of twenty-one English-speaking children (1 ;10 to 2 ;8; MLUs 1.53 to 4.38) demonstrate the presence of the syntactic category determiner from the start of combinatorial speech, supporting nativist accounts. Children use multiple [...]
Here there is an ambiguity: two readings for the sequence here/there-P in Italian
Abstract sentence representation in 3-year-olds: Evidence from comprehension and production Abstract: We use syntactic priming to test the abstractness of the sentence representations of young 3-year-olds (35-42 10 months). In describing pictures with inanimate participants, 18 children primed with passives produced more passives (11 with a strict scoring scheme, 16 with [...]
Direct object predictability: effects on young children’s imitation of sentences Abstract: We hypothesize that the conceptual relation between a verb and its direct object can make a sentence easier (“the cat is eating some food”) or harder (“the cat is eating a sock”) to parse and understand. If children’s limited performance [...]
When opportunity knocks twice: two-year-olds’ repetition of sentence subjects Abstract: Why are young children’s utterances short ? This elicited imitation study used a new task – double imitation – to investigate the factors that contribute to children’s failure to lexicalize sentence subjects. Two-year-olds heard a triad of sentences singly and attempted [...]
Young children’s acquisition of wh-questions: The role of structured input Abstract: Two-year-olds learn language quickly but how they exploit adult input remains obscure. Twenty-nine children aged 2;6 to 3;2, divided into three treatment groups, participated in an intervention experiment consisting of four sessions one week apart. Pre- and post-intervention sessions were [...]
Is syntax intact in Williams syndrome? A study of relative clauses Abstract: Despite growing empirical evidence to the contrary, claims continue to be made that the grammar of people with Williams syndrome (WS) is intact. We show that even in a simple elicited imitation task examining the syntax of relative clauses, [...]
Input and language acquisition. Abstract: (from the book) Begins by distinguishing among 3 metaphors of acquisition: the copy, hypothesis-testing, and trigger metaphors. After outlining these 3 positions, the distinction among direct and indirect positive evidence and direct and indirect negative evidence and their roles in languages acquisition under the hypothesis-testing and [...]
Rethinking learning: comments on Rethinking innateness.
The development of syntactic subjects in Portuguese-speaking children Abstract: In order to separate competence and performance factors in acquisition of knowledge of syntactic subjects, we audiotaped and analyzed the spontaneous speech of 20 Portuguese-speaking two-year-olds in natural conversation with Portuguese-speaking adults. We separated the children into three groups based on Mean [...]
