The Prosody-Syntax Interface of Polar Questions: Evidence from German and English FirstLanguage Acquisition

极性问题的韵律-句法界面：来自德语和英语第一语言习得的证据

• 批准号: 276395025
• 负责人: Dr. Muna Schönhuber
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Fachbereich Linguistik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Units
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2015-12-31 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/276395025?language=en
• 关键词: Prosody; Syntax; Interface; Polar; Questions

P-7 focuses on the interaction of syntax and prosody in English and German polar questions andon the interplay of these modules in children¿s developing grammars. In both languages, canonicalpolar questions are characterized by question intonation and word order. Previous studies suggesta principal role of prosody in children¿s processing of interrogatives, but insights into the exactmechanisms at play is lacking. Word order takes longer to acquire than intonation contours. Nostudies are available yet which reveal how children¿s increase of syntactic complexity ininterrogatives in production is related to comprehension, and how syntactic complexity isconditioned by intonation or vice versa. We aim to fill this gap taking into account the considerationthat the study of the acquisition of polar questions is essential for our understanding of interfaceissues. The complexity of prosodic cues and syntactic rules marking declaratives and polarquestions means that a better understanding of how children learn these aspects will help us tounravel the interaction of semantics, prosody and syntax in general. By comparing learners fromstructurally related though in many aspects essentially different languages, it will be possible todevelop a more profound knowledge of how closely prosody and syntax are related.Main questions addressed are (i) when do children become aware of verb position as a cue forcoding polar questions and (ii) how does this newly acquired knowledge interact with the intonationcue? The focus is on monolingual children aged 2 to 4 and their capacity to deal with sentenceswith a main verb and without a modal verb and sentences with copula be plus a predicate nounwithout a modal verb.In addition to replicating experiments for English, we will collect data for German. This allowsus to draw conclusions about the acquisition of inversion of the main verb/copula be, aphenomenon that is present in both languages but which has a different status (default syntacticmarker for polar questions in German, more exceptional in English, where main verbs require doPROPOSALsupport). The focus on prosody will help to gain a better understanding of the prosody-syntaxinterface and the relative weight of the two components in the course of development. As thestudies focus on production and interpretation of syntax-prosody combinations, the data will alsoshed light on the question whether coding by multiple grammar modules is redundant or not. Wewill collect production and comprehension data based on closely matched stimulus material todirectly compare receptive and productive development. The interplay of syntactic and prosodicstructures in the stimulus material and the different options for combination result in both canonicaland non-canonical utterance types. This will provide an extra layer to the investigation forcanonical and non-canonical meanings of the sentence types under investigation for such an earlyage.

P-7 重点关注英语和德语极性问题中句法和韵律的相互作用，以及这些模块在儿童语法发展中的相互作用。在这两种语言中，规范极性问题的特点是问题语调和词序。先前的研究表明韵律在儿童疑问句处理中发挥着主要作用，但缺乏对其确切机制的深入了解。获取词序比获取语调轮廓需要更长的时间。目前尚无研究揭示儿童疑问句句法复杂性的增加如何与理解相关，以及句法复杂性如何受语调制约，反之亦然。考虑到极性问题的习得研究对于我们理解界面问题至关重要，我们的目标是填补这一空白。标记陈述句和极性问题的韵律线索和句法规则的复杂性意味着更好地理解儿童如何学习这些方面将有助于我们解开语义、韵律和句法之间的相互作用。通过比较来自结构相关但在许多方面本质上不同的语言的学习者，将有可能对韵律和句法的相关程度有更深刻的了解。主要解决的问题是（i）孩子们何时意识到动词位置作为编码极性问题的提示以及（ii）这种新获得的知识如何与语调提示相互作用？重点关注 2 至 4 岁的单语儿童以及他们处理主动词无情态动词的句子以及系动词 be 加谓语名词但无情态动词的句子的能力。除了复制英语实验外，我们还将收集德语数据。这使我们能够得出关于主要动词/系动词 be 倒装习得的结论，这种现象在两种语言中都存在，但具有不同的状态（德语中极性问题的默认句法标记，在英语中更例外，其中主要动词需要 doPROPOSALsupport）。对韵律的关注将有助于更好地理解韵律-句法界面以及两个组成部分在开发过程中的相对权重。由于研究的重点是语法-韵律组合的产生和解释，这些数据也将揭示多个语法模块的编码是否冗余的问题。我们将根据紧密匹配的刺激材料收集生产和理解数据，以直接比较接受性和生产性发展。刺激材料中句法和韵律结构的相互作用以及不同的组合选项产生了规范和非规范的话语类型。这将为研究早期所研究的句子类型的规范和非规范含义提供额外的一层。