Given-before-new, the effects of discourse on argument structure in early child language
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Child language researchers, particularly those studying the acquisition of syntax, have often viewed young children's utterances as isolated and self-contained units of analysis. But "language does not exist in a vacuum" (Clark & Clark 1978:227), and utterances don't either. This dissertation explores the influence of conversational context on early word order. Specifically, I consider how discourse givenness affects the order of postverbal arguments in the speech of preschool children. In three elicited production studies, I systematically varied the structure of the discourse children heard just before they were asked to describe a filmed vignette. Study 1 targeted verbs of locative transfer, both alternating locative verbs (cf. She squirted the hotdog with the ketchup. vs. She squirted the ketchup on the hotdog.) and non-alternating ones (cf. She filled the cup with sand. vs. *She filled sand into the cup.). Studies 2 and 3 targeted alternating dative verbs (cf. She gave the man the hat. vs. She gave the hat to the man.). These studies provide converging evidence that (i) givenness has a robust effect on early argument ordering—like adults, children tend to use given-before-new ordering, (ii) this discourse effect can be largely, but not fully, attributed to the effect of discourse on referring expressions (viz. that given arguments tend to be pronominal and new ones tend to be lexical), (iii) givenness does not influence all verbs and all arguments equally. I argue that several factors are needed to explain the asymmetrical effects of givenness across verbs and arguments. These include patterns of distribution in the input, conceptual biases, and semantic and pragmatic properties of the verbs. I also evaluate several mechanisms that might drive early given-before-new ordering: those that are addressee-based, speaker-based, or experience-based. My data do not decide between these, but they do offer preliminary evidence in favor of a speaker-based account. Ultimately, my dissertation highlights the importance of approaching syntactic acquisition from several directions simultaneously. Children must learn to attend to cues from form, function, and discourse and use their limited processing capacities to integrate these cues into a larger model of language production. Linguists must do likewise.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Stephens, Nola Marie |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Linguistics |
| Primary advisor | Clark, Eve V |
| Thesis advisor | Clark, Eve V |
| Thesis advisor | Clark, Herbert H |
| Thesis advisor | Levin, Beth, 1955- |
| Thesis advisor | Wasow, Thomas |
| Advisor | Clark, Herbert H |
| Advisor | Levin, Beth, 1955- |
| Advisor | Wasow, Thomas |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Nola M. Stephens. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Linguistics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 2010. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2010 by Nola Marie Stephens
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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