CAS LX 500 A1Language Acquisition

Week 14a.Acquisition of semantics

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 you’d learn from the input.

Overuse of the• Karmiloff-Smith (1979)

• French determiners

• Experimental setup:

• Ask the girl to lend you that.

• Lend me a book. Lend me the bottle.

Girl-doll’s room Boy-doll’s room

1 blue book 3 books (each a different color)

3 multicolored balls 1 multicolored ball

1 bottle 1 car

Karmiloff-Smith (1979)• 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

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 won’t get any breakfast tomorrow.’ Then she went to bed. But do you know what happened? One of them started laughing and giggling. Now let’s 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.

Egocentricity?

• Maratsos 1976, Karmiloff-Smith 1979. Observed and supposed that this might be due to an inability of the child to take the listener’s point of view.

• What does the mean?

• Presupposes existence and uniqueness. Use it when you can. Else: a.

• Also: maximal (the books).

Wexler (2003)

• Wexler proposes that definite errors arise from kids not observing the Maximality presupposition in their lexical entry for the.

• So, the book is fine even if it isn’t unique.

Presuppositions

• Munn, Miller, Schmitt

• Give me the frogs next to the barn.

• Give me the frog next to the barn.

The frogs, the barn Maximality errors only in the sg condition?

• The first frog next to the barn.

Quantifier spreading

• Roeper et al. (2004) (also Philip 1995).

• Is every girl riding a bike?

• Interpreted such that every girl needs to be riding a bike, and every bike needs a girl to be riding it...?

Is every girl riding a bike?

Is every dog eating a bone?“Bunny” spreading

• Is every dog chewing a bone?

• Is it always the case that a dog is chewing a bone?

BS+CS to CS to adult Acquisition of semantics• Another popular topic in the study of the acquisition of

semantics is quantifiers.

• One popular topic has been investigating children’s knowledge of sentences like:

• The guy didn’t deliver two pizzas.

• For adults, this can mean:

• There are 2 pizzas that the guy didn’t deliver

• (E.g., after delivering the rest of his pizzas, he had 2 left)

• It’s not the case that the guy delivered 2 pizzas

• (E.g., he delivered 4 pizzas, or 1)

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 student]k [every book]i [tk read tj ]

• [every book]i [a student]k [tk read tj ]

• The relative structural positions determine their relative scope unambiguously.

• [Not]k [2 pizzas]i [The guy did ti deliver tk ]

• [2 pizzas]i [Not]k [The guy did ti deliver tk ]

Musolino’s (2000) OOI

• Musolino (1998) found that kids seem not to reverse scope relations found in the surface form (the Observation of Isomorphism).

• Every horse didn’t jump over the fence.

• The detective didn’t find some guys

• The smurf didn’t buy every orange.

Lidz & Musolino (2002)• The detective didn’t 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: It’s c-command that matters.

• For a while, this was thought to be an aspect of children’s competence. Their grammar, e.g., lacked QR.

Gualmini (2004)

• By manipulating the context, however, Gualmini (2004) 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 didn’t deliver some pizzas.!90% accept

• The Troll didn’t lose some pizzas.! 50% accept

• One points out a discrepancy between the expectations and what actually happened, one doesn’t.

Gualmini, Hulsey, Hacquard & Fox (2008)

• 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” isn’t 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%)

Kids, 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)

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 4;6. Acted like adults, yes where yes was required, no where no was required.

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 t]]i

MR [jumped over ti].

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 4;5 act basically like adults.

• So, they must have QR. Whatever OOI is about, it isn’t about kids lacking QR from their grammar.

Musolino & Lidz (2003)

• Adults can be made to act like kids with respect to isomorphism too, in fact.

• Cookie Monster didn’t 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).

Musolino & Lidz (2003)• Two frogs didn’t 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 didn’t jump over the rock. Up to 92% acceptance.

Entailments• E.g., Minai, Meroni, & Crain (2004):

• John has a black dog > John has a dog

• Every boy has a black dog > Every boy has a dog

• Nobody has a black dog < Nobody has a dog

• Every black dog caught a cicada < Every dog caught a cicada

• Nobody caught every black dog > Nobody caught every dog

• Can be used as an argument for an innateness hypothesis vs. constructional analogy.

• Kids (mean 4;10), 95% on #2. 90% on #4. 89% on #5.

• Nobody could feed every (big) koala bear

• Notice that this is a bit early—weren’t Chien & Wexler (1990) relying on kids’ inability to do quantifiers?