ORCID Profile
0000-0002-6370-7447
Current Organisation
Macquarie University
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Research Topics
In Research Link Australia (RLA), "Research Topics" refer to ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes. These topics are either sourced from ANZSRC FOR and SEO codes listed in researchers' related grants or generated by a large language model (LLM) based on their publications.
Top 5 Research Topics
ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)
Cognitive Science | Learning, Memory, Cognition And Language | Neurocognitive Patterns And Neural Networks | Linguistic Processes (Incl. Speech Production And Comprehension) | Biological Psychology (Neuropsychology, Psychopharmacology, | Psychology | Chinese Languages | Language Studies Not Elsewhere Classified | Sensory Processes, Perception And Performance | Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences | Linguistic Structures (Incl. Grammar, Phonology, Lexicon, Semantics) | Mental Health | Biological Psychology (Neuropsychology, Psychopharmacology, Physiological Psychology) | Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified | Developmental Psychology and Ageing
ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)
Behavioural and cognitive sciences | Scientific instrumentation | Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences | Child health | Early childhood education | Biological sciences | Diagnostic methods |
Related Links
Publications
Testing the limits of language production in long-term survivors of major stroke: A psycholinguistic and anatomic study
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-08-2010
The online processing ofonly ifandeven ifconditional statements: Implications for mental models
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-03-2015
Acquisition of the numerical wh-pronoun ji 'how many' in Mandarin Chinese
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 06-2014
Measurement Of Neuromagnetic Brain Function In Pre-school Children With Custom Sized MEG
Publisher: MyJove Corporation
Date: 19-02-2010
DOI: 10.3791/1693
Using the visual-world paradigm to explore the meaning of conditionals in natural language
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-03-2018
Universal Grammar versus language diversity
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2010
Differences in Scope Assignments for Child and Adult Speakers of Mandarin
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-02-2018
DOI: 10.1007/S10936-018-9557-8
Abstract: The present study used a Truth Value Judgment Task to investigate whether changes in sentence structure lead to corresponding changes in the assignment of scope relations by Mandarin-speaking children and adults. In one condition, participants were presented with ordinary negative sentences containing disjunction this condition was designed to verify the existing claim that disjunction is a positive polarity item for adult speakers of Mandarin, but not for child speakers. In a second condition, participants were presented with negative sentences where the disjunction phrase was preposed from object position this condition was designed to examine the extent to which changes in sentence structure can result in changes in scope assignments to negated disjunctions. The results indicate that the preposed disjunction phrase undergoes reconstruction for children, whereas reconstruction is blocked for adults. This finding also suggests that Mandarin-speaking children and adults exhibit different scope preferences for negated disjunctions, regardless of where the disjunction phrase appears in the surface syntax.
Introduction to the Special Issue on the Development of Binding
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-1992
Lateralization of brain activation in fluent and non-fluent preschool children
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 28-05-2014
Syntactic processing in agrammatic aphasia by speakers of a Slavic language
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 04-1995
Abstract: It is widely believed that agrammatic aphasics have lost the ability to assign complete syntactic representations. This view stems from indications that agrammatics often fail to comprehend complex syntactic structures, as for ex le, some types of relative clauses. The present study presents an alternative account. Comprehension by Serbo-Croatian-speaking agrammatic aphasics was tested on four types of relative clause structures and on conjoined clauses. The relative clauses varied in type of embedding (embedded vs. nonembedded) and in the location of the gap (subject position vs. object position). There were two control groups: Wernicke-type aphasics and normal subjects. The findings from a sentence-picture matching task indicated that agrammatic aphasics were able to process complex syntactic structures, as evidenced by their well-above chance performances. The success rate varied across different types of relative clauses, with object-gap relatives yielding more errors than subject-gap relatives in all groups. Each group showed the same pattern of errors: agrammatic subjects were distinguished from Wernicke subjects and normal subjects only in quantity of errors. These findings are incompatible with the view that the agrammatics are missing portions of the syntax. Instead, their comprehension deficits reflect varying degrees of processing impairment in the context of spared syntactic knowledge.
When Negation and Epistemic Modality Combine: The Role of Information Strength in Child Language
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 28-03-2014
Children’s interpretation of disjunction in negative sentences
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 20-03-2018
Language mechanisms and reading disorder
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-1986
DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(86)90008-9
Abstract: YKL-40 is secreted by several types of tumors. Increased serum YKL-40 levels have been reported in prostate, glioblastoma, breast and colorectal cancers. Determination of YKL-40 levels may serve as a valuable biomarker for the diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer. The purpose of this study was to determine the serum YKL-40 levels expressed in gastric carcinomas. Between 2009 and 2011, we retrospectively reviewed 100 patients with gastric cancer and compared their serum s les to 75 healthy volunteers. YKL-40 levels were determined by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). We found significantly higher serum levels of YKL-40 in patients with gastric cancer compared to the healthy population (P < 0.0001). We also found significant differences in serum YKL-40 levels between female and male patients with gastric cancer (P < 0.01). YKL-40 is over-expressed in gastric cancer, suggesting a more aggressive phenotype. YKL-40 may be a useful serum biomarker for gastric cancer identification, and future studies should focus on the role of YKL-40 in the tumorigenesis of gastric cancer and responsiveness toward treatment.
