Slides

"The acquisition of syntactic categories in Chinese:
issues of bootstrapping and productivity" *
Thomas Hun-tak Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Email: huntaklee@cuhk.edu.hk
International Workshop on Grammar & Evidence
National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan
April 13-15, 2007
1. Two contrasting positions on the acquisition of syntactic categories
1.1 The nativist position: the Universal Category Hypothesis (Chomsky 1965,
1970, Jackendoff 1977, Wexler and Culicover 1980)
The nativist position as enunciated in Chomsky (1965), termed the Universal
Category Hypothesis by Culicover (1999), assumes that syntactic categories such as
nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions are drawn from the substantive universals of
Universal Grammar, understood to be part of the initial state of the child. These
categorial primitives can be further analyzed as features within the framework of
X-bar theory (Chomsky 1970, Jackendoff 1977, Baker 2003) .
Given language variation, what is hardwired are just the formal category labels, and
not the particular cluster of properties that define them. To bootstrap into the syntax of
their target language, children must figure out the distributional characteristics of the
various syntactic categories of the language.
This boostrapping task could not be accomplished without some built-in biases, such
as the learner's assuming canonical mappings between syntactic categories and the
prototypical meanings of their members, as postulated in the Semantic Bootstrapping
Hypothesis of Pinker (1987).
1.2 The empiricist position: the Contingent Category Hypothesis (Braine 1963,
Bowerman 1976, Maratsos and Chalkley 1980, Culicover 1999, Tomasello 2003)
The empiricist hypothesis on category acquisition, termed the Contingent Category
Hypothesis by Culicover (1999), does not assume innately given syntactic primitives.
Children learn the distributional characteristics of various syntactic categories
inductively, using information such as morphological marking, word order and
semantic/ conceptual primitives.
*
I am indebted to various members of the Hunan Chinese Early Language Acquisition group who contributed to
the recording of the data of two subjects: LSY and AJR, and the transcription of the recordings: Ai Zhaoyang,
Zeng Tao, Huang Aijun, Chen Min, Cai Xin, Chen Feiyan, Liao Hui, Xiao Ling and Yang Jie. Thanks are also due
to Wang Hao for his technical support in the data processing for distributional analysis. We owe special thanks to
Ning Chunyan for his staunch support of acquisition research at Hunan University. The research reported in this
paper was supported by two grants to Thomas Lee, a Research Grants Council grant (CityU 1245/02H), and a
faculty start-up grant of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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In theory, language could vary without limit in the way word classes are formed and
in the features utilized to encode the category. A language may have major categories
with a large membership, such as nouns and verbs, as well as idiosyncratic minor
categories or sub-categories consisting of very few members. The set of syntactic
categories in human language is potentially unbounded.
Empiricist views on the acquisition of syntactic categories have had a long history,
going back to the early pivot grammar of Braine (1963), the limited scope forumulas
of Braine (1976), the semantic-based proposals of Bowerman (1973) and Schlesinger
(1982), the semantic-distributional analysis of Maratsos and Chalkley (1980),
Maratsos (1982), the inductive learning account of MacWhinney (1982) that takes
into account the function of rote-learning, analogy and item-based patterns; and the
more recent usage-based proposal of Tomasello (1992, 2000, 2003) which argue for
the predominance of lexically based patterns rather than abstract categories in early
development.
Very Early Parameter Setting (VEPS): "From the earliest observable ages (around
18 months), children have set their parameters correctly." (Wexler 1998, 2003)
'Do young children have adult syntactic competence" (Tomasello 2000):
"...the 2-year-old child's syntactic competence is comprised totally of verb-specific
constructions with open nominal slots. Other than the categorization of nominals,
nascent language learners possess no other linguistic abstractions or forms of
syntactic organization." (Tomasello 2000:214)
1.3. Arguments in favor of the Universal Category Hypothesis
• Inherent circularity in the definition of syntactic categories (cf. Pinker 1987).
Criteria for the English determiner (Valian 1986):
a) Must appear, if present in NP, pre-Adj or pre-Noun or pre-both.
b) Must not stand alone as sole content of an utterance or phrase.
c) Must not be sequenced (exceptions: certain quantifiers).
Criteria for the Cantonese classifier (Wong 1998:58)
a) A classifier can occur immediately after a determiner, a numeral, or a VP.
b) A classifier usually occurs immediately before a noun or an adjective modifying the
head noun.
c) A classifier can occur immediately before an adjectival phrase or relative clause.
