20. One argument against a semantically based stage-1 was that from the very beginning, children’s productive multi-word speech (MLU= 2+) yielded Inflectional plurals {+s} and gerund {+ing} endings—the first two morphemes to be acquired according to Brown’s morpho-sequencing list. These endings were only attached to syntactic categorial word-classes: e.g., {s} to nouns, {ing} to verbs, etc. There seemed to be no attempt by the young child to generalize such inflections onto pure semantic categories. In other words, if children’s word classes at this stage-1 were thematic, rather than syntactic innature, we would expect that specific inflections would be distributed along semantico-thematic lines: e.g., plural {s} to agent, gerund {ing} to action words, etc. (Radford 1990, 41). Such findings are not reported in the data. It was this absence of semantically based grammars which led discussions about possible a priori innate grammatical categories, a grammar based on a syntax (without meaning) rather than a syntax based on semantics (meaning) (cf. general vs. special nativism). Although it is indeed correct to suggest that there seem to be no purely semantically based Inflections at stage-1, one argument against the conclusion of the claim, and seemingly in support of a semantically-based stage-1, would be to suggest that, in fact, most utterances at this stage are instances of formulaic constructions. Only at a later stage-2 would we find instances of real productive inflection—viz., even though on the surface, inflection appears to be utilized at stage-1, the surface structure only mimic input driven phonological patterns. 21. This ‘mixed bag’ of a grammatical stage is indeed an argument against ‘too-strong-of-claim’ syntactic-based model of early grammar (assuming that a syntactic version holds as a buttress for Continuity—we shall take some comfort in it however due to the fact that this strong claim we take will be short lived and relegated to the very earliest of grammatical stages: (=MLU below 2). There is a caveat here. One argument, however, against interpreting from no evidence-namely, the observation that no inflection shows up on argument-themes might be the following: If our stage-1 were in fact formulaic, and not rule-based, then there indeed would be no utterance of an improper formulaic inflection attached to a semantic category simply because this would not have been available in the phonological input. Formula constructions come out of the input in a highly regular manner—based on high frequency, saliency and churn out as formulaic un-analyzable chunks. (See 40 for an account of apparently correct parameterized word order found at an otherwise non-parameterized stage of acquisition). 22. The argument could run as follows. The fact that children at stage-1 never produce e.g., the action- inflection ‘-ing’ to semantically classed action-words like *up-ing/down-ing/over-ing/on-ing, etc. merely indicates that such strings are not part of the available input (particularly note worthy given that our stage- 1 is semi-formulaic in nature). It will be argued that the very earliest of stages (stage-1), addressed herein, is indeed the very earliest of staged developmental grammar—what may have been even termed a-grammatical in previous theories (viz., the one word stage (cf. Atkinson, 1992; Radford, 1990; among others). Let it be known that I am all too ready to acknowledge and agree that language is indeed built upon pure syntax at our stage-2 of development, (and not on semantics): the classic evidence for a syntactic-based language at the earliest stages has been taken from the child’s inflectional system at work on the basis of grammatical categories. Notwithstanding early attempts to cast syntactic analyses to early stages of language, there has been attempts in the child language acquisition literature to construct a dual model for stage-1 based on (i) semantico-thematic relations on one hand, and (ii) categorial syntax on the other. This hybrid model has been considered as a lexical-thematic stage-1 of child language acquisition where mere semantic properties tied together those lexical syntactic categories void of any functional material (as related to the functional categories IP & CP). The most fully articulated version of this hybrid theory could be found in Radford (1990): 23. The question is then put to us in the following form:Is there any evidence at the earliest phases of stage-1 (say MLU<2) that the child actually analyzes strings as a syntactic structure—as opposed to a formulaic speech-utterance (i) which may be tethered to a variety of gradient meanings, and (ii) which may reduce to mere surface-level syntactic phenomena)? In other words, what may appear on the surface as syntax proper, may in all actuality simply be a result of the surface formulae learned and that real tacit syntactic knowledge is not represented. There seems to be little that hinges on the possible alternatives: If, on the one hand, we consider such semi-formula as syntax proper-making our stage-1 (MLU<2) a syntactic stage—then so be it. We are then forced to reconciling our syntactic stage-1 to the one word stage as previously thought and nothing is lost. If, on the other hand, a lexical-thematic stage-1 involved itself with bridging this narrowing gap between formula and syntax—then so be it. The benefits we have gained by adapting this measure is that it allows us a nice continuity bridge onto the later phrases of stage-1 (MLU +2). 