Reduced activation of left orbitofrontal cortex precedes blocked vocalization
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.JFLUDIS.2012.05.001
Abstract: While stuttering is known to be characterized by anomalous brain activations during speech, very little data is available describing brain activations during stuttering. To our knowledge there are no reports describing brain activations that precede blocking. In this case report we present magnetoencephalographic data from a person who stutters who had significant instances of blocking whilst performing a vowel production task. This unique data set has allowed us to compare the brain activations leading up to a block with those leading up to successful production. Surprisingly, the results are very consistent with data comparing fluent production in stutterers to controls. We show here that preceding a block there is significantly less activation of the left orbitofrontal and inferiorfrontal cortices. Furthermore, there is significant extra activation in the right orbitofrontal and inferiorfrontal cortices, and the sensorimotor and auditory areas bilaterally. This data adds weight to the argument forwarded by Kell et al. (2009) that the best functional sign of optimal repair in stutterering is activation of the left BA 47/12 in the orbitofrontal cortex. At the end of this activity the reader will be able to (a) identify brain regions associated with blocked vocalization, (b) discuss the functions of the orbitofrontal and inferior frontal cortices in regard to speech production and (c) describe the usefulness and limitations of magnetoencephalography (MEG) in stuttering research.
Innate ideas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 24-02-2005
Negation and Free Choice Inference in Child Mandarin
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 26-10-2020
When OR is assigned a conjunctive inference in child language
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 30-08-2020
Scalar Implicatures Versus Presuppositions: The View from Acquisition
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-11-2014
The structure of children's linguistic knowledge
Publisher: MIT Press - Journals
Date: 07-2005
What’s parsing got to do with it?
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 16-09-2013
Elicitation of morphological forms in non-fluent aphasia
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-1998
Interface conditions in child language
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2004
When OR is conjunctive in child Mandarin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 15-04-2019
Wh-Questions, Universal Statements and Free Choice Inferences in Child Mandarin
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 16-11-2017
DOI: 10.1007/S10936-017-9535-6
Abstract: This study investigated 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's comprehension of wh-questions, universal statements and free choice inferences. Previous research has found that Mandarin-speaking children assign a universal interpretation to sentences with a wh-word (e.g., shei 'who') followed by the adverbial quantifier dou 'all' (Zhou in Appl Psycholinguist 36:411-435, 2013). Children also compute free choice inferences in sentences that contain a modal verb in addition to a wh-word and dou (Zhou, in: Nakayama, Su, Huang (eds.) Studies in Chinese and Japanese language acquisition: in honour of Stephen Crain. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam, pp 223-235, 2017). The present study used a Question-Statement Task to assess children's interpretation of sentences containing shei + dou, both with and without the modal verb beiyunxu 'was allowed to', as well as the contrast between sentences with shei + dou, which are statements for adults, versus ones with dou + shei, which are wh-questions for adults. The 5-year-old Mandarin-speaking child participants exhibited adult-like linguistic knowledge of the semantics and pragmatics of wh-words, the adverbial quantifier dou, and the deontic modal verb beiyunxu.
The interpretation of logical connectives in Turkish
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 29-06-2016
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000915000306
Abstract: This study investigated how Turkish-speaking children and adults interpret negative sentences with disjunction (English or ) and ones with conjunction (English and ). The goal was to see whether Turkish-speaking children and adults assigned the same interpretation to both kinds of sentences and, if not, to determine the source of the differences. Turkish-speaking children and adults were found to assign different interpretations to negative sentences with disjunction just in case the nouns in the disjunction phrase were marked with accusative case. For children, negation took scope over disjunction regardless of case marking, whereas, for adults, disjunction took scope over negation if the disjunctive phrases were case marked. Both groups assigned the same interpretation to negative sentences with conjunction both case-marked and non-case-marked conjunction phrases took scope over negation. The findings are taken as evidence for a ‘subset’ principle of language learnability that dictates children's initial scope assignments.
Grey matter volume differences in the left caudate nucleus of people who stutter
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.BANDL.2016.08.009
Abstract: The cause of stuttering has many theoretical explanations. A number of research groups have suggested changes in the volume and/or function of the striatum as a causal agent. Two recent studies in children and one in adults who stutter (AWS) report differences in striatal volume compared that seen in controls however, the laterality and nature of this anatomical volume difference is not consistent across studies. The current study investigated whether a reduction in striatal grey matter volume, comparable to that seen in children who stutter (CWS), would be found in AWS. Such a finding would support claims that an anatomical striatal anomaly plays a causal role in stuttering. We used voxel-based morphometry to examine the structure of the striatum in a group of AWS and compared it to that in a group of matched adult control subjects. Results showed a statistically significant group difference for the left caudate nucleus, with smaller mean volume in the group of AWS. The caudate nucleus, one of three main structures within the striatum, is thought to be critical for the planning and modulation of movement sequencing. The difference in striatal volume found here aligns with theoretical accounts of stuttering, which suggest it is a motor control disorder that arises from deficient articulatory movement selection and sequencing. Whilst the current study provides further evidence of a striatal volume difference in stuttering at the group level compared to controls, the significant overlap between AWS and controls suggests this difference is unlikely to be diagnostic of stuttering.
The interpretation of disjunction in VP ellipsis: The case of Mandarin Chinese
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 11-08-2021
DOI: 10.1177/01427237211020971
Abstract: It has long been noted that verb phrase (VP) ellipsis cancels the polarity sensitivity of the English Positive Polarity Items (PPIs). In recent work, it has been proposed that words for disjunction are governed by a parameter. On one value of the parameter, disjunction is a PPI for adult speakers of many languages including Mandarin Chinese. On the other value, disjunction is interpreted in situ. It has also been proposed that child language learners, across languages, initially interpret disjunction in situ, not as a PPI. Taken together, these proposals predict that child and adult speakers of Mandarin will assign the same interpretation to disjunction in sentences with VP ellipsis, but will assign a different interpretation in sentences without VP ellipsis. This study assessed these predictions. In sentences with a full VP, the adult participants analyzed disjunction as a PPI, but they interpreted disjunction in situ in sentences with VP ellipsis. The child participants interpreted disjunction in situ in sentences of both kinds. Together, the findings support the recent proposal that disjunction is governed by a lexical parameter, with a default setting.
