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

语言对我们生活的几乎每一个方面都是必不可少的，它绝对是学校学习的核心。第一语言习得研究的目标是确定儿童如何在给定的语言输入下习得母语。研究表明，孩子们不只是逐字模仿他们的输入;相反，他们会产生父母说话中没有的形式，例如“他吃了它”或“我正在坚持它”。“此外，儿童接触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？说话者省略了前两个词，产生：“你想去吗？””、“想去吗？”这取决于社会背景。这个项目研究后一种变量输入对儿童语言习得的影响。这个项目的经验领域是收购相关的属性-传统上被称为-在两个品种的西班牙语的主题参数：多米尼加西班牙语（DS）和智利西班牙语（ChS）。虽然ChS显示属性的一个空的主题语言，DS显示了一些句法属性，是罕见的其他非加勒比品种的西班牙语，包括变量使用明显的咒骂主题，更高的使用明显的代词主题的背景下，主题连续性，和变量使用的主语动词（非）反转的疑问。通过比较儿童接触同一语言的两种变体的习得模式，我们可以比较在两种输入类型（例如一致输入与可变输入）的背景下特定语法结构的习得，同时保持语言的其他属性不变。这个项目将收集120小时的自然语言之间的DS照顾者和他们的孩子，而他们一起玩和阅读和40小时的多米尼加成人对成人的讲话。音频记录和录音将在儿童发展和教育数据库（http：//www.example.com）中存档，供未来的研究人员使用，并将提供关于学习非主流西班牙语方言的儿童的语言发展的急需数据，这对于语言障碍的标准化测试、早期教育和临床干预非常重要。childes.psy.cmu.edu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。

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.