24. One interesting by-product of such a lexical-thematic stage-1 is that it doesn’t specify Word Order: being traditionally tied to functional parameterization (see Atkinson, 1992; Tsimpli, and Galasso, 1999). Coming on the heels of such semantic-based models of language acquisition, claims have been made suggesting that the cause of a semantic stage-1 is due to memory deficits. As part of a Maturational time-table, the child starts off with a very limited memory attention span—this memory deficit (maturational based) triggers the more ‘robust & primitive’ semantic-lexical level of language (since the lexical component is more salient) to kick start productive communication (see Newport’s ‘Less-is- More Hypothesis’, S. Felix’s non-UG/cognitive approach to L2 learning, as well as J. Elman’s work in relation to connectionism. For evolutionary accounts, see Bickerton’s Proto-language, 1990). Less-is-More Hypothesis. According to Newport’s ‘Less-is-More’ Hypothesis, a Radfordian style maturational time-table—dividing our stage-1 from stage-2—would be linked to ‘working memory’ deficits: Stage-1 starts with early limited memory and thus can solely rely on the more primitive and robust rote-learned and formulaic structures. (One needn’t say that all possible structures at stage-1 are rote or formula—let it suffice to say that the flavor of the stage suggests little if any evidence for ‘true- rule’ formations or parameterizations, citing stage-1 variant Word Orders and null INFLections). This handicap of low memory actually works as an advantage for the child in that it serves to constrain the perceived input to basic degree-0 SV(X) structures—the structures are ready-made by the lower-level cognitive processes and made available to the stage-1 child. Lower-level memory seeks out idiomatic lexical-based categories or lexical based morphemes as opposed to functional, syntactic based morphemes/categories (termed ‘l’-morphemes’ vs. ‘f’-morphemes respectively by Pesetsky (1995) as understood in Distributional Morphology (see §50). (N.B. Felix (1981) as well as Krashen claim that it is precisely this over-production of the cognitive apparatus/high memory that makes second language learning so fraught with difficulty—having to ‘learn’ language overtly instead of naturally ‘acquiring’ it in a natural setting.) 25. We can better frame arguments that claim for a cognitive/memory dependence for language acquisition by addressing the very nature of syntax. First, syntax requires much more in the way of computational memory. (Or perhaps the question is better framed conversely—viz., more memory forces the computation to reorganize itself by way of syntax.) The emergence of syntax coincides with the onset of higher (quantity) amounts of language material—i.e., a higher number of memorized words/strings leading to longer and a richer complexity of sentences, etc. For instance, Degree-zero structures (say, basic SV sentences, order irrelevant) come at the expense of lower memorizations, while, et vice versa, Degree-1 structures, (embeddings, binding, recursiveness) come at a much higher cost with regards to memorization. Why is that? Well, in one manner of speaking the reason is self serving: simply due to the fact that in order to have a degree-1 sentence, the empirical (maturational) data dictates that a child must have, at some prior time, gone through a degree-0 stage, a process that mirrors memorization capacity. But more to the point, the reason for this mental/computational juggling has to do with how our brains go about making the most out of our limited memory capacity. The very nature of these high amounts of material forces a shift in how the brain can process (parse) the material. It is believed in the neuro- linguistic community that the shift here—both in the quantity and quality of language—triggers the already over burdened process of rote-learning and memorization to be lifted, triggering the share of burden to be replaced by rule-based processes (variables, categories, etc.). Such rule-based learning frees up space in the lexical component of the brain (say, the list of words stored) and allows new routes to be mapped. In other words, such a huge volume of material forces new ways of organizing the input (hence, categorization). In sum, the two-prong development as sketched out above might proceed as follows:
26. What syntax allows the brain to do is categorize and form analogies based on the vast amount of input, rather than to memorize and store all input as meaningful chunks (with an associative sound-to-meaning relationship imposed). This results ultimately in a finite array of neuro-linguistic networks in the brain. Hence, in a basic input-output model—similar to what we understand to be happening in behaviorist stimulus and response associative models—quantity of input equates to quality of brain processing. As is evident, the classic enigma (chicken and the egg scenario) remains: Is it this newly wired brain which now seeks out the formations of paradigms and variable rules that is responsible for the quantum leap of quality of language, or is it this quality leap in language that somehow drives the changes in the brain? This is