Jennifer Ryan Hsu

The development of grammars underlying children's interpretation of complex sentences

Abstract It is argued that childrens knowledge of the structure of multiple clause sentences and the rules governing control of missing complement subjects (PRO) can be described in terms of four grammar types which constitute separate developmental stages. These grammar types are believed to develop following an initial stage when children rely on a strategy to interpret multiple clause sentences. In order to test this hypothesis, 64 children ranging from 3;2 to 8;3 years of age were interviewed on four separate occassions. During the first interview a spontaneous language sample was collected and a Developmental Sentence Score (DSS), a measure of grammatical development, was obtained for each child. During the second and third interviews each child was askedto act out a total of 45 complex sentences. Fifty of the children returned for a fourth interview which included an acting out task and a judgment task. The five stages were associated, a priori, with specific patterns of control and the children were classified according to either grammar type or use of the initial strategy on the basis of their response patterns to a selected set of the 45 experimental constructions. The hypothesis of the four grammar types and their sequential development was supported by the fact that the children belonging to each grammar type differed significantly with respect to age and DSS scores. Furthermore, all the means were sequentially ordered in the predicted direction. Tests involving the relationship of grammar type to (1) reliability of response patterns across interviews, and (2) ability to identify semantically deviant sentences provided independent support for the theory of the four grammar types. There was only limited support for the existence of the initial stage.

Control and Coreference in Early Child Language.

This study investigated the relationship between control and coreference using an act-out task involving 81 children ranging in age from 3.1 to 8.0 and eight adults ranging in age from 30 to 55. The results replicated previous findings in revealing five developmental stages in childrens interpretation of PRO, an empty pronominal element. A significant relationship was observed in the patterns of childrens interpretation of forwards sentences containing PRO and those containing overt pronouns. However, there was no relationship in the development of restrictions on control and restrictions on coreference.

When do children avoid backwards coreference

This study investigated the claim that very young children avoid backwards coreference in their interpretation of sentences containing pronouns. Eighty-one children ranging in age from 3;1 to 8;0 and eight adults acted out four types of pronominal sentences. Cross-sectional data and individual response patterns reveal that children initially prefer internal coreference even when such a response is disallowed for structural reasons. Avoidance of backwards coreference appears to be a late developing phenomenon characteristic of six-year-olds. Adult response patterns, which are manifested by some very young children, emerge as the dominant pattern by age seven.

Interpreting PRO: From Strategy to Structure

A FUNDAMENTAL characteristic of the comprehension of language by the adult is that it is highly decontextualized. The interpretation of sentences is based on knowledge of the individual lexical items and the structural relationships among those items. Thus, the adult can interpret a sentence without the aid of context or real world knowledge. In fact, if such knowledge is at variance with the meaning that is derived from a structural analysis, as illustrated in (1) below, then the sentence will not be misunderstood, but, rather, will be perceived as bizarre. Young children, however, differ from adults in this regard. Initially, they apparently rely heavily on context and conventional action to interpret the sentences that they hear (Chapman 1978; Chapman and Kohn 1977; Clark, 1973). Even after they have learned something about linguistic structure, young children will often rely on plausibility for sentence interpretation. Thus, a child of four who can correctly understand sentences such as (2) may interpret (3) to mean that the mommy fed the baby (Strohner and Nelson 1974).

When-questions: A study of how children linguistically encode temporal information

Sixty children between the ages of 4 and 7 years and 10 adults were presented with a series of stories illustrated by five pictures in a comic strip format. Each story was follwed by either a “when-,” “why-,” or control question. With respect to the “when”-questions, some of the stories involved causally related events while others did not. An analysis of the responses supported the hypotheses that causal relationships play an important role in the development of the ability to encode temporal relationships in response to “when”-questions.

A Reply to "Children Are in Control" (Sherman & Lust, 1993)

A recent paper by Sherman .and Lust (1993) has mischaracterized our theoretical position regarding the acquisition of control structures by children. We do not here seek to respond to any of the details of the study they report in their paper we do, however, need to set the record straight with respect to our published theoretical position. Sherman and Lust claim that we “propose that children’s initial . . . ‘grammars’ are discontinuous with the adult grammar with regard to control. Specifically . . . UG [universal grammar] may determine the adult competence for control, but ‘strategies’ determine the child’s interpretation of control structures. The term ‘strategies’ here refer to the application of non-grammatical heuristics for sentence interpretation.” They go on to contrast our (putative) view with theirs, which is a continuity theory in which UG constrains children’s grammars from the beginning. In a paper published 8 years ago (Hsu, Cairns, & Fiengo, 1985), two of us did suggest a “strategy” analysis of children’s interpretation of control structures. However, that theoretical position was explicitly rejected in McDaniel and Cairns