Children's comprehension of plural predicate conjunction*
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 08-05-2018
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000917000137
Abstract: Previous developmental studies of conjunction have focused on the syntax of phrasal and sentential coordination (Lust, 1977 de Villiers, Tager-Flusberg & Hakuta, 1977 Bloom, Lahey, Hood, Lifter & Fiess, 1980, among others). The present study examined the flexibility of children's interpretation of conjunction. Specifically, when two predicates that can apply simultaneously to a single in idual are conjoined in the scope of a plural definite ( The bears are big and white ), conjunction receives a Boolean, intersective interpretation. However, when the conjoined predicates cannot apply simultaneously to an in idual ( The bears are big and small ), conjunction receives a weaker ‘split’ interpretation (Krifka, 1990 Lasersohn, 1995 Winter, 1996). Our experiments reveal that preschool-aged children are sensitive to both intersective and split interpretations, and can use their lexical and world knowledge of the relevant predicates in order to select an appropriate reading.
Lateralized auditory brain function in children with normal reading ability and in children withdyslexia
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2013
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROPSYCHOLOGIA.2012.12.015
Abstract: We examined central auditory processing in typically- and atypically-developing readers. Concurrent EEG and MEG brain measurements were obtained from a group of 16 children with dyslexia aged 8-12 years, and a group of 16 age-matched children with normal reading ability. Auditory responses were elicited using 500ms duration broadband noise. These responses were strongly lateralized in control children. Children with dyslexia showed significantly less lateralisation of auditory cortical functioning, and a different pattern of development of auditory lateralization with age. These results provide further evidence that the core neurophysiological deficit of dyslexia is a problem in the balance of auditory function between the two hemispheres.
Children's Interpretation of Focus Expressions in English and Mandarin
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 30-09-2009
Chapter 11. The meaning of question words in statements in child Mandarin
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 13-07-2018
Downward entailment in child Mandarin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 29-11-2011
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000911000389
Abstract: There are three hallmarks of core linguistic properties. First, they are expected to be manifested in typologically different languages. Second, they should unify superficially unrelated linguistic phenomena. Third, they are expected to emerge early in the course of language development, all things being equal (Crain, 1991). The present study investigates a candidate for a core linguistic property, namely the semantic property of downward entailment. We report the findings of two experimental studies of children's knowledge of downward entailment. These experiments explore two different aspects of downward entailment, in a study with Mandarin-speaking children. Taken together with previous research findings, the results of the present study support the conclusion that downward entailment is a core property of human languages.
In-Depth Verification of Sentinel-1 and TerraSAR-X Geolocation Accuracy Using the Australian Corner Reflector Array
Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Date: 02-2021
The growth of language
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUBIOREV.2016.12.023
Abstract: Human infants develop language remarkably rapidly and without overt instruction. We argue that the distinctive ontogenesis of child language arises from the interplay of three factors: domain-specific principles of language (Universal Grammar), external experience, and properties of non-linguistic domains of cognition including general learning mechanisms and principles of efficient computation. We review developmental evidence that children make use of hierarchically composed structures ('Merge') from the earliest stages and at all levels of linguistic organization. At the same time, longitudinal trajectories of development show sensitivity to the quantity of specific patterns in the input, which suggests the use of probabilistic processes as well as inductive learning mechanisms that are suitable for the psychological constraints on language acquisition. By considering the place of language in human biology and evolution, we propose an approach that integrates principles from Universal Grammar and constraints from other domains of cognition. We outline some initial results of this approach as well as challenges for future research.
Acquisition of syntax and semantics
Publisher: Elsevier
Date: 2006
Introduction to experimental approaches to the study of child language: A cross-linguistic perspective
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 19-09-2018
Studying Brain Function in Children Using Magnetoencephalography
Publisher: MyJove Corporation
Date: 08-02-2019
DOI: 10.3791/58909
Abstract: Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a non-invasive neuroimaging technique which directly measures magnetic fields produced by the electrical activity of the human brain. MEG is quiet and less likely to induce claustrophobia compared with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). It is therefore a promising tool for investigating brain function in young children. However, analysis of MEG data from pediatric populations is often complicated by head movement artefacts which arise as a consequence of the requirement for a spatially-fixed sensor array that is not affixed to the child's head. Minimizing head movements during MEG sessions can be particularly challenging as young children are often unable to remain still during experimental tasks. The protocol presented here aims to reduce head movement artefacts during pediatric MEG scanning. Prior to visiting the MEG laboratory, families are provided with resources that explain the MEG system and the experimental procedures in simple, accessible language. An MEG familiarization session is conducted during which children are acquainted with both the researchers and the MEG procedures. They are then trained to keep their head still whilst lying inside an MEG simulator. To help children feel at ease in the novel MEG environment, all of the procedures are explained through the narrative of a space mission. To minimize head movement due to restlessness, children are trained and assessed using fun and engaging experimental paradigms. In addition, children's residual head movement artefacts are compensated for during the data acquisition session using a real-time head movement tracking system. Implementing these child-friendly procedures is important for improving data quality, minimizing participant attrition rates in longitudinal studies, and ensuring that families have a positive research experience.