tantamount to the classic Nature vs. Nurture debate. My hunch here is that (i) the nature of the raw Data as it is (ii) tied to cognitive processing may be the driving force behind any structural changes that occur in the brain—in other words, language changed the brain and not the other way around. (It may ultimately be impossible to separate the one from the other). But this is only a hunch, and again, it reduces to the same catch-22 scenario (if it is the data that is the driving force behind the change, how do we account for a maturational protracted development, and secondly, surely, how the brain handles and processes the data must be part of the equation for any theory that attempts to account for developmental stages of language). In a certain sense, Newport’s ‘less-is-more’ hypothesis simply restates this same paradox. Regarding architecture and the nature vs. nurture debate, clearly all linguists suppose now that some connection must be made between genes and environment Thus, a two-staged development follows:
27. Radford (2001) more recently has gone on the record as saying that the Language Faculty specifies a universal set of features—namely, that a child acquiring language has to learn which subset of these features are assembled into the lexical items as +universal (all other features awaiting parameterization via a maturational timetable). The problem for the child is assembling the features into lexical items. To a certain degree, the child needs to build-up lexical items feature at a time (see Clahsen’s Lexical Learning Hypothesis). Thus, the issue for Radford is that there are innate architectural principles—loosely referred to as an Innate Grammar Construction Algorithm—which determine how lexical items project into syntactic structures. This begs the following question: How much of this initial learning deficit cited for our lexical stage-1 is owed to the child’s protracted language development being exclusively tied to a maturational based low-scope cognitive template—a potentially semantic based template upon which later formal abstract categories (such as functional categories) can be mapped? It is clear at least that more abstract functional categories come on-line later in the course of development. 28. General vs. Special Nativism. This is a nice place to pause and examine the role that our lower-scope cognitive processes might play in deciphering between Stage-1 vs. stage-2 grammar. In brief, there are two schools of thinking on this, both of which could maintain general ties to a Chomskyan paradigm. One school takes an evolutionary stance (Pinker & Bloom) and basically claims that lexical learning leading to grammaticalization is heavily based on what are preexisting cognitive constraints (much in the manner of former Piagetian models of language development). Such linguists would disagree with the notion that a special module in the brain must exist in order for language to manifest. Recall, Chomsky in his strongest claims suggests that the Language Faculty (LF) is an independent autonomous organ found somewhere in the mind/brain (similar to say the liver or the stomach) and that this LF organ shares very little in the way of general cognitive processes—a language module all to its own and without common lineages to other regions or modules of the brain. This notion is referred to in the language acquisition literature as a Double Disassociation Hypothesis (disassociation between formal language and cognition) (see Smith and Tsimpli for some discussion). The second anti-Neo-Darwinian position suggests that a special module in the brain is required for language, and that language learning can be accounted for by reduced/non-cognitive means. 29. Regarding the debate over General vs. Special Nativism, it is still unclear how the debate should be viewed. Much of the argument quickly degenerates into the classic aforementioned ‘chicken-and-the- egg’ dilemma of being circular in nature: e.g., (i) The Special Nativist claims that the child first needs syntax to uncover the underlying semantics (syntactic-bootstrapping), while (ii) The General nativist insures that in order to properly construct a syntax category in the first place, general properties of (inherent) cognitive-semantics must be observed (semantic-bootstrapping). (Interesting, Chomsky’s most recent work on Minimalism suggest that there may be economical constraints on language processing (from out of Logical Form). While it is still unclear how to interpret the wide range of claims on the minimalist table, and Chomsky himself often remains agnostic at these levels of inquiry, such economic constraints could be interpreted as indeed not pertaining to consideration of pure syntax, and rather adhering to more cognitive levels of processing: e.g., Minimalist notions of shortest move, minimal amount of rules, and to a certain degree, the objective essence behind the (PF) phonological form of language as versus the (LF) logic form, etc.). On one hand however, it seems to me that a dualist approach to acquisition (as presented herein) would initially favor a first order semantic-bootstrapping view, given that semantics seem to play an essential role in language acquisition early on before the onset of syntax. (There is no conclusion drawn here, as nothing argued in this paper hinges on that debate). 30.
