ABSTRACT

Previous research suggests that toddlers can rely on distributional cues in the input to track adjacent and nonadjacent grammatical dependencies. It remains unclear whether toddlers understand the hierarchical phrase structures that determine the corresponding grammatical dependencies. We addressed this question by testing toddlers on two different phrase structures in French that govern distinct patterns of grammatical gender feature agreement. We first show that the two structures are in fact extremely infrequent in children’s input. Then we report on a preferential looking experiment in which French-learning 30-month-olds were presented with French sentences in the two structures, and the grammaticality of the feature agreement was manipulated. Crucially, the contrasting structures contained the same sequentially ordered feature-bearing words in our design (e.g., correct agreement: La banane _FEMININE dans le chapeau _MASCLINE, elle _FEMININE … ‘The banana in the hat, it …’; incorrect agreement: *La banane _FEMININE et le chapeau _MASCLINE, elles _FEMININE … ‘The banana and the hat, they …’). Thus, children must go beyond those words and distinguish the structures hierarchically in order to determine the grammaticality of the different agreement patterns. We predicted that if toddlers rely solely on input support to acquire the structures and the agreement, they should show no discrimination of feature grammaticality. If, however, they can rely on mechanisms beyond linear input, such as the principle of structure dependence in the universal grammar (UG), they should show a grammaticality effect. The results confirmed the latter prediction, demonstrating the possible influence of the learner’s internal system, suggesting that UG knowledge might guide early language development.

摘要

先前的研究表明，幼儿可以依靠输入中的分布提示来跟踪相邻和不相邻的语法依存关系。尚不清楚幼儿是否理解确定相应语法依赖性的分层短语结构。我们通过用两种不同的法语短语测试幼儿来解决这个问题，这两种短语结构控制着语法性别特征一致的不同模式。我们首先表明，这两种结构实际上在儿童的输入中非常少见。然后，我们报告了一个看起来很喜欢的实验，该实验中在两个结构中都向法语学习30个月大的孩子展示了法语句子，并且操纵了特征约定的语法。至关重要的是香格里拉banane _FEMININE 丹斯乐起首 _MASCLINE，ELLE _FEMININE ...... “帽子里的香蕉，这......”; 不正确的协议：*拉banane _FEMININE 等文件起首 _MASCLINE，埃尔斯 _FEMININE……“香蕉和帽子，他们……”）。因此，孩子们必须超越这些单词，并按层次区分结构，以便确定不同协议模式的语法性。我们预测，如果幼儿仅依靠输入支持来获取结构和协议，则他们不应表现出对特征语法的歧视。但是，如果他们可以依靠线性输入以外的机制（例如通用语法（UG）中的结构依存性原理），则它们应该显示出语法效果。结果证实了后者的预测，表明了学习者内部系统的可能影响，表明UG知识可能指导早期语言发展。