What are core linguistic properties?
Publisher: Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science
Date: 2010
DOI: 10.5096/ASCS200911
The language faculty
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Date: 05-2012
DOI: 10.1093/OXFORDHB/9780195309799.013.0015
Abstract: The article illustrates that humans have a language faculty, a cognitive system that supports the acquisition and use of certain languages, with several core properties. The faculty is apparently governed by principles that are logically contingent, specific to human language, and innately determined. A naturally acquirable human language (Naturahl) is a finite-yet-unbounded language, with two further properties that include: its signals are overt sounds or signs, and it can be acquired by a biologically normal human child, given an ordinary course of human experience. Any biologically normal human child can acquire any Naturahl, given an ordinary course of experience with users of that language. An E-language is a set of signal-interpretation pairs, while an I-language is a procedure that pairs signals with interpretations. The I-languages that children acquire are biologically implementable, since they are actually implemented in human biology. A function has a unique value for each argument, but Naturahls admit the possibility of ambiguity. A domain general learning procedure might help children learn the environments in which negative polarity items (NPI) can appear but acquiring the constraint on where such expressions cannot appear is another matter. The language faculty makes it possible to acquire an I-language that permits questions with a medial-wh, even if one does not encounter such questions.
Capturing the evasive passive
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 27-03-2009
Language acquisition in the absence of experience
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 12-1991
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X00071491
Abstract: A fundamental goal of linguistic theory is to explain how natural languages are acquired. This paper describes some recent findings on how learners acquire syntactic knowledge for which there is little, if any, decisive evidence from the environment. The first section presents several general observations about language acquisition that linguistic theory has tried to explain and discusses the thesis that certain linguistic properties are innate because they appear universally and in the absence of corresponding experience. A third diagnostic for innateness, early emergence, is the focus of the second section of the paper, in which linguistic theory is tested against recent experimental evidence on children's acquisition of syntax.
Children's interpretation of disjunction in the scope of ‘before’: a comparison of English and Mandarin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 27-07-2011
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000911000092
Abstract: This study investigates three- to five-year-old children's interpretation of disjunction in sentences like ‘The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or the bunny’. English disjunction has a conjunctive interpretation in such sentences (‘The dog reached the finish line before the turtle and before the bunny’). This interpretation conforms with classical logic. Mandarin disjunction (‘huozhe’) can take scope over ‘before’ (‘zai … zhiqian’), so the same sentence can mean ‘The dog reached the finish line before the turtle or before the bunny (I don't know which)’. If children are guided by adult input in the acquisition of sentence meanings, English- and Mandarin-speaking children should assign different interpretations to such sentences. If children are guided by logical principles, then children acquiring either language should initially assign the conjunctive interpretation of disjunction. A truth-value judgment task was used to test this prediction and English- and Mandarin-speaking children were found to behave similarly.
Unravelling the Cognition of Coding in 3-to-6-year Olds
Publisher: ACM
Date: 08-08-2018
Children's interpretation of conjunction in the scope of negation in English and Mandarin: New evidence for the semantic subset maxim
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 24-08-2015
DOI: 10.1017/S0142716415000296
Abstract: We tested 3- to 5-year-old English- and Mandarin-speaking children on their interpretation of sentences like The elephant didn't eat both the carrot and the capsicum . These sentences are scopally ambiguous. Adult English speakers favor a weak interpretation of such sentences, with negation taking scope over conjunction (i.e., the elephant probably ate one of the vegetables, but not both). In contrast, adult Mandarin speakers favor a strong interpretation of the corresponding Mandarin sentences, with conjunction taking scope over negation (i.e., the elephant ate neither vegetable). The semantic subset maxim (Notley, Zhou, Jensen, & Crain, 2012) predicts that children acquiring all human languages should initially prefer the strong (subset) reading of such sentences. In contrast, the question–answer requirement model (Gualmini, Hulsey, Hacquard, & Fox, 2008 Hulsey, Hacquard, Fox, & Gualmini, 2004) predicts that children should initially prefer the scope reading that constitutes a good true answer to a question under discussion in the context. We designed a task in which the weak reading of our sentences corresponded to a good true answer to the question under discussion. We found that children across languages nonetheless preferred to assign a strong interpretation to our test sentences, providing empirical support for the semantic subset maxim.
Why language acquisition is a snap
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 26-01-2002
Charting the course of language development
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 12-1991
The case of the missing generalizations
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Date: 2009
Children's use of phonological information in ambiguity resolution: a view from Mandarin Chinese
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 14-09-2011
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000911000249
Abstract: How do children develop the mapping between prosody and other levels of linguistic knowledge? This question has received considerable attention in child language research. In the present study two experiments were conducted to investigate four- to five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's sensitivity to prosody in ambiguity resolution. Experiment 1 used eye-tracking to assess children's use of stress in resolving structural ambiguities. Experiment 2 took advantage of special properties of Mandarin to investigate whether children can use intonational cues to resolve ambiguities involving speech acts. The results of our experiments show that children's use of prosodic information in ambiguity resolution varies depending on the type of ambiguity involved. Children can use prosodic information more effectively to resolve speech act ambiguities than to resolve structural ambiguities. This finding suggests that the mapping between prosody and semantics ragmatics in young children is better established than the mapping between prosody and syntax.