Well, the above passage makes for a nice analogy, but it merits a closer look. When I look at this cup of coffee in front of me, reach out for it, anddrink its contents, it certainly appears to me that I do little more than what my own cognitive abilities lets me achieve—I don’t perform any ‘abstract rule’ formulations, procedures as such, although, I do agree that one could possibly uncover all of the aforementioned procedural content coming together such as e.g., Gestalt psychology, visual cortex processing, contextual/meta-linguistic background of say [+liquid] => drink => mouth, along with muscle motor coordination that allows me to see into space reaching and holding the cup without breaking the glass (etc.). In face of all this possible theory, it remains somewhat natural for me to maintain the idea that when I see a tree, I just see a tree (period). But much has come out of Gestalt theory in the past (being somewhat reframed here in the present context of connectionism) that suggests there may be something to this very natural notion of just seeing after all. Gestalt theory on perception states that there are first-order perceptions in which, say, a child might see a line or a slope in a strict iconic representation of the visual field. No rules apply—and there is a strict Stimulus and Response (S&R) equation involved. Regarding language acquisition, this first-order representation could be illustrated by the early onset of vowel recognition (i.e., environmental sound)—and not sound as filtered through assimilation processes, etc. (as seen in the u-shaped model below). At a later stage of perception, second-order perceptions allow the child to break iconic mappings and allow lines, slopes, etc. to begin to be seen (with less vividness) as e.g., a chair—now, a larger, somewhat more generic unit, which embodies the lower level visual stimuli. It seems to be the case that the role of second-order perceptions is to pull and frame larger aspects of Objects and Events—in linguistic terms, forming Nouns (out of the former) and Verbs (out of the latter). So regarding language, we should be clear that by the time a child reaches the very first stages of language development—where a child is said to begin producing single word utterances—s/he has already moved from the first-order perceptual field into a second-order field. So, the idea that children may have some means to rules, perhaps bootstrapped from Gestalt psychology (the General Nativist Position) may not be totally implausible. However, and more to our point, Newport’s ‘Less-is-More’ hypothesis just as well could be interpreted to fit Gestalt findings: when memory/cognitive capacity is low, children see in a fixed iconic manner, and when memory/cognitive capacity increases, the child reorganized the visual field and must begin to classify according to class—e.g., the child sees a chair (second-order) as opposed to a chaotic string of lines and slopes, etc. So, roughly, the theme throughout holds—memory/cognitive capacity drives computational order. One way though to save our nice analogy is by pinning it down (to a narrow application) to issues surrounding Lexical S&R behaviorism vs. Functional rule-based grammar. Surely, the spirit of the analogy is well taken. Yes, iff (if and only if) I ever saw one tree, I could adhere and maintain an exclusive iconic S&R process; it is when I look and see another tree that I must compare notes and begin to re-organize both visual trees into a class of ‘Tree’ (using Plato’s terminology). Again, Newport’s theme above holds in that too much information, in this case the second tree, forces an adjustment in the computation—corresponding to our data drive axiom. In other words, on one basic and primitive level (order-1), visual transmission is nothing more than sensory input directly stimulating the sensory cortex). However, at a more abstract and functional level (order-2), perception is not fully determined by sensory input, but is dependent on intervening processes of Gestalt psychology. Hence, a dual mechanism account likewise credits a purely cognitive behavior such as vision as having two distinct modes of processing—(i) Bottom-up sensory-driven Transmission and (ii) Top down context-driven Perception. These two approaches could nicely map onto our analogous dichotomy between Skinner and S&R style learning vs. Chomsky’s rule-based symbolic style learning. So, our emerging linguistic schism separating Derivational morphological processes from Inflectional processes may not be a schism relegated to language per se, but may actually be operative in separating other lower-level cognitive procedures as well. Discontinuity: A Lexical-Thematic stage-1 31. It is now widely reported in the literature that children generally go through a stage during which they optionally project Functional Categories: e.g., Determiner Phrases (DP), Finite Main Verb Phrases which mark Tense (TP), Infinitive and Agreement markings such as infinitive-‘to’ (IP), and 3person/present /singular {s} (AgrP) (respectively). Wexler (1994) refers to this stage as the Optional Infinitive stage. In more general terms regarding Inflection, Wexler’s ‘Optional Infinitive’ stage has recently been more accurately characterized as an ‘Optional Inflection’ stage (see Radford & Galasso 1998). More importantly, a picture seems to emerge in