Passives in first language acquisition: What causes the delay?

The passive construction is a late acquisition in child language. In this paper I evaluate the claim that difficulty with noncanonical semantics, rather than non-mature subject-object A-chains, underlie young children’s poor performance on the passive. In a series of truth-value judgment tasks, 4- and 5-year-old English-speaking children were tested on their comprehension of matrix passives and passives embedded under raising-to-object (RO: want, need) and object control (OC: ask, tell) verbs. RO passives (Olivia wanted/needed Scott to be kissed by Misha) entail object-subject-object A-chains, but allow semantic patients to surface as syntactic objects; OC passives (Olivia asked/told Scott to be kissed by Misha) and matrix passives (Scott was kissed by Misha) involve similar A-chains but do not result in this syntactic-semantic configuration. I found that although 4-year-olds failed to comprehend matrix passives and passives embedded under OC verbs, they correctly interpreted passives under RO verbs. (5-year-olds performed above chance in all tasks.) I propose a “semantic scaffolding” account of children’s comprehension of the passive that rests on the prototypicality of subjects being agents and objects being patients, arguing against the view that difficulty with passives results from an inability to form A-chains

Do What You Know: "Semantic Scaffolding" in Biclausal Raising and Control

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Semantic scaffolding in first language acquisition: the acquisition of raising-to-object and object control

This dissertation joins the debates on whether language is innate and/or modular, by examining English-speaking children's acquisition of raising-to-object (RO; (1)) and object control (OC; (2)) utterances. 1. RO: Suki wanted/needed Neili [ti to kiss Louise] 2. OC: Suki asked/told Neili [PROi to kiss Louise] While these verbs may appear in the same surface string, they map onto two distinct underlying structures. As a result, they differ in their syntactic and semantic behaviors, including the interpretation of embedded passives, and whether the subject of the embedded clause may be expletive or inanimate. Several truth-value and sentence judgment tasks yielded the following results: Children have adultlike comprehension of active RO/OC utterances by age 4. Children who fail on tests of matrix passives can interpret passives embedded under RO verbs (despite their greater length and syntactic complexity), but not under OC verbs (which have syntax more like matrix passives). In sentence judgment tasks, children preferentially parse the embedded clause alone. To account for these patterns, I offder the semantic scaffolding hypothesis, which comprises two major proposals: (a) children assume a canonical alignment of thematic and grammatical roles, resulting in agent-subjects and patient-objects, and (b) children assume a default clausal shape of contiguous subject and predicate. I argue that children use semantic scaffolding as a stepping stone on their way to adultlike syntactic and processing power. In short, movement may be easier than control structures, if these assumptions are not violated. Moreover, the fact that children do maintain a distinction between the verb classes is evidence for innateness and modularity in language. However, the language module interacts crucially with other cognitive modules (e.g., the conceptual-semantic system) and with domain-general faculties (e.g., attention, memory). Finally, the results presented here also bear on the following issues: There is no evidence for maturation of A-chains and/or control, contra Wexler. Children's performance on active RO, passives, and embedded passives suggest that RO utterances should instead be analyzed as instances of exceptional case marking. The data can neither support nor refute Hornstein's proposal that RO and OC both be analyzed as instances of movement

Up to D[eb]ate on Raising and Control, Part 2: The Empirical Range of the Constructions and Research on their Acquistion

This is the second part of a two-part article that reviews a number of the current debates regarding raising and control constructions. The issues addressed in this part include the spectrum of related raising (e.g. possessor raising, further raising) and control (partial, split, generic, super-equi) phenomena; cross-linguistic typology, including backward and copy constructions; and their acquisition in child language

Up to D[eb]ate on Raising and Control, Part 1: Properties and Analyses of the Constructions

This is the first part of a two-part article that reviews a number of the current debates regarding raising and control constructions. The issues addressed in this part include the syntactic attributes governing their distribution; the characterization of the relevant silent elements; the empirical properties which may distinguish/unify two classes of constructions (on either syntactic or semantic grounds)

Culture and Social Change in Mothers’ and Fathers’ Individualism, Collectivism and Parenting Attitudes

Cultures and families are not static over time but evolve in response to social transformations, such as changing gender roles, urbanization, globalization, and technology uptake. Historically, individualism and collectivism have been widely used heuristics guiding cross-cultural comparisons, yet these orientations may evolve over time, and individuals within cultures and cultures themselves can have both individualist and collectivist orientations. Historical shifts in parents’ attitudes also have occurred within families in several cultures. As a way of understanding mothers’ and fathers’ individualism, collectivism, and parenting attitudes at this point in history, we examined parents in nine countries that varied widely in country-level individualism rankings. Data included mothers’ and fathers’ reports (N = 1338 families) at three time points in China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and the United States. More variance was accounted for by within-culture than between-culture factors for parents’ individualism, collectivism, progressive parenting attitudes, and authoritarian parenting attitudes, which were predicted by a range of sociodemographic factors that were largely similar for mothers and fathers and across cultural groups. Social changes from the 20th to the 21st century may have contributed to some of the similarities between mothers and fathers and across the nine countries

A statistical model of the grammatical choices in child production of dative sentences

Focusing on children's production of the dative alternation in English, we examine whether children's choices are influenced by the same factors that influence adults’ choices, and whether, like adults, they are sensitive to multiple factors simultaneously. We do so by using mixed-effect regression models to analyse child and child-directed datives extracted from the Child Language Data Exchange System corpus. Such models allow us to investigate the collective and independent effects of multiple factors simultaneously. The results show that children's choices are influenced by multiple factors (length of theme and recipient, nominal expression type of both, syntactic persistence) and pattern similarly to child-directed speech. Our findings demonstrate parallels between child and adult speech, consistent with recent acquisition research suggesting that there is a usage-based continuity between child and adult grammars. Furthermore, they highlight the utility of analysing children's speech from a multi-variable perspective, and portray a learner who is sensitive to the multiple cues present in her input

Reductive alkylation of beta-alkoxy aziridines:new route to substituted allylic amines

A new route to substituted cyclic allylic amines via the reductive alkylation of beta-alkoxy aziridines using excess alkyllithium reagents is described

Men's and women's views on acceptability of husband-to-wife violence and use of corporal punishment with children in 21 low- and middle-income countries

Background Monitoring violence against women and children, and understanding risk factors and consequences of such violence, are key parts of the action plan for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. Objective We examined how men’s and women’s views about the acceptability of husband-to-wife violence are related within households and how views about the acceptability of husband-to-wife violence are related to beliefs in the necessity of using corporal punishment to rear children and to reported use of corporal punishment with children. Participants and Setting:We used nationally representative samples of men and women in 37,641 households in 21 low- and middle-income countries that participated in UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey. Methods We conducted a series of logistic regression models, controlling for clustering within country, with outcomes of whether participants believe corporal punishment is necessary in childrearing, and whether a child in their household experienced corporal punishment in the last month. Results In 46 % of households, men, women, or both men and women believed husbands are justified in hitting their wives. Children in households in which both men and women believe husbands are justified in hitting their wives had 1.83 times the odds of experiencing corporal punishment as children in households in which neither men nor women believe husbands are justified in hitting their wives (95 % CI: 1.12, 2.97). Conclusions Working toward the realization of SDG 5 and SDG 16 involving prevention of violence against women and children, respectively, should be complementary undertakings.Accepted versio