Sensitivity to inflectional morphology in agrammatism
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 1988
DOI: 10.1016/0093-934X(88)90050-8
Abstract: We present the results of a study with six Serbo-Croatian-speaking agrammatic patients on a test of inflectional morphology in which subjects judged whether spoken sentences were grammatical or ungrammatical. Sensitivity to two kinds of syntactic features was investigated in these aphasic patients: (1) subcategorization rules for transitive verbs (which must be followed by a noun in the accusative case intransitive verbs can be followed by nouns in other noun cases) (2) sensitivity to the inflectional morphology marking noun case. The test items consisted of three-word sentences (noun-verb-noun) in which verb transitivity and appropriateness of the case inflection of the following noun were manipulated. Results of the grammaticality judgment task show that both syntactic properties are preserved in these patients.
The Interpretation of disjunction in the scope of dou in child Mandarin
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 15-12-2020
DOI: 10.3389/FPSYG.2020.609492
Abstract: A recent theory provides a unified cross-linguistic analysis of the interpretations that are assigned to expressions for disjunction, Negative Polarity Items, Free Choice Items, and the non-interrogative uses of wh -phrases in languages such as Mandarin Chinese. If this approach is on the right track, children should be expected to demonstrate similar patterns in the acquisition of these linguistic expressions. Previous research has found that, by age four, children have acquired the knowledge that both the existential indefinite renhe “any” and wh -words in Mandarin Chinese are interpreted as Negative Polarity Items when they are bound by downward entailing operators, but the same expressions are interpreted as Free Choice Items (with a conjunctive interpretation) when they are bound by deontic modals (Mandarin keyi ) or by the Mandarin adverbial quantifier dou “all”. The present study extends this line of research to the Mandarin disjunction word huozhe . A Truth Value Judgment Task was used to investigate the possibility that disjunction phrases that are bound by the adverbial quantifier dou generate a conjunctive interpretation in the grammars of Mandarin-speaking 4-year-old children. The findings confirmed this prediction. We discuss the implications of the findings for linguistic theory and for language learnability.
Syntax acquisition
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-01-2012
DOI: 10.1002/WCS.1158
Abstract: Every normal child acquires a language in just a few years. By 3- or 4-years-old, children have effectively become adults in their abilities to produce and understand endlessly many sentences in a variety of conversational contexts. There are two alternative accounts of the course of children's language development. These different perspectives can be traced back to the nature versus nurture debate about how knowledge is acquired in any cognitive domain. One perspective dates back to Plato's dialog 'The Meno'. In this dialog, the protagonist, Socrates, demonstrates to Meno, an aristocrat in Ancient Greece, that a young slave knows more about geometry than he could have learned from experience. By extension, Plato's Problem refers to any gap between experience and knowledge. How children fill in the gap in the case of language continues to be the subject of much controversy in cognitive science. Any model of language acquisition must address three factors, inter alia: 1. The knowledge children accrue 2. The input children receive (often called the primary linguistic data) 3. The nonlinguistic capacities of children to form and test generalizations based on the input. According to the famous linguist Noam Chomsky, the main task of linguistics is to explain how children bridge the gap-Chomsky calls it a 'chasm'-between what they come to know about language, and what they could have learned from experience, even given optimistic assumptions about their cognitive abilities. Proponents of the alternative 'nurture' approach accuse nativists like Chomsky of overestimating the complexity of what children learn, underestimating the data children have to work with, and manifesting undue pessimism about children's abilities to extract information based on the input. The modern 'nurture' approach is often referred to as the usage-based account. We discuss the usage-based account first, and then the nativist account. After that, we report and discuss the findings of several studies of child language that have been conducted with the goal of helping to adjudicate between the alternative approaches to language development. WIREs Cogn Sci 2012, 3:185-203. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1158 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
Comprehension of temporal terms by good and poor readers
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 1989
DOI: 10.1177/002383098903200103
Abstract: Poor beginning readers often have difficulty comprehending spoken sentences with complex syntactic structures. This study attempts to identify the reasons for this difficulty. Second-grade good and poor readers were tested for comprehension of spoken sentences containing the temporal terms before and after. Processing load was varied systematically while holding syntax constant in an effort to determine whether processing factors contribute to poor readers' comprehension problems, or whether poor readers are simply lacking the structural knowledge required to understand sentences containing temporal terms. The poor readers' high level of performance under conditions of reduced processing demands suggests that their misinterpretations in spoken language understanding may be due, in large part, to limitations in verbal working memory.
Sentence scope
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 26-11-2015
Contextual information and temporal terms
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 10-1989
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000900010758
Abstract: We report an experiment designed to identify how contextual information can influence children's performance on an experimental task involving temporal terms. Grain (1982) reported improved performance on a comprehension task when subjects were provided with contextual information, and he suggested that the improvement was due to satisfaction of presuppositions. However, this contextual information might have served to simplify task demands by providing prior information concerning an important aspect of the task. The present study distinguishes these factors by incorporating contextual information into the subordinate clause of the test sentences in a comprehension experiment (to satisfy presupposions) or into the main clause (to provide comparable prior information without satisfying presuppositions). We conclude that contextual information results in a significant improvement only when such information can be used to satisfy presuppositions.