the investigation of early child speech that shows an even earlier stage of development—a stage in which the overall deficit well exceeds any notion of Infinitive/Inflectional Optionality. Mainly speaking, there seems to exist a stage-1 in the course of child language acquisition —briefly peaking at around two years of age with MLUw well below 2.5 and then quickly falling off—which indicates ‘No Inflection’ whatsoever. What might have been too hastily claimed a stage-1 in Wexler’s terms, must now be relegated to a stage-2 in Radford & Galasso’s terms. It so happens that Wexler has been a leading proponent of maturational-based theories of language acquisition, so supporting arguments for Continuity based on the optionality data as presented by Wexler and his colleges don’t get a fair play. Likewise interpretations regarding our own work here would most certainly solicit continuity in getting at fair play—that is, however, only if it were the case that Wexler’s stage-1 indeed simply equated to our stage-1. As it turns out, it doesn’t. Our stage-1 is much more systematically avoid of functional material. In other words, Wexler’s OI-model doesn’t offer us a solid, foul-proof discontinuity model. By definition, ‘optionality’ suggest that the child has some working tacit competence of the adult target grammar—it may only be that the performance level or mastery of such competence is lacking. Certainly, this is a far cry from any possible notion of a ‘strong discontinuity’ theory. 32. One Continuity argument could run as follows. Since, the child at the earliest of conceivable syntactic stages is already marking Inflection (albeit optionally), then there is no justifiable reason to assume (even as the null hypothesis) that child’s grammar is Discontinuous with the adult target grammar. (In this sense, the dual mechanism apparatus has established itself from the get-go, and thus, no child-to-adult discontinuity has to be assumed). The differences found between the child’s grammar and adult target grammar would not be significantly real, in developmental language terms, and could be readily accounted for by a variety of superficial means—such as e.g., saliency conditions, morphological feature spell-out conditions, parameter miss-settings, phonological complexity and general immature cognitive factors bringing about the memory deficits of such non-salient phonological features. Having said this, a very different scenario emerges if indeed our stage-1 is a stage that precedes optionality by showing ‘no inflection’ whatsoever. In such a scenario, a discontinuity hypothesis now seems to emerge as the null hypothesis, as previously cited above, yielding to highly universal biological considerations. My own data (a syntactically-coded naturalistic corpus of well over 10,000 analyzable utterances) presented in the following sections, taken from Radford & Galasso (1998) & Galasso (1999), demonstrate this two- prong stage of acquisition, the consequence of which will buttress our calls for Discontinuity. (N.B. It goes without saying that by postulating a ‘dual mechanism model’ for adult language systems, any working theory claiming a stage in which a child starts-off with a truncated ‘single model’ (for stage-1) would be tantamount to discontinuity). The Inflection {‘s’} 33. In examining the ‘portmonteau’-morpheme {s}, the data provide (prima facie) evidence of some relation between the acquisition of Possessive {‘s} and the Third person singular {s}. At our stage-1, there is no evidence of the inflectional marker across the board, it is only with the onset of our so labeled ‘Stage-2’ (from age 3,2 onward) that we begin to see Wexler’s notion of optionality kick-in. The table 3 below shows the relative frequency of use of Poss(essive) {‘s} and 3Psing {s} in obligatory contexts before and after age 3;2: Table 3 Occurrence of Inflection {s} in Obligatory Contexts
Token sentence examples of the two-staged data are presented below (respectively):
34. But more importantly, they also suggest that whatever discontinuity is at work in the child’s grammar, it seems to manifest across the board in a systematic way. In other words, the lack of inflection here is not categorical specific, but rather is realized across categories affecting both DP and IP alike. It seems that Poss and 3PS {s} at our stage-1 both reflect general catastrophic agreement failure. Certainly, any notion of a real child-to-adult discontinuity would want to be expressed in such absolute terms—as opposed to any Optional-based theory which might be corned into spinning arguments from what on the surface would appear as mere non-mastery and under-specification of Continuity into arguments for real Discontinuity. As was expressed above, both deficits could be captured by a lack of Agreement—a functional property of adult grammar. Consider then the phrase structure discontinuity of the two stages below:
