PUTTING WORDS TOGETHER:

MORPHOLOGY AND SYNTAX

IN THE PRESCHOOL YEARS

Prepared by: Catherine D. De Loyola

1. Later developments in
preschoolers

Passive
Coordination
Relative Clauses

Passive
rarely used in English
highlights the object of a sentence or
the recipient of an action
The window was broken by a dog.
rare in childrens spontaneous speech
due to reversed order of agent - object

Horgan, 1978
used set of pictures to elicit passives out from
1-13 years old children

Younger children produced full

passives than truncated passives (no
agent is specified) example The window
was broken.
Topic differences:
Full passives animate subjects (girl,
boy)
Truncated passives inanimate subjects
(lamp, windows).

Horgan, 1978
Truncated passives are not true passives
at all, which explain the differing pattern
of full passives in early productions.
*The window was broken. = adjective
not a passive participle of break
*Adjectival passives are generated in
the lexicon, whereas true passives are
generated by a syntactic transformation.

Used:
Semantically reversible both nouns
could plausibly act as an agent or subject
Ex: The boy kissed the girl. (active) or
The boy was kissed by the girl. (passive)

Semantically irreversible only one of

the nouns could plausibly act as an
agent
Ex: The girl patted the dog. (active) The
dog was patted by the girl. (passive)

Bever, 1970

Findings:
Children understand irreversible passives
earlier than reversible ones
Children dont master passive sentences w/
actional verbs (kiss or pat) until age 4-5 &
later for sentences w/psychological verbs
(see or like)

At chance level in comprehending = Bart

was seen by Marge up until age 7 and
they only reached 90% correct at age 9

Bever, 1970

Suggestions:
3-4yrs developed abstract rule that order of
words in English signals the main sentence
relations

Children know predominantly (nounverb-noun sequences = active voice

mean agent-action-object)
Passive sentence = ignore the was/by
inferring passive noun-verb-noun
sequence to be active.

Bever, 1970

COORDINATIONS
2 years children begin combining
sentences to express complex or
compound propositions
Simplest and most frequent way
children combine sentences is to conjoin
two propositions with and.
Development depends not only on
linguistic complexity but also on
semantic and contextual factors.

*Two main forms of coordination

according to linguists:
Sentential
Coordination two
or more sentences
are conjoined.

Phrasal C.
phrases w/in
sentence are
conjoined.

Ex: Im pushing the

wagon and Im
pulling the train

Ex: Im pushing the

wagon and the
train.

Note: Sentential generally doesnt develop

before phrasal coordination.
(de Villiers, Tager-Flusberg & Hakuta 1977)

Acquisition of coordination was influenced

by semantic factors (Bloom et. Al,1980)
Additive no dependency relation
between the conjoined clauses
Ex: Maybe you can carry this and I
can carry that.
Temporal relations two clauses were
related by temporal sequence or
simultaneity.
Ex: Marys going home and takes her
sweater off.

Acquisition of coordination was influenced

by semantic factors (Bloom et. Al,1980)
Causal relations
Ex: She put a bandage on her shoe and
marked it feel better.
Object Specification to encode other
meanings
Ex: It looks like a fishing thing and you fish
with it.
Adversative Relation Expressing opposition
Ex: Because I was tired and now Im not
tired.

RELATIVE CLAUSES
Bloom et al (1980) Relativization
developed late than coordination; used
exclusively to present information about
an object or person (e.g.: Its the one
you went to last night.)
Due of its complexity and the lack of
occasion to use relative clauses in
naturalistic setting children produce
them rarely

Types of relative clauses in variety

of location w/in a sentence:

Hamburger and Crain (1982)

- Conducted elicited-production Studies
- Found out that 4yr old produced
relative clauses modifying object of the
sentence
*Right Branching Relative Clauses
added to NP to the right of a verb the
direct object of the verb
Ex: Pick-up the walrus that is tickling the
zebra.

