Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T19:06:35.272Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Abstract knowledge of word order by 19 months: An eye-tracking study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 December 2011

JULIE FRANCK ,
SEVERINE MILLOTTE ,
ANDRES POSADA  and
LUIGI RIZZI
JULIE FRANCK*
Affiliation:
University of Geneva
SEVERINE MILLOTTE
Affiliation:
University of Dijon
ANDRES POSADA
Affiliation:
University of Geneva
LUIGI RIZZI
Affiliation:
University of Siena
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Julie Franck, Laboratoire de psycholinguistique, Université de Genève, FAPSE, 40, Boulevard du Pont d'Arve, Geneva 1205, Switzerland. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Word order is one of the earliest aspects of grammar that the child acquires, because her early utterances already respect the basic word order of the target language. However, the question of the nature of early syntactic representations is subject to debate. Approaches inspired by formal syntax assume that the head–complement order, differentiating verb–object and object–verb languages, is represented very early on in an abstract, rulelike format. In contrast, constructivist theories assume that it is initially encoded as lexicalized, verb-specific knowledge. In order to address this issue experimentally, we combined the preferential looking paradigm using pseudoverbs with the weird word order paradigm adapted to comprehension. The results, based on highly reliable, coder-independent eye-tracking measures, provide the first direct evidence that as early as 19 months French-speaking infants have an abstract representation of the word order of their language.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , March 2013 , pp. 323 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011 

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

Abbot-Smith, K., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2001). What pre-school children do and do not do with ungrammatical word orders. Cognitive Development, 16, 679–692.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akhtar, N. (1999). Acquiring basic word order: Evidence for data-driven learning of syntactic structure. Journal of Child Language, 26, 339–356.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Akhtar, N., & Tomasello, M. (1997). Young children's productivity with word order and verb morphology. Developmental Psychology, 33, 952–965.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bavin, E. L., & Growcott, C. (1999). Infants of 24–30 months understand verb frames. In Perkins, M. & Howard, S. (Eds.), New directions in language development and disorders (pp. 169–177). New York: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Christophe, A., Nespor, M., Guasti, M. T., & van Ooyen, B. (2003). Prosodic structure and syntactic acquisition: The case of the head–complement parameter. Developmental Science, 6, 213–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dittmar, M., Abbot-Smith, K., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2008). Young German children's early syntactic competence: A preferential looking study. Developmental Science, 11, 575–582.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernald, A., Zangl, R., Portillo, A. L., & Marchman, V. A. (2008). Looking while listening: Using eye movements to monitor spoken language comprehension by infants and young children. In Sekerina, I. A., Fernandez, E. M., & Clahsen, H. (Eds.), Developmental psycholinguistics: On-line methods in children's language processing (pp. 97–135). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernandes, K. J., Marcus, G. F., Di Nubila, J. A., & Vouloumanos, A. (2006). From semantics to syntax and back again: Argument structure in the third year of life. Cognition, 100, B10–B20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Franck, J., Millotte, S., & Lassotta, R. (in press). Early word order representations: Novel arguments against old contradictions. Language Acquisition.Google Scholar
Gertner, Y., Fisher, C., & Eisengart, J. (2006). Learning words and rules: Abstract knowledge of word order in early sentence comprehension. Psychological Science, 17, 684–691.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gervain, J., Nespor, M., Mazuka, R., Horie, R., & Mehler, J. (2008). Bootstrapping word order in prelexical infants: A Japanese–Italian cross-linguistic study. Cognitive Psychology, 57, 56–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenberg, J. (1963). Some universals of grammar with particular reference to the order of meaningful elements. In Greenberg, J. (Ed.), Universals of language (pp. 73–113). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hirsh-Pasek, K. R., & Golinkoff, R. M. (1996). The origins of grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kayne, R. (1994). The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kern, S. (2003). Le compte-rendu parental au service de l'évaluation de la production lexical des enfants français entre 16 et 30 mois. Glossa, 80, 48–61.Google Scholar
Kidd, E., Bavin, E., & Rhodes, B. (2001). Two year-olds’ knowledge of verbs and argument structures. In Almgren, M., Barreña, A., Ezeizabarrena, M.-J., Idiazabal, I., & MacWhinney, B. (Eds.), Research on child language acquisition (pp. 1368–1382). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Langus, A., & Nespor, M. (2010). Cognitive systems struggling for word order. Cognitive Psychology, 60, 291–318.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lidz, J., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. (2001). Kidz in the Hood: Syntactic bootstrapping and the mental lexicon (IRCS Technical Reports Series). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Luce, P. A., & Pisoni, D. B. (1998). Recognizing spoken words: The neighbourhood activation model. Ear & Hearing, 19, 1–36.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., Theakston, A., & Tomasello, M. (2005). The role of frequency in the acquisition of English word order. Cognitive Development, 20, 121–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, D., Lieven, E., Theakston, A., & Tomasello, M. (2007). French children's use and correction of weird word orders: A constructivist account. Journal of Child Language, 32, 381–409.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naigles, L. (1990). Children use syntax to learn verb meanings. Journal of Child Language, 17, 357–374.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naigles, L. (1996). The use of multiple frames in verb learning via syntactic bootstrapping. Cognition, 58, 221–251.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Naigles, L., & Kako, E. (1993). First contact: Biases in verb learning with and without syntactic information. Child Development, 64, 1665–1687.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
New, B., Pallier, C., Ferrand, L., & Matos, R. (2001). Une base de données lexicales du français contemporain sur internet: LEXIQUE. L'Année Psychologique, 101, 447–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nespor, M., & Vogel, I. (1986). Prosodic phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Rizzi, L. (2006). Grammatically-based target-inconsistencies in child language. University of Connecticut Occasional Papers in Linguistics, 4, 19–49.Google Scholar
Tomasello, M. (1998). Response to commentators. Journal of Child Language, 25, 485–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 74, 209–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomlin, R. S. (1986). Basic word order: Functional principles. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Wexler, K. (1998). Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation of the optional infinitive stage. Lingua, 106, 23–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar