8. Pre- and School Age Lang - Morphsyntax (1)

Preschool and School-age Language Morphosyntax

Stages of Syntax

  • Holophrases

    • One word represents a whole sentence (e.g., "boat").

  • Two-word utterances

    • Two words combined to convey meaning (e.g., "boat river").

  • Telegraphic speech

    • Phrases that omit unnecessary words, retaining essential meaning (e.g., "boat on river").

  • Simple sentences

    • A sentence must have at least one verb (e.g., "the boat is on the river").

  • Complex sentences

    • Sentences containing clauses (e.g., "the boat we saw yesterday sailed up the river").

Early Syntactic Development

  • Toddlers

    • Early Stage 1

      • One-word, holophrastic speech.

    • Late Stage 1

      • Some two-word combinations, emergence of pivot grammar, and semantic relations between actor and action.

    • Stage 2

      • Two-word utterances evolve with grammatical morphemes.

    • Stage 3

      • Simple sentences appear with the addition of some auxiliary verbs.

  • Exploration of Modalities

    • Introduction of negatives and questions; understanding of holophrastic expressions, pivot grammar, and semantic relations.

Pivot Grammar

  • Definition and Examples

    • Formed through fixed and frequent combinations (e.g., "Bye-bye doggie").

    • Pivot Words

      • Used in fixed positions, cannot stand alone.

    • Open-Class Words

      • Infrequent, can stand alone, and can combine with pivot words to form sentences.

    • Children learn to categorize pivot and open-class words, associating pivot words with grammatical functions and open-class words with nouns.

Semantic Relations

  • Pivot Grammar Examples

    • More + [noun]: e.g., "More car"

    • Action + Object: e.g., "Eat grape"

    • Agent + Action: e.g., "Mama sit"

    • Action + Location: e.g., "Sit chair"

    • Possessor + Possession: e.g., "My dress"

    • Entity + Attribute: e.g., "Crayon big"

    • Demonstrative + Entity: e.g., "That money"

Semantic Bootstrapping

  • Pinker (1984) Theory

    • Involves inferring syntactic categories from semantic relations.

    • Example Sentences:

      • "Bob opened the door" (Bob as agent).

      • "The wind opened the door" (wind as cause).

      • "The key opened the door" (key as instrument).

Telegraphic Speech

  • Examples

    • Phrases like "Bye-bye you plane" and "Truck up high” that exhibit minimal grammatical complexity while retaining meaning.

Brown & Fraser (1963) Study

  • Study on Children

    • Subjects: 6 children aged 2-3 years.

    • Method: Presented sentences for imitation.

    • Findings:

      • Retained lexical/content words but omitted grammatical ones.

      • Imitations reflected natural child speech and were often telegraphic.

Imitation Results from Brown & Fraser

  • Summary and performance outcomes from children imitating sentences, noting a range of results from correct structures to omissions and errors.

Toddler to Preschool Transition

  • Between ages 2-3, noticeable increase in morphemes and transition from telegraphic speech to simple sentences.

Acquisition of Auxiliaries

  • Definition

    • Helping verbs that assist in constructing tenses (e.g., "I am going").

    • Used for emphasis and in forming questions/negatives.

Simple Sentences

  • Must include a verb; children begin using different modalities, such as questions and negatives.

Phrase Structure

  • Sentence Construction

    • Diagramming sentences to reveal underlying organization (e.g., structure trees).

    • Distinction between Phrase Structure theory and more complex syntactic theories.

Brown’s Stages of Language Development

  • Summary of stages characterized by Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) and milestones in language acquisition.

Negative Modality

  • Development Stages:

    • Early use of negative markers outside sentences.

    • Transition to internal placement of negatives, leading to structure with auxiliaries.

Question Modality

  • Early questions marked by intonation, moving to more complex structures involving inversion and Wh-questions.

Stages of Acquisition for Auxiliaries

  • Reported developments detailing auxiliary use, interrogative reversal emergence, and complex forms across developmental stages.

Morphosyntax in School-age Children (Stage V)

  • Increase in sentence length and complexity, introduction to various sentence types beyond simple declarations.

Research on Inversions

  • Studies indicating various factors influencing the acquisition and use of interrogative reversals.

Complex Syntax Development

  • Introduction of passive voice structures and complex verb phrases; more prevalent in written language.

Comprehending and Creating Passives

  • Analysis of child understanding of reversible and truncable sentences, noting frequency of passives in spoken versus written contexts.

The Relative Clause

  • Definition and structure; important for syntactic complexity, acquisition patterns, and language development indicators.

Language Development During School Years

  • Changes in language input sources, emergence of metalinguistic awareness, and vocabulary expansion.

Lexical Development

  • Mastery of vocabulary increases, with children using various strategies for learning new words.

Understanding Meaning Variations

  • Acquisition of polysemous words, lexical and sentential ambiguity stressing the complexity of semantic understanding.

Language and Aging

  • Characteristics of language use in older ages including slower speech, retrieval issues, and maintaining comprehension.