Tager-Flusberg (1982)
*Center Embedded Relative Clauses
modify the main clause subject
appears between the subject-predicate
Ex: The bear who is seating in a chair
jumped up and down.
Findings: Children find it easier to add a
clause at the end of a sentence than in
the middle.
Ex. The boy gave the dog to the bear who
is holding the wagon.

Classification on the basis of

containing a gap inside of RC:
*Object Gap Relative Clauses
regardless of whether they appear in rightbranching or a center-embedded position.
Noun phrase: the horse that the boy rode
missing a direct object called object gap
relative clause.
Subject- Gap Relative Clauses those
that gap in the position of the subject
Example: the walrus that is tickling the
zebra

Note:
Studies show the same result w/c
mirrored the grammatical patterns
observed in languages of the world:
No language seems to have object-gap
relative clauses unless it has also subjectgap, yet many languages on have
subject-gap relative clauses.

2. BEYOND THE PRESCHOOL

YEARS

Anaphora
Principles A, B, & C
Interpreting Empty Subjects
in Infinitive Clauses

Anaphora
how different pronouns forms link up
with their referents in a sentence.
John said that Robert hurt himself.
John said that Robert hurt him.

PRINCIPLES
Principle A: A reflexive is always bound
to a referent that is within the same
clause.
Principle B: An anaphoric pronoun
cannot be bound to a referent within the
same clause.
1. When he came home John made dinner.
2. He made dinner when John came home.
Principle C: Backward co-reference is
allowed only if the pronoun is in a
subordinate clause to the main referent.

Chien & Wexler,

1990
Age 6, children knew Principle A but
makes error of Principle B (delay of
principle B effect after 6-7y/o)
Conclusion: differences in methods used
suggest that experimental factors explain
childrens failure in Principle B when the
problematic experimental conditions are
avoided. This suggests that knowledge of
principle B may be present from an early age.
Principle C is mastered quite early.

Interpreting Empty Subjects in

Infinitive Clauses
Similar in surface structure
John is eager to
please.

John is easy to
please.

John = subject of
the clause to
please

John = object of the

clause; subject is
unspecified

Cromer, 1972
Tested children using puppets and asked
them to act out sentences.
The wolf is glad to bite.
The wolf is easy to bite.
By age 6, dont know which adjective
requires interpretation; dont reach adult
levels of performance until age 10-11
Reasons for this is not known suggests
to help children thru asking them
periodically to act things out without
giving feedback

3. KNOWLEDGE VERSUS
PROCESSING

Grammar
1. Map an idea onto a sentence
structure that expresses the idea
2. Insert lexical items into
appropriate parts of that structure

3. Utter lexical items in

correct left-right order

Pattern in syntax (young children):

4-5 years children produced passive

sentences with actional verbs = reflects
Immature processing systems (not knowing
the passive structure) or Immature
grammatical system (one that has difficulty
finding or accessing the passive structure
because it is so infrequent in English)

3 years capable of producing passive

sentences depending on the
lowness/highness of frequency in the
language.

Pattern in syntax
(young children):
Technologies were used to measure
childrens language processing (eye
movements
and
patterns
of
electrical activity in the brain)
Electroencephalography (EEG)

Language processing responses to semantically

and syntactically unexpected words:
(Studies done in Adults)

N400 processes involved in semantic

processing and maybe related to a
listeners ability to predict semantic
information about upcoming words.
Ex: I take my coffee with cream and DOG.
Semantically incongruent (negative voltage
deflection that peaks approximately 400
milliseconds after the onset of the word and
which the largest over central regions of the
scalp)

Language processing responses to semantically

and syntactically unexpected words:
(Studies done in Adults)

P600 processes involved in syntactic

processing.
Ex: The broker persuaded to sell the stock.
The dog ate Maxs of picture his
grandmother.
(positive voltage deflection over posterior
scalp sites that peaks approximately 600
milliseconds after the first syntactically
unexpected word) Event-Related Potentials
(ERPs)