35. It is argued herein that both possessive {‘s} and third person {s} are reflexes of an agreement relation between an inflectional head and its specifier-and any omission reflects an agreement failure. The specific issue at hand here is that only an absolute omission stage-as seen with our stage-1—would provide support for true discontinuity. Any optionality here, e.g., [+/- agr] would play directly into the hands of Continuity theories with the mere additional disclaimer that the adult target grammar has indeed been acquired, but simply not mastered. (See Wexler & Schütze (1996) for treatments of under-specification of Agr as would be encountered in our stage-2 data). Possessors 36. In a similar vain, we find additional support for a non-target grammar in the wake of data showing Case errors e.g., with possessors (enter alia). The assumption that children’s possessive structures may be initially (i) non-specified, and then later (ii) (optionally) underspecified with respect to agreement also accounts for the wide array of case errors where children (at stage-1) use the default case of objective possessor (me) and only later come to acquire the target Case of possessor (my), etc. The use of objective possessors e.g., (me) has been reported for Dutch by Hoekstra & Jordens (1994), but not for English. If we look at the earliest first person singular possessor structures produced in the data, we find that objective me possessors predominate at ages 2;6-2;8, and that Genitive possessors (prenominal my and pronominal mine) are initially infrequent (with no cases reported for the use of nominative I for possessor): Table 4 Occurrence of First Person Singular Possessors
37. In terms of the analysis outlined above, the data seem to suggest that the possessive structures produced early on (=stage-1) are predominately not specified for possessor-agreement, with agreement gradually being specific more and more frequently (until it exceeds 90% mastery at age 3;0). While it is true that we can’t argue here for absolute Non-agreement of Case at stage-1 (whereas for the earliest file, age 2;6, we get at least two examples of correct my), this contrast in acquisition—as compared to what we observed earlier regarding the agreement of the morphological inflection {s}—may be a residual effect of the two types of agreement involved: its seems to be the case that true morphological inflection should be the benchmark of agreement and not lexical equivalents e.g., prenominal/pronominal my/mine (respectively) due to the fact that it is always more difficult to tease apart lexical form functional underlying structure and determine if a lexical item is being properly projected as a functional category, or if merely the lexical ‘shell’ is simply phonologically produced ‘rote- learned’. (Also see §50ff regarding such distinctions placed between the two features as understood in Distributional Morphology). The above examples could be expressed by the same type of Phrase structure presented below: Agreement Structure
38. It could be argued that for our stage-1, ‘adult target’ agreement (acting as a functional and formal feature of language) is set to the default via a [-agr] setting and so renders the possessor case objective. The close to 100% omission of adult-like agreement provides additional support for a discontinuity theory between child and adult grammars. Word Order 39 One initial assertion that can be made regarding the possible early insensitivity of verbs towards their appropriate position within a sentence has come from early MLU data. For instance, many naturalistic studies of early language development suggest that rather than generating structure via abstract g rammatical generalizations, children may actually be tethering their grammars to individual lexical items with respect to functional elements auxiliaries (Kuczaj & Maratsos, 1993, Pine & Lieven, 1997); determiners (Pine & Lieven, 1997) and pronouns (Pine & Baldwin, 1997). Data on early verb/argument structure (see Radford 1990: pp. 213-17 for stage-1 examples) suggest that early MLU verb classes may not adhere to appropriate SVO argument structure in the sense that target transitive verbs take obligatory object arguments. Radford cites very early two-word structures of the I/(me) want, Her hit, type where the direct objects required presence in adult speech go missing. Such deficits might suggest the children’s initial knowledge of verb-argument structure to be developed around individual verbs (and not verb type). In addition, semantic over-extensions of Intransitive verbs of the ‘Me sleeped teddy’ type (=sleeped, slept>put to bed) may likewise show over-extensions on an individual verb basis (Tomasello, 1992), or individual frame-basis (Braine, 1976), but show little evidence that the extension carries over to the entire verb class. In view of these data, it remains questionable whether or not children’s very earliest MLU staged grammar operates with abstract, rule-based representations at all—e.g., [+/-] Verb Transitivity. More specific to English SV(X) word order, some questions regarding rule-based word order parameterization for early MLU speech have been formulated. Atkinson (1992) (following the work of Susan Goldin-Meadow with deaf children and ‘Home Sign’) suggests that there may be no theoretical reason to stipulate for a correct target word order at, say, a pre-parameterized stage of development. If children have an inherent abstract understanding of predicate-argument structure (cf. Valian, 1991), they should then be able to understand the differences between the subject and object of a transitive verb and how to apply this to word order. 