• A purely item-based distributional account will involve astronomical computations
Caveat: The learner may not consider all combinations of words out of other
constraints such as processing limitations; the idea of 'less is more' of Elissa Newport
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(1990). The computations will be reduced if frequency effects are taken into
consideration (Mintz, Newport and Bever 1995; Mintz 2003).
• UG principles make reference to syntactic categories (Lasnik 1990)
• The early acquisition of functional categories and core syntactic structures in early
child language. The issue of continuity in language development.
Knowledge of inflectional categories by two years of age (Poeppel and Wexler 1993,
Wexler 1998, 2003; Pierce 1992; Deprez and Pierce 1993).
Knowledge of structure-dependence by three years old (Crain and Nakayama 1987)
Knowledge of numerous subtle properties of grammar (Constraints on
wanna-contraction, and Principle A and Principle C of the Binding Theory)
(see Crain 1991, Crain and Thornton 1998 for a review of relevant studies; also Chien
and Wexler 1987, 1990).
2. What counts as evidence for category acquisition
Typically the advocates of UCH and CCH do not use the same criteria for category
acquisition, or the same kinds of data, and often ignore the crucial evidence produced
by the other side.
Tomasello (2000).
Crain vs Tomasello debate at BU Conference on Language Development (2004).
Linguists do not have a consensus on the kinds of criteria that count as decisive
evidence for children's knowledge of syntactic categories.
2.1 Observance of category distribution in adult language
Table 1. Determiner use by two-year-old English children (Valian 1986)
Child Age MLU Utterances Tokens *post-adj *alone *two
/utterance or
Dets in
*post-N
sequence
A 2;0 2.93 420 .36 0 0 0
D 2;3 3.21 532 .50 0 0 1
I 2;5 3.31 200 .37 0 0 0
S 2;5 3.47 689 .30 0 0 0
E 2;5 3.58 358 .36 0 0 0
N 2;0 4.14 52 .42 0 0 0
Example 1: Determiners in English (Valian 1986)
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A study of 6 English-speaking children aged between 2 years and 2 years 5 months,
with MLU ranging from 2.93 to 4.14.
Example 2: Modal auxiliaries in English (Valian 1991)
A study of 21 American children aged between 1;10 and 2;8, divided into 4 age
groups, the youngest group having the mean age of 2;0 and mean MLU 1.77, and the
oldest group having the mean age of 2;7 and MLU 4.22.
All children except the lowest MLU child produced modal auxiliaries. In every group,
'can' and 'll/will' were the two most common modals.
Modal usage was infrequent: in Group I, only 3% of utterances with verbs contained
modals, a total of 14 tokens. There was a steady gradual increase to 6% in Group II
(61 tokens), 9% in Group III, and 14% in Group IV.
Valian argued that Group I children have knowledge of modals as a category separate
from verbs, ie. knowledge of INFL.
"First appearance correlates highly with more stringent criteria...Sampling
considerations alone would suggest that a child has been using a form before our data
demonstrate it. ....At present any criterion beyond initial correct use appears arbitrary.
Since the Group I children made no distributional errors with the modals they used,
we have called their use genuine." (p. 60)
Example 3: Finite vs nonfinite distinction of verbs in Dutch
Table 2. Verb use by Dutch children (aged 1;7-3;7; N=47) (Wexler 2003)
All normal children V2 Vfinal
Finite 1953 (99%) 11 (2%)
Non-finite 20 (1%) 606 (98%)
"Very little leeway has to be given to measurement error or noise, even at the
youngest ages. This is the kind of data that psychologists studying cognitive
development almost never see, close to categorical data." (Wexler 2003)
2.2 Pre-requisite for distributional analysis: demonstrating the productivity of
early word combinations
How to analyze a multiword utterance W1 W2
(a) W 1+2
(frozen form)
(b) W1+W2
(genuine word combination)
(c) Category1 + Category2 (category sequence)
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Explicit coding scheme for measuring productivity of multiword utterances:(Lieven,
Pine and Barnes 1992, Lieven, Pine and Baldwin 1997).
Frozen phrases: utterances which contain two or more words which have not
previously occurred alone in the child's vocabulary or which contain one such word,
provided it has not occurred in the same position in a previous multi-word utterance.
Constructed utterances: utterances which contain one or more words or phrases which
have occurred independently in the child's vocabulary together with a word or phrase
which has occurred in the same position in at least two other previous multi-word
utterances.
Example:
Words in child's single-word vocabulary:
Gone
ball
dolly
birdie
dinner
Multi-word utterances:
book gone
ball gone
dolly gone
birdie gone
dinner gone
frozen phrase
intermediate
constructed
constructed
constructed
Lexically-based constructions can account for about 60% of children's early
multi-word utterances, with the remainder 40% consisting primarily of frozen phrases
(Lieven, Pine and Baldwin 1997).
