Early Grammar Productivity: Three Languages, Comprehension

描述(由申请人提供)：这个项目试图调查儿童语言习得中的两个关键问题：(1)幼儿在理解过程中何时表现出语法生产力的证据？(2)这种生产力的出现在跨语言方面是如何变化的(即，学习某种语言的儿童是否比学习其他语言的儿童表现出更早的出现？)在一种给定的语言中，跨语法结构(即，某些语法结构是否比其他语法结构更早产生生产力？)这个项目通过将语言习得研究中两个通常分开的线索结合在一起来解决这些问题。首先，这将是第一个采用跨语言方法对儿童早期语法生产力进行研究的研究之一，重点是选择三种语言进行多种类型的比较。其次，这将是第一个以理解为核心的关于早期语法知识的跨语言研究之一，因为儿童的新兴生产力将通过多态优先看范式(IPL)进行评估。将用英语、法语和土耳其语评估儿童在动词词法和句法方面的早期语法生产力。这些语言在标记基本从句中的论元结构时，对语序(英语)、动词屈折变化(即，派生代词；法语)和名词性屈折变化(土耳其语)的依赖最为明显。将进行四组实验，调查特定语言论元结构的习得情况。这些问题询问儿童何时在词序(研究1)、与主题关系相关的动词形态(研究2)、名词格标记(研究3)和结构自举(研究4)方面表现出生产力。将对每种实验的不同语言进行比较，并对每种语言进行不同的实验。这项研究可以在一个重要的方面揭示儿童的语言能力何时会变得像成年人一样。它对理解的关注和对不同语言的比较可以揭示这种能力的年龄如何取决于任务(理解而不是说话)和正在学习的语言。因此，这项研究可以为评估语言障碍儿童提供关于语言和任务特定里程碑的信息。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project seeks to investigate two critical questions in child language acquisition: (1) WHEN do toddlers show evidence of grammatical productivity in comprehension? (2) HOW does this productivity emergence vary, both cross-linguistically (i.e., do children learning some languages demonstrate earlier emergence than children learning other languages?) and within a given language, across grammatical constructions (i.e., do some grammatical constructions yield earlier emergence of productivity than others?)? This project addresses these questions by bringing together two usually-separate strands in language acquisition research. First, this will be one of the first studies of children's early grammatical productivity to take a cross- linguistic approach, focusing on three languages which have been selected to enable multiple types of comparisons. Second, this will be one of the first cross-linguistic studies of early grammatical knowledge to have comprehension at its core, as children's emerging productivity will be assessed via the intermodal preferential looking paradigm (IPL). Children's early grammatical productivity in verb morphology and syntax will be assessed in English, French, and Turkish. These languages vary most obviously in their reliance on word order (English) versus verbal inflections (i.e., clitic pronouns; French) versus nominal inflections (Turkish) for marking argument structure in the basic clause. Four sets of experiments, which investigate the acquisition of language-specific argument structure will be conducted. These ask when children demonstrate productivity with word order (Study 1), verbal morphology relevant to thematic relations (Study 2), noun case markings (Study 3), and structural bootstrapping (Study 4). Comparisons will be made across languages for each experiment and across experiments for each language. This research could reveal when children's language abilities become adult-like in one important way. Its focus on comprehension and its comparison of different languages could reveal how the age of this ability depends on the task (understanding rather than speaking) and the language being learned. This research thus could provide information about language- and task-specific milestones for assessing children with language disorders.