Barbara Lust

Early childhood bilingualism leads to advances in executive attention: Dissociating culture and language

This study investigated whether early especially efficient utilization of executive functioning in young bilinguals would transcend potential cultural benefits. To dissociate potential cultural effects from bilingualism, four-year-old U.S. Korean–English bilingual children were compared to three monolingual groups – English and Korean monolinguals in the U.S.A. and another Korean monolingual group, in Korea. Overall, bilinguals were most accurate and fastest among all groups. The bilingual advantage was stronger than that of culture in the speed of attention processing, inverse processing efficiency independent of possible speed-accuracy trade-offs, and the network of executive control for conflict resolution. A culture advantage favoring Korean monolinguals from Korea was found in accuracy but at the cost of longer response times.

Continuity and development in the acquisition of inversion in yes/no questions: dissociating movement and inflection.

This paper examines two- to five-year-old childrens knowledge of inversion in English yes/no questions through a new experimental study. It challenges the view that the syntax for inversion develops slowly in child English and tests the hypothesis that grammatical competence for inversion is present from the earliest testable ages of the childs sentence production. The experimental design is based on the premise that a valid test of this hypothesis must dissociate from inversion various language-specific aspects of English grammar, including its inflectional system. An elicited imitation method was used to test parallel, lexically-matched declarative and question structures across several different verb types in a design which dissociated subject-auxiliary inversion from the English-specific realization of the inflectional/auxiliary system. Using this design, the results showed no significant difference in amount or type of childrens errors between declarative (non-inverted) and question (inverted) sentences with modals or auxiliary be, but a significant difference for sentences with main verbs (requiring reconstruction of inflection through do-support) and copula be. The results from sentences with auxiliary be and those with modals indicate that knowledge of inversion is present throughout our very young sample and does not develop during this time. We argue that these results indicate that the grammar of inversion is present from the youngest ages tested. Our results also provide evidence of development relevant to the English-specific inflectional system. We conclude with a new developmental hypothesis: development in question formation occurs in integrating language-specific knowledge related to inflection with the principles of Universal Grammar which allow grammatical inversion.

On Parameter Setting and Parsing: Predictions for Cross-Linguistic Differences in Adult and Child Processing

Up until now, studies of natural language processing and acquisition in relation to Universal Grammar Chomsky, 1982 and 1987) have been conducted independently to a large degree. When they have been related, e.g. in studies of relations between language learnability and parsability, these studies have mainly argued that learnability and parsability put functional constraints on Universal Grammar. In contrast, in this paper, we will pursue a program of study of the relations between language processing and acquisition which hypothesizes that Universal Grammar itself significantly determines certain aspects of language processing as well as language acquisition. In particular, we will hypothesize that parameter setting in UG has as one deductive consequence, a systematically different organization of parsing across language types. Since we consider that parameter-setting for UG occurs very early, we predict that this differential organization of parsing is a characteristic of processing in very early stages of language acquisition, as well as in the adult

The structure of coordination in first language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese: Evidence for a universal ☆

Abstract This study exemplifies a type of cross-linguistic research which is based on the theory that certain parameters of natural language variation are central to the human competence for language. Sensitivity to these parameters allows the child to develop various specific language structures which follow from setting the parameters. Results of this study provide evidence that children are universally sensitive to one such parameter, namely, Principal Branching Direction. Data are based on results of a standardized elicited imitation test of 68 Chinese children in Taiwan between 2;0 and 4;5 with mean age of 3;3. The test is on a set of coordinate sentences. The results show that children acquiring Mandarin Chinese (a left-branching language) systematically prefer VO sentences with a backward reduction pattern ([V + V]O) over those with a forward reduction pattern (V[O + O]). Childrens responses to SV coordinate sentences differ systematically from their VO responses. They very frequently reduce redundant subjects in a forward direction (in SV sentences) and do not prefer backward reduction ([S + S])V) over forward reduction (S[V + V]) in these SV sentences. This paper suggests an explanation of this apparent paradox in terms of an interaction in early language acquisition between childrens sensitivity to a predominant Chinese topic-comment structure (in SV) and their sensitivity to the abstract, specifically grammatical concept of “Principal Branching Direction”.