Acquiring a stock of frozen phrases may be a typical route for syntactic acquisition
(Pine and Lieven 1993).
2.3 Variety of category membership ('Multiple appearances' test)
There should be multiple members, and each of the members should occur in a range
of diagnostic contexts.
Example 1: V + tense/aspect (Pine, Lieven and Rowland 1998)
A study of 12 children audiorecorded at monthly to fortnightly intervals for about six
months. The age at the beginning of the recording varied between 1;3 and 2;0. The
age at the end of the recording varied between 1;10 and 2;7.
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Table 3. No. of verb types before inflections
(Pine, Lieven and Rowland 1998)
Subjects -ing -s -ed
Rita 17 2 4
Joey 32 5 8
Julie 12 2 3
Jean 30 2 4
Ricky 8 2 1
Eva 11 8 2
Helen 4 2 -
Carl 11 - -
John 1 1 1
Simon 22 - 2
Olga 7 - -
Laura 4 - 1
Mean 13.3 2.0 2.2
Example 2 : V + CP (Diessel 2004)
A study of CHILDES data of five children covering the age range 1;7 to 5;1.
For all five children (Naomi, Peter, Nina, Sarah, Adam) the most frequent
complement taking verbs of the children's finite complement clauses are the following,
which constituted 80% of the tokens:
know, see, think, say, look (mean %: 22.9, 20.5, 19.0, 9.8, 8.8).
(I) think it's a cow. [Peter 2;2]
Know what that is [Nina 2;3]
Let's see if we can fix them. [Peter 2;3]
Diessel argues that most utterances that include a finite complement clause in early
child speech are simple nonembedded sentences containing a single proposition.
These 'matrix verbs' are epistemic markers, attention getters or markers of
illocutionary force.
2.4 Combinatorial versatility
There should be a certain degree of overlap in the cooccurrence patterns of various
members of the category.
Example: Aux + V (Pine, Lieven and Rowland 1998)
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None of the children showed overlap that was significantly different from zero on any
of the overlap measures. Pine et al argue against postulating modal auxiliaries for
children of this age range.
Table 4. Proportion of verbs that occurred with both auxiliaries to verbs
that occurred with either (Pine, Lieven and Rowland 1998)
Subjects can/do can/be can/have do/be do/have be/have
Rita 2/10 1/10 1/10 1/4 1/4 1/3
Joey 0/10 0/15 1/5 0/17 0/8 0/13
Julie 0/8 0/9 1/9 0/7 0/8 2/7
Jean 2/20 3/19 0/14 4/22* 1/17 2/16
Ricky 1/9 0/7 1/6 0/9 1/8 0/6
Eva 1/11 1/9 0/6 2/14 0/12 1/9
Helen 0/4 1/3 0/4 0/6 1/5 0/6
Carl 0/3 0/7 0/3 1/5 1/1 1/5
John 0/3 0/2 0/5 0/1 0/4 0/3
Simon 0/7 1/7 2/5 0/7 0/6 1/6
Olga 0/2 0/2 0/2 0/2 0/2 0/2
Laura 0/1 0/3 0/1 0/4 0/2 1/3
*Indicates an overlap score significantly different from zero at p

Substitution: 'drink water' > 'drink milk'.
Expansion: 'lock-it' > 'lock that Lulu'.
Addition: 'hit tennis' > 'Danny hit tennis';
Coordination: 'Maria hit. Hit me.' > 'Maria hit me'.
Based on data from his daughter for the period 18 to 20 months, Tomasello (1992:
236-7) reports that 92% of the first 271 three-or-more-word combinations of the child
involved only a single simple change from previous sentences with the same verb.
Reordering of elements in a sentence is a rare operation.
3. Data from Chinese-speaking children
3.1 Productivity of early word combinations in Cantonese-speaking children (Lee
2004)
Table 5. Multi-word combinations of two Cantonese-speaking children before 2;0
Child Age frozen phrases intermediate
utterances
constructed
utterances
MHZ 1;7-2;0 55 (23%) 109 (45%) 77 (32%) 241
CKT 1;5-2;0 77 (21%) 69 (19%) 218 (60%) 364
total number
of
multi-word
utterances
Lieven's methodology is too restrictive in excluding first time occurrences as
indicative of productive patterns.
For example, if a child says Daddy drink and drink milk, and later says Daddy drink
milk, the latter utterance will not be classified as constructed. But the child may be
generalizing from its knowledge of subject-predicate and verb-object structures (cf.
