Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T17:01:40.776Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Representations of abstract grammatical feature agreement in young children*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2015

ANDRÉANE MELANÇON  and
RUSHEN SHI
ANDRÉANE MELANÇON*
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal
RUSHEN SHI*
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal
*
Address for correspondence: Andréane Melançon ([email protected]) and Rushen Shi ([email protected]), Département de Psychologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, C.P. 8888, Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Qc. H3C 3P8.
Address for correspondence: Andréane Melançon ([email protected]) and Rushen Shi ([email protected]), Département de Psychologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, C.P. 8888, Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Qc. H3C 3P8.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A fundamental question in language acquisition research is whether young children have abstract grammatical representations. We tested this question experimentally. French-learning 30-month-olds were first taught novel word–object pairs in the context of a gender-marked determiner (e.g., unMASCravole ‘a ravole’). Test trials presented the objects side-by-side while one of them was named in new phrases containing other determiners and an adjective (e.g., leMASCjoli ravoleMASC ‘the pretty ravole’). The gender agreement between the new determiner and the non-adjacent noun was manipulated in different test trials (e.g., leMASC__ravoleMASC; *laFEM__ravoleMASC). We found that online comprehension of the named target was facilitated in gender-matched trials but impeded in gender-mismatched trials. That is, children assigned the determiner genders to the novel nouns during word learning. They then processed the non-adjacent gender agreement between the two categories (Det, Noun) during test. The results demonstrate abstract featural representation and grammatical productivity in young children.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 42 , Issue 6 , November 2015 , pp. 1379 - 1393
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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.)

Footnotes

[*]

This research was supported by NSERC, SSHRC, and CFI grants to the second author. We thank all the families who participated. We also thank Mireille Babineau, Julie Raymond, and Camille Bédard for research assistance. We are grateful to André Achim for his helpful suggestions during this study.

References

REFERENCES

Cyr, M., & Shi, R. (2013). Development of abstract grammatical categorization in infants. Child Development 84, 617–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dabrowska, E., & Tomasello, M. (2008). Rapid learning of an abstract language-specific category: Polish children's acquisition of the instrumental construction. Journal of Child Language 35, 533–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gerken, L., Wilson, R., & Lewis, W. (2005). Infants can use distributional cues to form syntactic categories. Journal of Child Language 32, 249–68.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gómez, R. L. (2002). Variability and detection of invariant structure. Psychological Science 13, 431–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gómez, R. L., & Lakusta, L. (2004). A first step in form-based category abstraction by 12-month-old infants. Developmental Science 7, 567–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Höhle, B., Schmitz, M., Santelmann, L., & Weissenborn, J. (2006). The recognition of discontinuous verbal dependencies by German 19-month-olds: evidence for lexical and structural influences on children's early processing capacities. Language Learning and Development 2, 277–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Höhle, B., Weissenborn, J., Kiefer, D., Schulz, A., & Schmitz, M. (2004). Functional elements in infants’ speech processing: the role of determiners in the syntactic categorization of lexical elements. Infancy 5, 341–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollich, G. (2005). Supercoder: a program for coding preferential looking (Version 1.5) [Computer Software]. West Lafayette: Purdue University.Google Scholar
Johnson, E. K. (2005). Grammatical gender and early word recognition in Dutch. In Brugis, A., Clark-cotton, M. R. & Ha, S. (eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, 320–30. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Lew-Williams, C., & Fernald, A. (2007). Young children learning Spanish make rapid use of grammatical gender in spoken word recognition. Psychological Science 18, 193–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mintz, T. H. (2006). Finding the verbs: distributional cues to categories available to young learners. In Hirsh-Pasek, K. & Golinkoff, R. M. (eds), Action meets word: how children learn verbs, 31–63. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pine, J. M., & Lieven, E. V. M. (1997). Slot and frame patterns and the development of the determiner category. Applied Psycholinguistics 18, 123–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santelmann, L., & Jusczyk, P. (1998). Sensitivity to discontinuous dependencies in language learners: evidence for processing limitations. Cognition 69, 105–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shi, R., & Melançon, A. (2010). Syntactic categorization in French-learning infants. Infancy 15, 517–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition 74, 209–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valian, V. (2009). Abstract linguistic representations and innateness: the development of determiners. In Lewis, W. D., Karimi, S., Harley, H. & Farrar, S.. (Eds.), Time and again: theoretical perspectives on formal linguistics in honor of D. Terence Langendoen, 189–206. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valian, V., Solt, S., & Stewart, J. (2009). Abstract categories or limited-scope formulae? The case of children's determiners. Journal of Child Language 36, 743–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Heugten, M., & Johnson, E. K. (2011). Gender-marked determiners help Dutch learners’ word recognition when gender information itself does not. Journal of Child Language 38, 87–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Heugten, M., & Shi, R. (2009). French-learning toddlers use gender information on determiners during word recognition. Developmental Science 12, 419–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Heugten, M., & Shi, R. (2010). Infants’ sensitivity to non-adjacent dependencies across phonological phrase boundaries. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 128, EL223–28.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Yang, C. (2013). Ontogeny and phylogeny of language. PNAS 110, 6324–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed