Ling 425/709
The First Word Combinations
1. Describe how the subperiods of the Period of the First Word Combinations may be defined.
2. Discuss the data base for the study of this period.
3. Define the two kinds of successive single-word utterances found in Bloom (1973) and show an example of each.
4. Describe the four stages of successive single-word utterances found by Fonagy (1972).
5. Contrast the rich and lean interpretations of successive single-word utterances.
6. Do the results in Shipley, Smith & Gleitman (1969) show that telegraphic children understand well-formed commands? Explain.
7. Describe the method used in Sachs & Truswell (1978).
8. Describe the method used in de Villiers & de Villiers (1973).
9. Compare the results of Rodd & Braine (1970) on postverbal articles with those of the other comprehension studies discussed.
10. Give Rodd & Braine’s three patterns of subject pronoun acquisition.
11. Discuss four general issues that characterize the different approaches to early grammatical development.
12. Describe the defining features of a pivot grammar.
13. Give Brown’s (1973) three arguments against pivot grammar.
14. Give Bloom’s grammar 1 for Gia I.
15. Describe Bloom’s five tests for the existence of underlying relations in children’s early word combinations.
16. What role does the NOM category play in Bloom’s grammar for Kathryn?
17. Why does the NOM category create a learnability problem for Bloom’s grammar?
18. Give Bowerman’s arguments against the existence of grammatical relations in Stage I.
19. Describe Brown’s semantic relations for Stage I.
20. Explain what Brown means by his law of cumulative complexity.
21. Discuss the three criteria Braine (1976) used to classify early word combinations.
22. Give the four patterns that result from the above criteria.
23. Provide a summary of the kind of data used by Braine and his general findings.
24. How does Kendall’s and Seppo’s acquisition of locatives argue against the existence of a transformational grammar?
25. What are the general features of functionalism?
26. Give the steps in the competition model for the acquisition of early word combinations.
27. Name and briefly describe the six strategies proposed by MacWhinney (1982) for the acquisition of early word combinations.
28. Discuss the steps in the formation of early word combinations in the distributional learning theory of Maratsos and Chalkley (1980).
29. What are Pinker’s (1984) two criticisms of the above model?
30. Define ‘semantic bootstrapping’.
31. Describe Pinker’s two basic assumptions about grammatical acquisition.
32. What are the steps given in class for Pinker’s model of grammatical acquisition?
33. What are ‘orphans’, and how are they acquired?
34. Explain the problem that children’s predicate adjective constructions (e.g. “Dog big”) create for Pinker’s continuity condition.
35. Compare Pinker’s Stage I grammar with Bloom’s grammar of Kathryn I.
36. Describe five features of Pinker's grammar, and give his arguments for each one.
37. Why does Pinker claim missing elements are not optional in children’s grammars?