McNeill 1966).
3.2 Verb as a category (shown by its being an argument of a higher predicate)
(Xiao, Cai and Lee 2006)
Table 6. Longitudinal data for verb argument analysis and distributional analysis
Subject Age range covered Number
of
sessions
Age range
covered
AJR 01;02;22-02;00;26 20 01;06;03-02;00;10 13
LSY 01;03;14-02;00;19 20 01;06;28-01;11;29 11
Number
of
sessions
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Table 7. Number of verbs occurring in negative sentences, in sentences with verb
complements and in [V V] compounds*
Subject # of verbs # of verbs # of verbs # of verbs # and
(types, (types) (types) (types) percentage
including occurring occurring as occurring as V2 of verbs
adjectives) in negative complements in [V1 V2] (types)
utterances to matrix verbs compounds, (# occurring as
(including of those V2 argument of
existential, which also other
modal and occurred as operator
aspectual
verbs)
independent
predicates)
AJR 134 24 28 18 (13) 61 (45.5%)
LSY 170 52 25 29 (20) 87 (51.2%)
*Examples of different types of sentences are as follows: negative utterance: buyao (not want),
meiyou qu (not go); verb complements: hui hua (can draw), yao mama lai (want mommy
come), you wenzi guo (exist mosquito pass) , qu wan (go play); [V V] compounds in which
the second verb was also used independently: qie-kai (cut-open); na-xialai (take-down),
da-po (beat-broken).
The data show clearly that both children used verbs as a semantic argument of the
negator, existential, modal and aspectual verbs, as well as other matrix verbs.
3.3 The feasibility of distributional bootstrapping for verbs (Cai 2006, Xiao, Cai
and Lee 2006)
We analyzed adult input to the two Mandarin-acquiring children from around 1 year 2
months to 2 years of age, following the method of Mintz (2003). We extracted every
sequence of three adjoining words from each utterance. In each such sequence, the
intervening word was the target and the neighboring words were considered as the
frame, i.e. the linguistic environment of the target word.
The frequency of each frame, as well as that of each intervening word in the frames,
was recorded. In this analysis, a subset of all frames whose frequency reached 15 or
more were considered as frequent frames. With respect to frames in children’s
production, those whose frequency reached 3 or more were considered as frequent
frames.
The intervening words of each frequent frame were assigned category labels
according to the linguistic criteria for word classes in Mandarin Chinese. To compute
the accuracy score for each frame, all possible pairs of words in the category were
compared. Each pair was classified as a hit or false alarm. A hit was recorded when
two words were from the same syntactic category. And a false alarm was recorded
when two items were from different syntactic categories.
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Accuracy =
hits +
hits
false
alarms
For each cluster of intervening words identified by a frame, the category label that
occurred most frequently, in terms of both type and token, was taken as the prominent
category of the frame. This measure indicates the degree to which a salient category
was identified by a frequent frame.
number of words belonging to pro min ent category
Prominence=
number of all words
Table 8. Examples of frequent frames in the adult input to AJR (w_w)
Frequent
frames
zenme_de
“how_particle”
Intervening words (number of tokens)
shuo “talk”(76), jiao “call”(17), gao “manage to get”(6),
jiang “speak”(6), da “beat” (5), xi “wash”(4), chang “sing”
(3), tiaowu “dance” (2), an “press”(1), cai “guess”(1), fang
“put up”(1), jiao “teach” (1), na “tale”(1), sukou “rinse
one’s mouth” (1), shuijiaojiao “sleep”(1), xiang “ring”(1),
xie “write”(1), zhidao “know”(1).
Prominent
category of
intervening words
verb
bu_le
“not_particle”
yao “want to have”(8),wan “play(5), qu “go” (3), tiaowu
“dance”(3), xi “wash”(3), tiao “jump”(3), hua “draw”(2),
jide “remember”(2), jiang “speak”(2), jiao “call”(2), kai
“open”(2), yun “dizzy”(2), ying “win”(2), ren
“recognize”(1), shua “wash”(1), ting “listen”(1), tou
“cast”(1), xihan “like”(1), zhong “hit target”(1), zhuan
“turn” (1), zuo “sit”(1), guang “take charge of “(1), hao
“good” (1), he “drink”(1), kan “look”(1), lai “come”(1).
verb
Table 9. Accuracy and prominence score of frequent frames in the adult input (types)
Subject
AJR
Prominent
category
yielded by
frequent
frames
Mean accuracy
score of frequent
frames (w_w)
yielding verb and
adjective
Verb 0.74 0.91
Adjective 0.77 0.88
Mean prominence
score of frequent
frames yielding
verb and adjective
LSY
Verb 0.83 0.86
Adjective 0.82 0.89
83-84% of the frequent frames produced by the two children at two years of age
overlapped with the frequent frames of the adult input covering the period prior to two
years of age.