Focus identification in child Mandarin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 16-11-2009
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000909990110
Abstract: In this study, we investigated how Mandarin-speaking children and adults interpret focus structures like Zhiyou Yuehan chi-le pingguo ‘Only John ate an apple’ and Shi Yuehan chi-de pingguo ‘It is John who ate an apple’. We found that children tended to associate focus operators zhiyou ‘only’ and shi ‘be’ with the verb phrase (VP), whereas adults uniquely associated them with the subject noun phrase (NP). To account for this difference, we propose that children initially treat focus operators as adverbials, thus ending up associating them with the VP. In order to assess our proposal, we examined children's understanding of zhiyou -constructions with negation, like Zhiyou Yuehan meiyou chi pingguo ‘Only John didn't eat an apple’. It was found that children, like adults, consistently associated the focus operator with the subject NP in this construction. The findings have an important bearing on language learnability, since negation assists children in reaching the adult-like interpretation.
Acquisition of logical connectives and focus, L1
Publisher: No publisher found
Date: 2017
Sometimes children are as good as adults: The pragmatic use of prosody in children’s on-line sentence processing
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2012
Language acquisition is language change
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2006
DOI: 10.1007/S10936-005-9002-7
Abstract: According to the theory of Universal Grammar, the primary linguistic data guides children through an innately specified space of hypotheses. On this view, similarities between child-English and adult-German are as unsurprising as similarities between cousins who have never met. By contrast, experience-based approaches to language acquisition contend that child language matches the input, with nonadult forms being simply less articulated versions of the forms produced by adults. This paper reports several studies that provide support for the theory of Universal grammar, and resist explanation on experience-based accounts. Two studies investigate English-speaking children's productions, and a third examines the interpretation of sentences by Japanese speaking children. When considered against the input children are exposed to, the findings of these and other studies are consistent with the continuity hypothesis, which supposes that child language can differ from the language spoken by adults only in ways that adult languages can differ from each other.
Theories of language acquisition
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc.
Date: 2014
Are there universals of reading? We don't believe so
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 29-08-2012
DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X12000155
Abstract: There are universals of language but is it also true, as the target article claims, that there are universals of reading? We believe there are no such universals, and invite others to refute our claim by providing a list of some universals of reading. If there are no universals of reading, there cannot be a universal model of reading.
Unification in child language
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 12-09-2013
Measurement of brain function in pre-school children using a custom sized whole-head MEG sensor array
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2010
DOI: 10.1016/J.CLINPH.2009.10.017
Abstract: Conventional whole-head MEG systems have fixed sensor arrays designed to accommodate most adult heads. However arrays optimised for adult brain measurements are suboptimal for research with the significantly smaller heads of young children. We wished to measure brain activity in children using a novel whole-head MEG system custom sized to fit the heads of pre-school-aged children. Auditory evoked fields were measured from seven 4-year-old children in a 64-channel KIT whole-head gradiometer MEG system. The fit of heads in the MEG helmet dewars, defined as the mean of sensor-to-head centre distances, were substantially better for children in the child helmet dewar than in the adult helmet dewar, and were similar to head fits obtained for adults in a conventional adult MEG system. Auditory evoked fields were successfully measured from all seven children and dipole source locations were computed. These results demonstrate the feasibility of routinely measuring neuromagnetic brain function in healthy, awake pre-school-aged children. The advent of child-sized whole-head MEG systems opens new opportunities for the study of cognitive brain development in young children.
Children’s knowledge of double negative structures in Mandarin Chinese
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-2013
On performability
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 1987
On children's variable success with scalar inferences
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 09-2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.COGNITION.2018.04.020
Abstract: Previous developmental studies have revealed variation in children's ability to compute scalar inferences. While children have been shown to struggle with standard scalar inferences (e.g., with scalar quantifiers like "some") (Chierchia, Crain, Guasti, Gualmini, & Meroni, 2001 Guasti et al., 2005 Noveck, 2001 Papafragou & Musolino, 2003), there is also a growing handful of inferences that children have been reported to derive quite readily (Barner & Bachrach, 2010 Hochstein, Bale, Fox, & Barner, 2016 Papafragou & Musolino, 2003 Singh, Wexler, Astle-Rahim, Kamawar, & Fox, 2016 Stiller, Goodman, & Frank, 2015 Tieu, Romoli, Zhou, & Crain, 2016 Tieu et al., 2017). One recent approach, which we refer to as the Alternatives-based approach, attributes the variability in children's performance to limitations in how children engage with the alternative sentences that are required to compute the relevant inferences. Specifically, if the alternative sentences can be generated by simplifying the assertion, rather than by lexically replacing one scalar term with another, children should be better able to compute the inference. In this paper, we investigated this prediction by assessing how children and adults interpret sentences that embed disjunction under a universal quantifier, such as "Every elephant caught a big butterfly or a small butterfly". For adults, such sentences typically give rise to the distributive inference that some elephant caught a big butterfly and some elephant caught a small butterfly (Crnič, Chemla, & Fox, 2015 Fox, 2007 Gazdar, 1979). Another possible interpretation, though not one typically accessed by adults, is the conjunctive inference that every elephant caught a big butterfly and a small butterfly (Singh, Wexler, Astle-Rahim, Kamawar, & Fox, 2016). Crucially, for our purposes, it has been argued that both of these inferences can be derived using alternatives that are generated by deleting parts of the asserted sentence, rather than through lexical replacement, making these sentences an ideal test case for evaluating the predictions of the Alternatives-based approach. The findings of our experimental study reveal that children are indeed able to successfully compute this class of inferences, providing support for the Alternatives-based approach as a viable explanation of children's variable success in computing scalar inferences.
