Structure building model of child language
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In his seminal 1990 book Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition of English Syntax,[n 1] Andrew Radford summarizes the state of a maturation hypothesis for child language acquisition.[1] Working within the principles and parameters framework[n 2] as his point of departure, and drawing from previous work done by Hagit Borer and Kenneth Wexler[n 3] on the apparent absence of A-chains in early grammar, Radford proposed a structure-building model which focused (inter alia) on the lack of syntactic movement-operations in the early multi-word stage of child English syntax, viz. the lack of inflectional morphology. This led to an analysis which saw children as gradually building up increasingly complex structure, with Lexical/thematic stage-1 (lexical categories like noun and verb) preceding Functional/syntactic stage-2 (functional categories like determiner and complementiser).
Since theory-internal considerations define functional categories as the only type of phrasal projections which could serve as potential landing-sites for move-based elements displaced from lower down within the base-generated syntactic structure – e.g., A-movement such as passives ("The apple was eaten by [John (ate the apple)]"), or raising ("Some work does seem to remain"; "(There) does seem to remain (some work)") – as a consequence, any structure-building model which calls for an exclusive lexical stage-1 before a functional stage-2 means that early child speech simply lacks the ability to generate and host elements derived via movement operation. Particularly, the theoretical specifier position of a functional head is seen as projecting for the sole purpose of hosting moved elements. Hence, according to a structure-building model, early child utterances at the early multi-word lexical stage-1 simply lack movement. In addition to the lack of A-movement talked about by Borer and Wexler, Radford considers the absence of a second kind of movement, termed f-movement since it involves movement of a base-generated item into a higher f(unctional) position — namely, a head or specifier position within a functional category (DP, TP, CP) (e.g., auxiliary inversion from T to C ["Does [he (does) like it]?"]). This glass-ceiling of move-based morphosyntax suggests that all early multi-word utterances (usually associated with children aged 18 to 23 months, ±20%) involve flat structure-building elements (N, V) not motivated by movement: what Radford terms bricolage. These prosaic bricolage structures are considered lexical/thematic in nature, with any observed early morphology being relegated to lexicalization (such as derivational morphology, or formulaic chunking) whereby the fixed morpheme involved is said to be incorporated, unsegmented and undecomposed within the lexical stem. When true inflectional morphology emerges, it follows a gradual growth trajectory with the simple lexical noun and verb inflections emerging first: e.g., plural [N + [{s}]], gerund [V + [{ing}]], [V + [{en}]], with the later onset of more formal inflections associated with functional phrases DP (e.g., possessive {'s}, Case on pronouns ("he" vs "him"), and TP (e.g., Agreement {s}, and Tense {ed}). For example, regarding the AGReement/INFLection of possessive as well as verbal morphology, the mere lack of recursive [ [ ] {s}] could be singularly interpreted as due to the lack of full movement operations. Thus, a young child at the early lexical stage-1 goes from Merge-based [(-'s) [Tom book]], He [(-s) [drink]] to Move-based and recursive [[Tom] 's] and [[drink] s] respectively.[2] In this way, AGR is seen as the quintessential trigger to recursion/Movement.[n 4] The central tenet of the structure-building model is that such a disparity between the two categories (lexical vs functional) is the main characteristic of any maturation-based theory of child language acquisition.
In recent research dealing with the brain-to-language corollary (brain imaging devices such as fMRI and ERP), some have argued that the schedule for these morphosyntax onsets is pegged to the neurological maturation of the front-left-hemisphere which houses Broca's area — that area of the brain seemingly responsible for movement-based operations found in language.[3]
Notes[edit]
- ↑ Radford, Andrew (1990). Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition of English Syntax. Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-16358-1. Search this book on
- ↑ See Noam Chomsky, Lectures on Government and Binding (Dordrecht: Foris, 1981), and Some notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation (MS, MIT, 1988).
- ↑ Hagit Borer and Kenneth Wexler, "The maturation of Syntax" (1983); in Thomas Roeper and Edwin Williams (eds), Parameter Setting (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 2013), pp. 123–172.
- ↑ For more recent discussion of AGR as a trigger for all move-based syntactic operations, see Shigeru Miyagawa, Why Agree? Why Move? Unifying Agreement-Based and Discourse-Configurational Languages (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010).
References[edit]
- ↑ Joseph Galasso, "Synopsis of the Structure-building model of Andrew Radford (1990): And other maturational hypotheses leading to child development theories of the time" (MS, California State University Northridge, 2017).
- ↑ Andrew Radford and Joseph Galasso, "Children's possessive structures: A case study"; Essex Research Reports in Linguistics, vol. 19 (University of Essex, 1998).
- ↑ Yosef Grodzinsky, Theoretical perspectives on language deficits (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990).
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