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The frequent frame analysis of the adult input to these two children and the
spontaneous utterances produced by the children indicate clearly the formation of
distributionally defined word classes, and that distribuional bootstrapping of syntactic
categories is possible.
3.4 Syntactic development is not gradual or piecemeal (Xiao 2006, Xiao, Cai and
Lee 2006)
Only between 47 and 52 percent of the sentence frames first used with a verb
involved repetition of a previous sentence frame or a single operation.
Between 48 and 53 percent of the sentence frames first used with a verb involved two
or more changes from prior sentence frames used with the verb, or were frames that
could not be traced to any previous sentence frames for the verb. These figures are
much higher than the 8% reported by Tomasello for his subject.
Children were in command of sentence frames as abstract structures and were able to
apply structures acquired for a particular verb to other verbs.
Table 10. Changes in the sentence frames of verbs in verb chains
for utterances with three or more words
Number of changes from previous AJR LSY
sentence in the same verb chain
Repetition of previous sentence in the 56 66
same verb chain
One change from previous sentence 73 75
in the same verb chain
Subtotal 129 (51.8%) 141 (47.2%)
Two changes from previous sentence 56 53
in the same verb chain
Three or more changes from previous 18 52
sentence in the same verb chain
No previous sentence in the same 46 53
verb chain
Subtotal 120 (48.2%) 158 (52.8%)
(i) LSY: hongse bi mei hua qiangshang (01;10;10)
Red pen not draw wall
"(I) did not use the red pen to draw on the wall"
(ii) LSY hua dabing (01;07;11)
draw biscuit
"Draw biscuit"
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LSY hua zhege bi (01;08;16)
draw this pen
"Draw with this pen"
(iii) Step 1: Reordering : [_ Instrument] →[Instrument _ ]
Step 2: Addition: [Instrument _ ] → [Instrument Neg _ ]
Step 3: Coordination: [Instrument Neg _ ] + [ _ Location]
→ [Instrument Neg _ Location]
Reordering was a salient operation. LSY rearranged the positions of two constituents
21 times, in sentences containing verbs such as kan ("look"), kanjian ("see"), hua
("draw"), nian ("read") and pa ("fear").
First-use verbs occurred in first-use frames rather than prior-use frames for about
40-50% of the time.
4. Assessing the discrepancies in the empirical findings
4.1 The arbitrariness of criteria
Are the criteria reasonable, even for adults (cf. production of sentence final particles
or relative clauses in a Chinese adult)
Why limit ourselves to naturalistic production data How about comprehension data
The requirements of diversity of membership and combinatorial versatility may be
overly stringent. Assessment of Diessel (2004)'s findings.
4.2 Accounting for cross-linguistic differences
Early development of inflectional features is not observed for English, because the
morphemes that mark tense, person and number are not phonologically salient.
Early development of inflectional features is observed for German, Dutch, French
because of word order reflexes of inflectional features.
Early emergence of the verb category in Chinese, reflected in verb argument
structures and in the viability of distributional bootstrapping in word class acquisition,
could have been facilitated by the prominence of V in reduplication structures and the
syllabic form of aspectual markers.
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4.3 Individual variation
How should we reconcile the patterns found in different data sets
Theory shapes what one admits as relevant evidence.
If one is interested in properties of the initial state, then individual variation will not
be an issue of great interest.
Just as it is possible to demonstrate language universals through observing one
language, it is possible to demonstrate the nature of early syntactic competence
through observing one child (Crain and Wexler 1999).
If one would like to understand individual differences in language development, and
understand the relationship between language development and cognitive
development, the factors underlying varying rates of syntactic growth are clearly
worthy of further exploration.
5. Conclusions
Some intractable problems remain for the empiricist view on category acquisition.
Six types of criteria have been used in determining early vs. late emergence of
syntactic categories.
Four sets of Chinese child language data based on empiricist methodology have
shown that:
(a) Children's early word combinations are much more productive than is suggested
by usage-based linguists;
(b) The verb category is available to children before 2;0, since it often appears as an
argument of another operator (in negative sentences, verb compounds, and verb
complementation);
(c) Distributional bootstrapping is a viable route for children to tap into the
language-specific properties of particular word classes;
(d) Early syntactic development is not gradual or piecemeal.
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