Born in the USA: a comparison of modals and nominal quantifiers in child language
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 02-02-2016
On the acquisition of pronominal reference. Review of
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 1985
Phrase structure parameters
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-1990
DOI: 10.1007/BF00627510
Reception of language in broca's aphasia
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 1989
Disjunction triggers exhaustivity implicatures in 4- to 5-year-olds
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 11-04-2020
DOI: 10.1093/JOS/FFZ021
Abstract: Children’s difficulty deriving scalar implicatures has been attributed to a variety of factors including processing limitations, an inability to access scalar alternatives, and pragmatic tolerance. The present research explores the nature of children’s difficulty by investigating a previously unexplored kind of inference—an exhaustivity implicature that is triggered by disjunction. We reasoned that if children are able to draw quantity implicatures but have difficulties accessing alternative lexical expressions from a scale, then they should perform better on exhaustivity implicatures than on scalar implicatures, since the former do not require spontaneously accessing relevant scalar alternatives from the lexicon. We conducted two experiments. Experiment 1 found that 4- to 5-year-olds consistently computed exhaustivity implicatures to a greater extent than scalar implicatures. Experiment 2 demonstrated that children are more likely to compute exhaustivity implicatures with disjunction compared to conjunction. We conclude that children often fail to derive scalar implicatures because (1) they struggle to access scalar alternatives and (2) disjunction (but not conjunction) makes subdomain alternatives particularly salient. Thus, the findings suggest that exhaustivity implicatures can be derived without reference to a scale of alternatives.
The interpretation of disjunction in VP ellipsis in Mandarin Chinese
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 15-04-2019
Envelope-following responses in MEG and EEG as indices of temporal processing in the human auditory system
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2014
Negative sentences with disjunction in child Catalan
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-01-2021
Sentence matching and overgeneration
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-1987
DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(87)90028-X
Abstract: Recent reports suggest that ghrelin regulation may differ by ethnicity and age. This study was designed to examine circulating ghrelin among overweight female African Americans across different age groups. Eleven overweight peripubertal girls, 17 overweight pubertal girls, and a control group of 18 overweight African-American premenopausal women ingested a standard liquid meal after an overnight fast. Blood s les were obtained before the meal and for 4 h postchallenge. Participants rated appetite by a visual analog scale. Peripubertal girls demonstrated higher postprandial ghrelin and lesser ghrelin suppression compared with adults (p < 0.05), corresponding with greater desire to eat across the test period (p = 0.017). Fasting ghrelin tended to be inversely related to fasting estradiol (r = -0.264, p = 0.076). Compared with overweight African-American women, peripubertal girls had higher ghrelin as well as greater appetite after a standard meal. These results may suggest a dysregulation in ghrelin reflective of demands of growth.
The Use of Linguistic Cues in Sentence Comprehension by Mandarin-Speaking Children with High-Functioning Autism
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-11-2016
DOI: 10.1007/S10803-016-2912-4
Abstract: Two studies were conducted to investigate how high-functioning children with autism use different linguistic cues in sentence comprehension. Two types of linguistic cues were investigated: word order and morphosyntactic cues. The results show that children with autism can use both types of cues in sentence comprehension. However, compared to age-matched typically developing peers, children with autism relied significantly more on word order cues and exhibited significantly more difficulties in interpreting sentences in which there was a conflict between the morphosyntactic cue and the word order cue. We attribute the difficulties exhibited by children with autism to their deficits in executive function. We then discuss the implications of the findings for understanding the nature of the sentence processing mechanism in autism.
Dual temporal encoding mechanisms in human auditory cortex: Evidence from MEG and EEG
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2016
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUROIMAGE.2015.12.053
Abstract: Current hypotheses about language processing advocate an integral relationship between encoding of temporal information and linguistic processing in the brain. All such explanations must accommodate the evident ability of the perceptual system to process both slow and fast time scales in speech. However most cortical neurons are limited in their capability to precisely synchronise to temporal modulations at rates faster than about 50Hz. Hence, a central question in auditory neurophysiology concerns how the full range of perceptually relevant modulation rates might be encoded in the cerebral cortex. Here we show with concurrent noninvasive magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) measurements that the human auditory cortex transitions between a phase-locked (PL) mode of responding to modulation rates below about 50Hz, and a non-phase-locked (NPL) mode at higher rates. Precisely such dual response modes are predictable from the behaviours of single neurons in auditory cortices of non-human primates. Our data point to a common mechanistic explanation for the single neuron and MEG/EEG results and support the hypothesis that two distinct types of neuronal encoding mechanisms are employed by the auditory cortex to represent a wide range of temporal modulation rates. This dual encoding model allows slow and fast modulations in speech to be processed in parallel and is therefore consistent with theoretical frameworks in which slow temporal modulations (such as rhythm or syllabic structure) are akin to the contours or edges of visual objects, whereas faster modulations (such as periodicity pitch or phonemic structure) are more like visual texture.
Grammatical aspect and event recognition in children’s online sentence comprehension
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2014
DOI: 10.1016/J.COGNITION.2014.06.018
Abstract: This study investigated whether or not the temporal information encoded in aspectual morphemes can be used immediately by young children to facilitate event recognition during online sentence comprehension. We focused on the contrast between two grammatical aspectual morphemes in Mandarin Chinese, the perfective morpheme -le and the (imperfective) durative morpheme -zhe. The perfective morpheme -le is often used to indicate that an event has been completed, whereas the durative morpheme -zhe indicates that an event is still in progress or continuing. We were interested to see whether young children are able to use the temporal reference encoded in the two aspectual morphemes (i.e., completed versus ongoing) as rapidly as adults to facilitate event recognition during online sentence comprehension. Using the visual world eye-tracking paradigm, we tested 34 Mandarin-speaking adults and 99 Mandarin-speaking children (35 three-year-olds, 32 four-year-olds and 32 five-year-olds). On each trial, participants were presented with spoken sentences containing either of the two aspectual morphemes while viewing a visual image containing two pictures, one representing a completed event and one representing an ongoing event. Participants' eye movements were recorded from the onset of the spoken sentences. The results show that both the adults and the three age groups of children exhibited a facilitatory effect trigged by the aspectual morpheme: hearing the perfective morpheme -le triggered more eye movements to the completed event area, whereas hearing the durative morpheme -zhe triggered more eye movements to the ongoing event area. This effect occurred immediately after the onset of the aspectual morpheme, both for the adults and the three groups of children. This is evidence that young children are able to use the temporal information encoded in aspectual morphemes as rapidly as adults to facilitate event recognition. Children's eye movement patterns reflect a rapid mapping of grammatical aspect onto the temporal structures of events depicted in the visual scene.
