Ling 415/709
More Study Questions
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. What are the two possible explanations for the results in Katz, Baker & Macnamara (1974). Which do the authors support? Why?
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. What are two problems with Pinker's orphan nodes?
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?
38. Define lexical and grammatical freedom, and describe the possible sentence types that follow from them.
Morphology
1. Define what is meant by a ‘grammatical’ morpheme and discuss four characteristics which could potentially affect their acquisition.
2. Describe the ‘wug’ procedure used in Berko (1958).
3. Give Cazden’s (1968) four possible ways to score the use of a grammatical morpheme.
4. Discuss the problem with measuring a child’s proportion of overgeneralization.
5. Provide an example of overgeneralization for a grammatical morpheme and discuss the theoretical significance of such overgeneralizations.
6. Cazden found four stages of acquisition for English inflections. Give these and then discuss Cazden’s interpretation of them.
7. What were Brown’s (1973) general findings about the acquisition of grammatical morphemes?
8. What evidence indicates that input frequency only has a minor effect on the acquisition of grammatical morphemes?
9. What factors did Brown conclude were the most important in explaining the children’s acquisition order of grammatical morphemes?
10. How does the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in K’iche’ compare to that in English?
11. What factors best explain the acquisition orders of grammatical morphemes in English and K’iche’? Why?
12. Describe Pinker’s three hypotheses on the acquisition of grammatical morphemes.
13. What are the shortcomings of the Exhaustive Hypothesization account?
14. What are the shortcomings of the Hypothesis Sampling account?
15. What are the advantages of the Paradigm Construction account?
16. What are the shortcomings of Paradigm Construction?
17. What is the main difference between the Single and Dual Mechanism accounts?
18. How do Behrens’ (2002) findings on German plurals contradict the Dual Mechanism account?
19. Describe the Prosodic Constraint account of morpheme acquisition.
20. Explain the K’iche’ evidence in support of the Prosodic Constraint account.
21. What is the Root Infinitive Hypothesis?
22. Explain the French negation evidence in support of the Root Infinitive Hypothesis.
23. Why does the Danish inflectional paradigm create a problem for the Root Infinitive Hypothesis?
24. What are the other problems for the Root Infinitive Hypothesis?
25. Describe Rizzi’s 1993/4 Truncation Hypothesis.
26. Explain the different predictions the Root Infinitive Hypothesis and the Truncation Hypothesis make about the acquisition of Wh-questions.
27. Why does verb omission create a problem for the Truncation Hypothesis?
Null Subjects
1. Provide a description of the head setting parameter model.
2. Describe Hyams’ (1984) proposal about the pro drop parameter.
3. What predictions does Hyams’ pro drop model make for language acquisition?
4. What logical flaws does Hyams’ pro drop model have?
5. What empirical evidence contradicts Hyams’ pro drop model?
6. Explain why the cross-linguistic evidence contradicts the predictions of the pro drop model.
7. What does the Subset Principle predict about the initial parameter setting?
8. What are two problems for the Subset Principle?
9. Describe Hyams’ (1992) topic drop parameter.
10. What empirical evidence contradicts the topic drop model?
Auxiliaries
1. What does a child need to know to acquire the English auxiliary?
2. Discuss the data and method used in Kuczaj & Maratsos (1978).
3. Describe how Bellugi captures the differences between the acquisition of yes/no and wh questions.
4. Give examples of ‘double tense marking’ and ‘double aux marking’, and discuss some of the views on their acquisition.
5. Describe the importance of the distinction between double tense marking and double aux marking for the theoretical account of English auxiliary acquisition.
6. How does the data from Ingram & Tyack (1979) contradict Bellugi’s stages of question acquisition?
7. How does Pinker’s (1984) model of auxiliary acquisition account for the difference between double tense marking and double aux marking?
8. Discuss one way in which the Ingram & Tyack (1979) data fail to support Grimshaw’s (1997) Optimality Theory account of the acquisition of questions.
9. Compare the explanation of auxiliary acquisition as due to performance factors with one based on competence factors.
10. Give the proposals by Maratsos & Kuczaj on the acquisition of auxiliaries.
11. What prediction about children’s auxiliary verbs distinguishes Brown’s (1973) account of morpheme acquisition order and Wexler’s Root Infinitive hypothesis?
12. Explain why Adam’s “does lions walk?” sentence contradicts Wexler’s Root Infinitive hypothesis and Rizzi’s truncation theory.
Passives
1. Describe the data base used in Horgan (1978). What are her results on the use of passives in spontaneous speech?
2. Compare Horgan’s results with those in de Villiers & de Villiers (1973).
3. Discuss the results of the study by Maratsos, Kuczaj, Fox & Chalkley (1979).
4. Give Pinker’s proposal for the acquisition of passives and two problems with it.
5. How did Wexler & Hyams (1987) attempt to explain the late acquisition of passives?
6. What are two problems with Wexler & Hyams’ explanation of passive acquisition?
7. In what ways is the acquisition of passives in K’iche’ different from the acquisition of passives in English?
8. What types of mistakes do children make with causatives?
9. How did Bowerman (1974) account for the errors children make with causative sentences?
10. Why did Lord (1979) criticize Bowerman’s account of causative errors?
11. Describe the experimental method used in the study by Braine, Brody, Fisch & Weisberger (1990).
12. Do Braine et al.’s results support Lord’s or Bowerman’s position?
13. How does Pinker (1989) attempt to account for children’s ability to stop making causative errors?
14. What are the differences between the causative alternations in English and K’iche’?
15. Discuss four results of the elicitation study of causatives in K’iche’.
16. Do the K’iche’ results support Pinker’s theory?