Week 14. Acquisition of semantics

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GRS LX 700Language Acquisition andLinguistic
Theory

• Week 14.Acquisition of semantics

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Acquisition of semantics

• Relatively recently, there has been an increased
  interest in the acquisition of semantics.
• Overuse of the.
• Limited scope ambiguity?
• Some of the hardest stuff to imagine how youd
  learn from the input.

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Maximality (Wexler 2003)

• Karmiloff-Smith (1979)
• French determiners
• Experimental setup
• Ask the girl to lend you that.
• Lend me a book. Lend me the bottle.

Girl-dolls room Boy-dolls room
1 blue book 3 books (each a different color)
3 multicolored balls 1 multicolored ball
1 bottle 1 car
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Maximality (Wexler 2003)

• Karmiloff-Smith (1979)
• French determiners
• Similar results obtain for English

Age Type of D Singleton Sev. Ident.
3 def 62 48
indef 0 3
6 def 92 56
indef 8 44
9 def 100 0
indef 0 100
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Egocentricity?

• Maratsos 1976, Karmiloff-Smith 1979. Observed and
  supposed that this might be due to an inability
  of the child to take the listeners point of
  view.
• What does the mean?
• Presupposes existence and uniqueness. Use it when
  you can. Else a.
• Also maximal (the books).

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Making noise

• Once there was a lady. She had lots of girls and
  boys, about four girls and three boys. They were
  very noisy, and they kept her awake all the time.
  One night she went to bed. She told them to be
  very quiet. She said, If anyone makes any noise,
  they wont get any breakfast tomorrow. Then she
  went to bed. But do you know what happened? One
  of them started laughing and giggling. Now lets
  see, there were four girls and three boys. Who
  was laughing and giggling like that?
• 4-year olds. The boy. About 58 of the time.

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Not intent to refer but uniqueness

• Wexler proposes that definite error arise from
  kids not observing the Maximality presupposition
  in their lexical entry for the.
• So, the book is fine even if it isnt unique.

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Ko, Ionin, Wexler (2004)

• Interestingly, it seems that this might also be
  at work in L2 acquisition.
• L2ers are known to have trouble with articles.
  But this is not going to be explained by
  cognitive development.

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Partitive contexts

• One of them started laughing and giggling.
• The boy.
• Wexler 2003 the X one of the X
• So, expect overuse in partitive contexts.

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Ko, Ionin, Wexler (2004)

• They tested 20 L1 Korean speakers.
• Partitive context
• Elissa How is your nephew Aaron doing? He is
  such a nice little boy!
• Robert He has some good newshis parents finally
  allowed him to get a petjust one! So last week,
  he went to our local pet shop. This pet shop had
  five puppies and seven kittens, and Aaron loved
  all of them. But he could get only one!
• Elissa Oh, so what did he do?
• Robert Well, it was difficult for him to make up
  his mind. But finally, he got (a, the, ) puppy.
  Aaron went home really happy.

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Ko, Ionin, Wexler (2004)

• Non-partitive context
• Elissa How is your nephew Joey doing? He is such
  a nice boy!
• Robert Well, he was a bit depressed the last few
  days. So, his parents decided to get him a pet.
  So last week, he went to our local pet ship.
• Elissa Oh, so did he buy some animal there?
• Robert No, he did not like the puppies in the
  pet shop, in fact. But then he was walking home
  and he found (a, the, ) kitten in the street! So
  now he has a new pet after all!

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Ko, Ionin, Wexler (2004)

• And indeed (Overuse of the with indefinites)

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Acquisition of semantics

• Another popular topic in the study of the
  acquisition of semantics is quantifiers.
• One popular topic has been investigating
  childrens knowledge of sentences like
• The guy didnt deliver two pizzas.
• For adults, this can mean
• There are 2 pizzas that the guy didnt deliver
• (E.g., after delivering the rest of his pizzas,
  he had 2 left)
• Its not the case that the guy delivered 2 pizzas
• (E.g., he delivered 4 pizzas, or 1)

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QR

• The availability of the two readings is generally
  accounted for in terms of Quantifier Raising
  (QR)
• A quantificational DP moves (covertly) to adjoin
  to the IP.
• If there are two quantificational DPs, they can
  do this adjunction in either order.
• A student read every book.
• a studentk every booki tk read tj
• every booki a studentk tk read tj
• The relative structural positions determine their
  relative scope unambiguously.
• Notk 2 pizzasi The guy did ti deliver tk
• 2 pizzasi Notk The guy did ti deliver tk

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Musolinos (2000) OOI

• Musolino (2000) found that kids seem not to
  reverse scope relations found in the surface form
  (the Observation of Isomorphism).
• Every horse didnt jump over the fence.
• The detective didnt find some guys
• The smurf didnt buy every orange.