40 Although traditional naturalistic studies have typically shown that correct SVO word order usually appears early on in the data (Brown, Cazden, and Bellugi-Klima (1968), Bloom, 1970; Brown, 1973; Radford, 1990), there is mounting literature to suggest otherwise (e.g., Braine, 1971; Bowerman, 1973; Tsimpli, 1992; Galasso, 1999). Mixed word order data to this effect suggest that there may be a very small window in the chronological development of language that doesn’t reflect target word order—i.e. a pre-SV(X) stage for English. In addition, the fact that early child English seems to provide us with correct word order recognition may be accounted for by means other than linguistic motivation—e.g., non- linguistic, (and perhaps cognitive-based) sequencing strategies based on formulaic aspects of the input, etc. (cf. Atkinson, 1992). Recall that the ‘U-shape’ learning discussed herein shows how possible surface similarities may actually have very different underpinning structural realizations—e.g., (i) went (formulaic) => (ii) go-ed (rule based), => (iii) went (rule insertion). While went in (i) and (iii) look identical on the surface, they are actually products of two very different processes. Other various studies on novel/non-sense verbs similarly reveal a small window in the duration of staged speech development that gleams word order errors (Olguin & Tomasello, 1993; Akhtar & Tomasello, 1997). The child’s inability to generalize correct word order to novel verbs suggests that word order, at this early MLU stage, may be learned on a ‘low-scope’ memorization level one verb at a time rather than via a rule- based ‘high-scope’ parameterization process. Thus, it remains unclear whether or not children’s very early MLU speech should be credited with having rule-based processes/parameterizations for determining word order. If not, a special nativist position could still be maintained in the sense that functional parameterization has not yet taken place (cf. Atkinson op. cit). In light of a potential stage-1 non-parameterization account for free word order, strong arguments could be devised suggesting that instances of free word order, in fact, demonstrate the early onset of abstract rules—if we take ‘rules’ here to mean the setting (or non-setting) of parameters. Such arguments would counter the general claims being made (cf. Tomasello, Rowland and Pine (ibid)) that stage-1 is more or less entirely rote-learned. The fact that we do find word order errors call for some level of formal rule abstraction—much in the manner of the U-shape learning model discussed above. 41. Keeping to the spirit of Chomsky’s Minimalist Program regarding Word Order, we would like to maintain Richard Kayne’s proposal that word order is indeed a universal hierarchical property of a Spec>Head>Comp relation. One could perhaps go as far as to make the very strong claim that SVO mirrors cognition, and thus a universal order of Subject-Verb-Object is innately given. In any event, Kayne’s universal constraint is seen as keeping to the spirit of Chomsky’s innateness hypothesis, and so we’ll take it as the null hypothesis here and see where we go with it. However, we can only possibly adhere to it insofar as the empirical data bear it out—and it is here that we instantly run into some difficulties. Mainly speaking, if we want to maintain a universal SVO order, we therefore must do so at that stage of development where the child in fact has access to Double Argument String structures (DAS). For instance, a prior Single Argument String stage (=SAS) would have no way of showing the appropriate Spec and Comp distributions. Well, when looking at a good cross section of child acquisition data, it appears that there is no strong evidence pointing to an exclusive SAS stage—(without some small amount of DASs interceding). While this may be the case, a stage does evidence in the data where at least the majority of utterances are indeed not only SASs, but that such SASs show variable word orders amongst the Subject/Object and Verb—rendering SV, VS, OV, VO orders. It is at this juncture that we have to weaken Kayne’s strong universal claim for an SVO order as correlated to his Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA), and say that such an axiom only holds for a child at (DAS) stage-2 of development—again, a stage roughly corresponding with the (albeit optional) emergence of abstract rule formulations and functional categories, both which lead to Parameterization. So in one full sweep, what we have done is somewhat preserve Chomsky’s original version of a word order based on Functional Parameterization (pace Kayne’s strong stance for a non-parameterized word order based on his universal LCA) and have added a further Kaynian stipulation by saying that LCA may only work, rendering all structures as base generated SVO orders only after a pre-cursor parameterization has taken place positioning the Object either Leftward or Rightward of the Verb—now providing two basic universal orders: SVO and (the mirror image) OVS: (of course, the latter order is very rare as a base-generated order, though some have claimed Japanese as an OVS base order, and then, via subject movement, derive an SOV order (fn). In any event, Kayne is explicit in stating that his Head Medial Principle, (stipulating that a Head/Verb must remain in middle position and one of the tenets of his axiom) would conceivably permit the four word orders above to be accessed by a child in a SAS stage-1 |
