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The acquisition of dative alternation by German-English and French-English bilingual and monolingual children

Manchester Salford Forum in LinguisticsUniversity of Manchester

3rd November 2012Rebecca Woods

University of Yorkrlw523@york.ac.uk

Samir ZarqaneUniversity of Sheffield/Exeter

s.zarqane@exeter.ac.uk

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Research Questions

• How do simultaneous bilingual children acquire phenomena at the syntax/semantics interface?

• In which ways do they diverge from the monolingual ‘norm’?

• Is divergence permanent, or is it overcome in the adult state?

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Dative alternation

• Dative alternation is syntactic variation which encodes subtle semantic differences in utterances with ditransitive verbs– Syntax-Semantics (internal) interface phenomenon

• Prepositional Construction (PC):– The boy gives the ball to the dog

SUBJ ditransitive verb DO preposition IO• Double-Object Construction (DOC):– The boy gives the dog the ball

SUBJ ditransitive verb IO DO

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Prepositional Construction (PC)• The only available construction in French (when full lexical

NPs are used)(1) Le garçon donne le ballonau chien The boy gives the ball to+the dog

• Available with most verbs in English• Restricted in German

– Not possible with ‘zeigen’ (to show), pragmatically restricted with ‘geben’ (to give), possible with ‘bringen’ (to bring)

• Not semantically restricted, i.e. does not require an animate possessor/recipient, does not have same level of entailment

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Double-Object Construction (DOC)

• Not possible with full lexical NPs in French(2) *Le garçon donne le chien le ballon The boy gives the dog the ball

• Restricted, though not uncommon, in English• Available with many verbs in German– The only possible option with ‘zeigen’, the neutral option

with ‘geben’, possible also with ‘bringen’• Requires animate possessor/recipient• Stronger entailment of possession/completion

(3) Beth taught French to the students vs (4) Beth taught the students French

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Our studies: Participants• 25 German-English bilingual

children (4;9-8;8) • 29 monolingual English

children (5;2-8;8)• 5 German-English bilingual

adults brought up in the same context

• 7 native German-speaking and 6 monolingual (southern) English students at the University of York

• 15 French-English bilingual children (4;11-7;4)

• 19 monolingual English children (4;10-7;8)

• 15 monolingual French children (4;8-7;5),

• 15 native English-speaking employees at the University of Sheffield (7 polyglots, 8 monolinguals)

40 bilingual children48 monolingual English children

(15 monolingual French children)5 bilingual adults

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Our studies: Procedure• Children’s aptitude determined through parental

questionnaires/experimenter’s observations– Children excluded if notably stronger in one language than the

other– German tests preceded by a “Ring” test (Drenhaus and Féry,

2008) to ensure knowledge of case marking• Native speaker experimenters used where possible to

promote natural language environment• Tests conducted during school hours in a quiet

space/participants’ homes – familiar surroundings• Long breaks between tests in different languages

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(5) Springe in den Ring Jump-IMP in the-ACC ring ‘Jump into the ring’

Accusative

(6) Springe in dem Ring Jump-IMP in the-DAT ring ‘Jump up and down in the ring’ Dative

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Our studies: Methodology• Elicited Production task– Watching clips (3-10 seconds each) of Tom and Jerry

cartoons depicting ditransitive actions; participant must describe action

– Agent established as the topic of the stimulus question: ‘What did Jerry do?’