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Musolino Lidz (2002)

• The detective didnt find 2 guys.
• TVJT Dramatic preference on the part of kids
  (4yo) for the surface scope.
• Linear order?
• Or structure (c-command?)
• Tested kids on the same thing in Kannada (where
  negation is at the end). Same result Its
  c-command that matters.
• For a while, this was thought to be an aspect of
  childrens competence. Their grammar, e.g.,
  lacked QR.

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Gualmini (2003)

• By manipulating the context, however, Gualmini
  (2003) showed that kids could access the inverse
  scope interpretation. It just has to do what
  would be a sensible/felicitous thing to say.
• Grover orders 4 pizzas from the Troll, who
  supposed to deliver them all to Grover. But the
  Troll drives too fast and loses 2.
• The Troll didnt deliver some pizzas. 90 accept
• The Troll didnt lose some pizzas. 50 accept
• One points out a discrepancy between the
  expectations and what actually happened, one
  doesnt.

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Hulsey, Hacquard, Fox, Gualmini (2004)

• The Question-Answer Requirement on TVJ tasks The
  test sentence must be understood as an answer to
  the question under discussion.
• Will the Troll deliver all of the pizzas?
• Yes (the Troll will deliver them all)
• No (the Troll will not deliver them all)
• There are some pizzas delivered by the Troll.
• Isomorphism isnt even really a default.
• Tested passives (when compared to actives, teases
  apart isomorphism and QAR)
• Some pizzas were not delivered. 94 (adult 100)
• Some pizza were not lost. 43 (adult 93)

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Kids and QR, Lidz et al. (2003)

• (BUCLD 28) More direct test of whether kids have
  QR by looking at constructions where QR is
  necessary in order to get the right
  interpretation.
• Quantifier-variable binding
• Kermit kissed every dancer before she went on
  stage
• Antecedent-Contained Deletion (ACD)
• Miss Red jumped over every frog that Miss Black
  did.
• (Also Syrett Lidz submitted)

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Quantifier-variable binding

• Subject QNP (QR not necessary)
• Every dancer kissed Kermit before she went on
  stage.
• Object QNP (QR required)
• Kermit kissed every dancer before she went on
  stage.
• Kids about 46. Acted like adults, yes where yes
  was required, no where no was required.

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ACD

• VP ellipsis involves interpreting an empty VP
  as a copy of the audible VP (or leaving an
  identical VP unpronounced).
• John bought a tape and Mary did too.
• ACD the elided VP is inside the audible one.
• MR jumped over every frog that MB did.
• Audible jumped over every frog that MB did VP
• Elided jumped over what?
• Infinite regress MR jumped over every frog that
  MB jumped over every frog that MB jumped over
  every frog that
• QR solves the problem, though
• Every frog that MB jumped over tiMR jumped
  over ti.

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ACD

• MB jumped over every frog that MR did
• QR relative clause reading
• No QR coordinated reading?
• MB jumped over every frog and MB did too.
• Kids about 45 act basically like adults.
• So, they must have QR. Whatever OOI is about, it
  isnt about kids lacking QR from their grammar.

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Musolino Lidz (2003)

• Adults can be made to act like kids with respect
  to isomorphism too, in fact.
• Cookie Monster didnt eat two slices of pizza.
• Try a context where both interpretations are
  true
• E.g. CM gets 3, but eats 1.
• justifications given seemed to be isomorphic
  (75 vs. 7.5 reverse, the rest unclear).

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Musolino Lidz (2003)

• Two frogs didnt jump over the rock
• Four frogs decide to jump over a rock, and two
  end up jumping whereas the other two end up not
  jumping.
• Wide True. Narrow False.
• Two frogs attempting to jump over a rock. One
  ends up jumping and the other one does not.
• Wide False. Narrow True.
• Accepted narrow scope reading only 27 of the
  time, justifications wide scope is false.
• Condition 2 Two frogs jumped over the fence but
  two frogs didnt jump over the rock. Up to 92
  acceptance.

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Entailments

• E.g., Minai, Meroni, Crain (2004)
• John has a black dog gt John has a dog
• Every boy has a black dog gt Every boy has a dog
• Nobody has a black dog lt Nobody has a dog
• Every black dog caught a cicada lt Every dog
  caught a cicada
• Nobody caught every black dog gt Nobody caught
  every dog
• Can be used as an argument for an innateness
  hypothesis vs. constructional analogy.
• Kids (mean 410), 95 on 2. 90 on 4. 89 on
  5.
• Nobody could feed every (big) koala bear
• Notice that this is a bit earlywerent Chien
  Wexler (1990) relying on kids inability to do
  quantifiers?

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