Chinese Children's Comprehension of Count-Classifiers and Mass-Classifiers

Two experiments were conducted to test Chinese childrens comprehension of count- and mass-classifiers. The participants for each experiment were 80 Chinese-speaking children between the ages of 3 and 8, plus 16 adults (recruited from Taipei, Taiwan). The results of the study indicate the following points: (1) Chinese children, in early stages of language acquisition (even as young as 3 years), honor the grammatical count-mass distinction which, as suggested by Cheng and Sybesma (1998, 1999), is reflected at the level of the classifier. (2) Chinese children are capable of making fine differentiations between and among a given set of count-classifiers. They know that the relationship between a count-classifier and an entity denoted by a noun is relatively fixed. (3) Chinese childrens abilities in dealing with mass-classifiers are comparable to their abilities in dealing with count-classifiers. (4) Although there are developmental differences across the classifiers tested (presumably due to lexical learning), these differences tend to fade by age 4. (5) The general classifier ge differed in that it does not require that the entity denoted by the noun be of a particular type. This was seen even in adults to some degree. The results of this study cohere with the linguistic analysis proposed by Cheng and Sybesma that the count-mass distinction is in fact relevant in Chinese grammar. These results also cohere with the current theory in cognitive development proposed by Soja, Carey, and Spelke (1991) that the ontological constraint reflected in the count-mass distinction is available in early stages of language acquisition.

Development of coordination in the natural speech of young children.

Natural speech of 32 young children from 2; 0 to 3; 1 (1·97 to 6·38 in MLU) was studied for evidence of use of coordination (by and ). Analyses of the structure of coordinative expressions reflected development in structural variants as well as amount of coordination. Analyses suggested that early forms of coordination in natural speech reflected the same constraints which had been suggested by previous study of these childrens language through an experimental elicited imitation task. A basis for a developmental theory of acquisition of coordination is sketched.

Conjunction reduction in child language

Coordinate conjunction was evaluated in early child language with regard to its structural properties. In a series of four studies, 60 two- and three-year-olds grouped by MLU were studied in an elicited imitation task where in the linguistic form of sentences was varied according to conjunction structure (whether sentential or phrasal) and according to pattern of redundancy deletion in conjunction reduction (whether forward or backward in directionality). Both factors were found to affect childrens imitation. The results suggested specific constraints on the structure of coordination in child language.

Knowledge of Variable Binding in VP–Ellipsis: Language Acquisition Research and Theory Converge

In this paper, we relate results from recent experimental study of young childrens (3;0–7;11) comprehension of coordinate VP–ellipsis structures in English to a new theoretical proposal regarding their representation. Historically, theoretical treatments of these structures have been challenged by the nature of the ambiguity they involve, which includes both a “sloppy” interpretation (represented in terms of a bound variable) and a “strict” interpretation (represented as referential), at the same time that other interpretations are ruled out. Based on our study of language acquisition, we propose a solution capturing the ambiguity in the syntax, including two different types of operator–variable binding (local and long–distance) over a shared coordinate configuration. Pragmatic focus motivates the choice of the syntactic option for the long–distance strict interpretation. Empirical results reveal that, at all ages, (i) the sloppy interpretation is preferred, (ii) the strict interpretation is nevertheless in evidence, (iii) ungrammatical interpretations are ruled out, and (iv) choice of the strict reading is influenced by semantic/pragmatic factors.

Syntactic and Lexical Constraints on the Acquisition of Control in Complement Sentences

There is currently much concern in linguistic theory for the role of the lexicon in the organization of syntax (e.g., Chomsky, 1981, Bresnan, 1982). Current linguistic theory proposes considerable restructuring of the grammar such that the lexical component is greatly expanded. This change in current grammatical theory raises interesting questions for a theory of first language acquisition. In the acquisition of complex syntax, to what degree can and do children depend on lexical knowledge and to what degree do they depend on structure-dependent knowledge, where structure-dependence is specifically determined by the syntactic com-ponent of sentence-grammar?

A Comparison of Null and Pronoun Anaphora in First Language Acquisition

In this paper we report selected results of an experimental study of the acquisition of certain forms of anaphora in first language acquisition of English. The results of this study provide evidence that children who are acquiring English distinguish a phonetically realized pronoun with free anaphora from a null nominal category with bound anaphora in environments such as those shown in 1 and 2. At the same time, however, the data from this study provide evidence that at early language levels children apply general principles to constrain both null and pronoun anaphora similarly in these environments. Specifically (a) children generalize certain grammatical restrictions which hold on free pronoun anaphora as in 1 to hold also on bound null anaphora as in 2; and (b) they fail to observe certain grammatical restrictions which should hold on bound null anaphora as in 2 and not on pronoun anaphora as in 1.