– Target words: give, show, throw, feed, bring, take, offer

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• Act-out task– Using toys provided, participant acts out stimulus

imperative sentences with ditransitive verbs (cf. Cook, 1976)

Our studies: Methodology

e.g.(7) Show the boy the banana(8) Bring the orange to the girl

(9) Give the girl the cat(10) Show the cat to the boy

(11) Give him the frog

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Our studies: Methodology

• Grammaticality judgment task– Puppet speaks stimulus sentences; participant

must recognise and correct ungrammatical utterances

– Two types of ungrammaticalutterances• Broad Range Rules =

form-predicting• Narrow Range Rules =

existence predicting(Pinker 1989)

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Grammaticality Judgment Task Stimuli• Broad Range Rules (form-predicting)– Key semantic criteria for DOCs, e.g. in English, the notion of

“cause-to-have”, either physically or metaphorically– Good example

(12) The boy gives the girl the flower– Violation

(13) *The man opens the woman the door

• Narrow Range Rules (existence-predicting)– Language-specific rules determining alternation, e.g. in English

ballistic motion “throw” can alternate, but continuous motion “pull” cannot. Also ‘morphophonemic’ restrictions on Latinate verbs

– Violation:(14) *The man describes the woman the picture

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HypothesesProduction Task- Transfer from the less complex language to the more complex language (in terms of evidence for alternation)

Act-out Task- No transfer- No difference in comprehension between bilinguals and monolinguals- Earlier comprehension of DOCs in German due to overt case marking

Grammaticality Judgment Task- No transfer- Delay in bilinguals compared with monolinguals

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Production task results• English

– monolingual children use 68% PCs, 21 different verbs. No ungrammatical constructions.

– bilingual children use 60.4% PCs with 22 different verbs. Only 1 ungrammatical construction

• German– bilingual children use 52.5% PCs, with 15 different verbs. 28% of

responses featured incorrect/pragmatically inappropriate constructions :(15)*Tom zeigt das Buch zu Jerry Tom shows the book to Jerry

• Bilingual adults behaved like their monolingual counterparts in both languages: 67% PCs in English vs 35% PCs in German ; only 2 pragmatic errors

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Reception Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Adult0

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20

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60

70

80

90

English PCEnglish DOCGerman PCGerman DOC

Age

Mea

n (%

)

Bilinguals’ production of dative constructions in each language(German-English study, PCs = block colour; DOCs = patterned)

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Production task results

• English– monolingual children use 39% PCs, 7 verbs– bilingual children use 72% PCs, 8 verbs

• French– monolingual children use 89% PCs with canonical

word order, 9 verbs– bilingual children use 85% PCs with canonical

word order, 13 verbs

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Production of dative constructions in English (French-English study)

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Bilinguals’ production of dative constructions in French and English

Reception Year Year one Year two0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

English PC

English DOC

French PC

French DOC

Age

Mea

n

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Production task: Discussion and Comparison

• Transfer from the less restricted language (Eng) to the more restricted language (Ger)

• Transfer from the most restricted language (Fre) to the less restricted language (Eng)

•Vocabulary use suggests bilinguals and monolinguals have the same lexical knowledge• Bilingual children use alternation similarly in each language, suggesting TRANSFER, leading to non-monolingual-like constructions in the language with the more subtle paradigm• Eng-Ger evidence suggests that between the ages of 8;0 and adulthood, bilinguals learn the semantic restrictions of the language affected by transfer, so transfer ceases

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Act-out task:Discussion and Comparison

• Bilingual and monolingual children show same level of comprehension– Problems throughout all

age groups with Animacy

• Bilingual and monolingual children show same level of comprehension– Some problems with

Animacy for older bilinguals

• High degree of accuracy from a young age• Animacy is problematic in all DOCs and some PCs in children• By adulthood, animacy no longer affects comprehension

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Grammaticality judgment task results

• Only Y2-Y3 (6;9-8;8) responses analysed due to difficulty of task

• English– All groups recognise grammatical stimuli to at least 75% accuracy– Monolingual children recognise ungrammatical stimuli between

62-100% of BRR cases and 50-67% of NRR cases– Bilingual children below 33% accuracy on all ungrammatical stimuli– Significant effects of Constraint*Age (p<0.01), Constraint*Language

(p<0.01), Language (p<0.001) and Age*Language (p<0.001).• Bilingual adults

– Not significantly different from monolingual adults

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Monolingual Bilingual Monolingual Bilingual Monolingual BilingualYear 2 Year 3 Adult

