The effect of variable input on children's acquisition of null subjects

变量输入对儿童习得无效科目的影响

• 批准号: 1322763
• 负责人: Karen Miller
• 金额: $ 26.33万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-01 至 2019-02-28
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1322763&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: effect; variable; input; children; acquisition

Language is essential to almost every aspect of our lives and it is absolutely central to learning in school. The goal of first language acquisition research is to determine how children acquire their native language given the linguistic input to which they are exposed. Research has shown that children do not just imitate word-for-word their input; instead, they produce forms not found in their parents' speech, such as "He eat-ed it" or "I'm hang onto-ing it." Moreover, the linguistic input to which children are exposed is quite complex, as utterances do not always match their underlying representation. For example, in sentences like "Do you want to go?" speakers variably omit the first two words, producing: "You wanna go?", "wanna go?", depending on social context. This project examines the impact of this latter sort of variable input on the acquisition of language in children. The empirical domain of this project is the acquisition of properties related to--what has traditionally been called--the Null Subject Parameter in two varieties of Spanish: Dominican Spanish (DS) and Chilean Spanish (ChS). While ChS shows properties of a null subject language, DS displays a number of syntactic properties that are infrequent in other non-Caribbean varieties of Spanish, including variable usage of overt expletive subjects, higher use of overt pronominal subjects in contexts of topic continuity, and variable usage of subject-verb (non)inversion in interrogatives. By comparing acquisition patterns in children exposed to two varieties of the same language, we can compare acquisition of specific grammatical structures in the context of two input types (e.g. consistent input v. variable input) while holding other properties of the language constant. This project will collect 120 hours of naturalistic speech between DS caregivers and their children while they play and read together and 40 hours of Dominican adult-to-adult speech. Audio-recordings and transcriptions will be archived on the CHILDES database (http://childes.psy.cmu.edu) for use by future researchers and will provide much needed data on language development in children acquiring non-mainstream dialects of Spanish, which is important in the context of standardized testing, early education, and clinical intervention in the case of speech disorders. This project will also provide international research experience to both graduate and undergraduate students, who will collect data in the Dominican Republic.

语言对于我们生活的几乎各个方面都至关重要，并且对于学校学习来说绝对是核心。第一语言习得研究的目标是确定儿童如何在考虑到他们所接触的语言输入的情况下习得母语。研究表明，孩子们不仅会逐字模仿他们输入的内容，还会逐字逐句地模仿他们输入的内容。相反，他们会说出父母讲话中没有的形式，例如“他吃了它”或“我坚持下去”。此外，儿童接触到的语言输入相当复杂，因为话语并不总是与其潜在的表征相匹配。例如，在“你想去吗？”这样的句子中。说话者会根据社会背景不同地省略前两个词，产生：“你想走吗？”、“想走吗？”。该项目研究了后一种变量输入对儿童语言习得的影响。该项目的经验领域是获取与传统上所谓的两种西班牙语中的空主题参数相关的属性：多米尼加西班牙语（DS）和智利西班牙语（ChS）。虽然 ChS 显示了空主语的属性，但 DS 显示了许多在其他非加勒比西班牙语变体中不常见的句法属性，包括明显的咒骂主语的可变用法、在主题连续性上下文中更多地使用明显的代词主语，以及疑问句中主谓（非）倒装的可变用法。通过比较接触两种相同语言的儿童的习得模式，我们可以在保持语言的其他属性不变的情况下比较两种输入类型（例如一致输入与可变输入）背景下特定语法结构的习得。该项目将收集 DS 护理人员与孩子一起玩耍和阅读时的 120 小时自然语言，以及 40 小时的多米尼加成人对成人的语言。录音和转录将存档在 CHILDES 数据库 (http://childes.psy.cmu.edu) 中，供未来的研究人员使用，并将提供有关习得非主流西班牙语方言的儿童语言发展的急需数据，这对于标准化测试、早期教育和言语障碍临床干预非常重要。该项目还将为研究生和本科生提供国际研究经验，他们将在多米尼加共和国收集数据。