0.00

10.00

20.00

30.00

40.00

50.00

60.00

70.00

80.00

90.00

100.00

GrammaticalBRRNRR

Language grouped by Age

Mea

n (%

)Responses to the Grammaticality Judgement task in English

(German-English study)

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Grammaticality judgment task results

• German– Bilingual children show

similar pattern to English: 75-90% accuracy with grammatical stimuli;27-37% accuracy with ungrammatical stimuli

• Bilingual adults– Unexpectedly weaker on

NRR violations, but still accurate above chance

Year 2 Year 3 Bilingual adult

Monolingual adult

0.00

10.00

20.00

30.00

40.00

50.00

60.00

70.00

80.00

90.00

100.00

GrammaticalBRRNRR

Age

Mea

n (%

)

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Grammaticality judgment task results

• English– Significant effect for Construction (p<0.05)– Morphological constraint (NRR) on dative

alternation is problematic for all children– Semantic constraint (BRR) seems to be acquired

before the morphological one– Children also tend to reject grammatical sentences– Adult monolinguals unexpectedly reject

grammatical sentences

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Responses to the Grammaticality Judgement task in English (French-English study)

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Grammaticality judgment test results

• French– Bilinguals tend to

accept ungrammatical sentences in French

– Reception/Y1s considerably less accurate with ungrammatical than with grammatical stimuli

– Slight advantage for monolinguals in Y2

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Grammaticality Judgment task: Discussion and Conclusion

• Bilingual children between 6;9 and 8;8 do not recognise either kind of ungrammatical stimuli, though monolingual children do

• Bilingual children between 6;9 and 7;8 are less accurate at recognising both grammatical and ungrammatical stimuli

• Bilingual children show equal competence in both languages• They usually recognise grammatical stimuli but do not reject ungrammatical stimuli• Between the ages of 8;8 and adulthood, the full range of semantic rules/features are acquired, and bilingual adults largely behave like their monolingual peers – semantic acquisition is DELAYED• However, attrition seems to occur if exposure to one of the languages is not maintained

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Discussion• Limitations of the study include small sample sizes, all

bilinguals are based in England, and more age groups are needed

• Effects of one language upon the other tend to be quantitative, i.e. transfer in task 1 and delay in task 3, rather than qualitative, i.e. acquiring phenomena in different orders

• Two types of competence in evidence: – Bilinguals’ syntactic competence = monolingual

competence– Bilinguals’ semantic competence =/= monolingual

competence

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Discussion cont.

• Implications for acquisition at the interfaces– The syntax-semantics interface, an internal

interface, is susceptible to cross-linguistic influence, just like external interfaces e.g. the syntax-pragmatics interface

– The interfaces play a role in non-“endstage” contexts (cf. Sorace and Filiaci’s Interface Hypothesis), but in the acquisition process also

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Conclusions and future research• Reduced input in each language compared to monolinguals

appears to result in underdetermination of the more complex semantic system in bilinguals

• Bilinguals’ syntactic competence is, however, the same as their monolingual peers

• Bilingual children seem to overcome instances of transfer and delay as they enter the adult state, as long as quality and quantity of input and exposure are maintained

• Areas for future research– Larger sample groups; also German monolingual children– Older children (up to around 12;0)– Ultimately examining multiple interfaces in the same experimental

sample to learn more about how the interfaces differ

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• Romaine, Suzanne (1995). Bilingualism. Malden, MA.: Blackwell• Sorace, Antonella, & Filiaci, Francesca (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of

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and Linguistic Science Colloquium Series]. University of York. • Woods, Rebecca (2012). Dative alternation and its acquisition by German-English bilingual

and English monolingual children. Unpublished Masters dissertation, University of York.• Zarqane, Samir (2009). Dative constructions in English-French bilingual and monolingual

acquisition. Unpublished Masters dissertation, University of Sheffield.