‘Language of the past’ – Exploring past tense disruption during autobiographical narration in neurodegenerative disorders
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 27-05-2016
DOI: 10.1111/JNP.12073
Abstract: Compromised retrieval of autobiographical memory (ABM) is well established in neurodegenerative disorders. The recounting of autobiographical events is inextricably linked to linguistic knowledge, yet no study to date has investigated whether tense use during autobiographical narration is disrupted in dementia syndromes. This study investigated the incidence of correct past tense use during ABM narration in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD, n = 10) and semantic dementia (SD, n = 10) in comparison with healthy older Controls (n = 10). Autobiographical narratives were analysed for episodic content (internal/external) and classified according to tense use (past resent). Across both patient groups, use of the past tense was significantly compromised relative to Controls, with increased levels of off-target present tense verbs observed. Voxel-based morphometry analyses based on structural MRI revealed differential associations between past tense use and regions of grey matter intensity in the brain. Bilateral temporal cortices were implicated in the SD group, whereas frontal, lateral, and medial temporal regions including the right hippoc us emerged in AD. This preliminary study provides the first demonstration of the disruption of specific linguistic constructs during autobiographical narration in AD and SD. Future studies are warranted to clarify at what point in the disease trajectory such deficits in tense use emerge, and whether these deficits are a product or contributing factor in memory disruption in these syndromes.
Using event-related potentials to measure phrase boundary perception in English
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 26-11-2014
Syntactic comprehension in young poor readers
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 12-1989
DOI: 10.1017/S0142716400009012
Abstract: Children with specific reading disability fail to understand some complex spoken sentences as well as good readers. This investigation sought to identify the source of poor readers' comprehension difficulties. Second-grade good and poor readers were tested on spoken sentences with restrictive relative clauses in two experiments designed to minimize demands on working memory. The methodological innovations resulted in a high level of performance by both reader groups, demonstrating knowledge of relative clause structure. The poor readers' performance closely paralleled that of the good readers both in pattern of errors and in awareness of the pragmatic aspects of relative clauses. The findings suggest that limitations in processing account for comprehension difficulties displayed by some poor readers in previous investigations.
Development of a whole-head child MEG system
Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Date: 2010
How Adults and Children Interpret Disjunction under Negation in Dutch, French, Hungarian and Italian: A Cross-Linguistic Comparison
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 21-09-2021
Brass tacks in linguistic theory
Publisher: Oxford University PressNew York
Date: 14-07-2005
DOI: 10.1093/ACPROF:OSO/9780195179675.003.0011
Abstract: This chapter presents detailed empirical work on several aspects of children's linguistic performance, focusing in particular on evidence that even two-year-old children understand that the meanings of determiners are ‘conservative’, that the meaning of natural language disjunction is ‘inclusive–or’, and that the structural notion of ‘c-command’ governs a range of linguistic phenomena. This and other works are used to defend three related versions of the argument from the poverty of the stimulus, each of which strongly supports the existence of an innate language faculty.
Acquisition of scope relations by Turkish-English bilingual children
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Date: 11-2016
Grammatical Impairment of Code-Switching but Intact Language Selection in Bilinguals with Aphasia
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2011
Scope assignment in child language: Evidence from the acquisition of Chinese
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-2009
Testing theories of plural meanings
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 12-2020
Comprehension of nonlexical categories in agrammatism
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 07-1995
DOI: 10.1007/BF02145059
Children's Knowledge of Free Choice Inferences and Scalar Implicatures
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 03-03-2015
DOI: 10.1093/JOS/FFV001
Quantification without qualification
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-1996
The logic instinct
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 18-01-2010
Acquisition of cognitive compiling
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 07-1984
DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(84)90015-5
Abstract: Cell death has a vital role in embryonic development and organismal homeostasis. Biochemical, pharmacological, behavioral, and electrophysiological evidences support the idea that dysregulation of cell death programs are involved in neuropathological conditions like epilepsy. The brain is particularly vulnerable to oxidative damage due to higher oxygen consumption and lower endogenous antioxidant defense than other bodily organ. Thus, in this review, we focused on the comprehensive summarization of evidence for redox-associated cell death pathways including apoptosis, autophagy, necroptosis, and pyroptosis in epilepsy and the oxidative stress-related signaling in this process. We specially proposed that the molecular crosstalk of various redox-linked neuronal cell death modalities might occur in seizure onset and/or epileptic conditions according to the published data. Additionally, abundance of polyunsaturated fatty acids in neuronal membrane makes the brain susceptible to lipid peroxidation. This presumption was then formalized in the proposal that ferroptosis, a novel type of lipid reactive oxygen species (ROS)-dependent regulatory cell death, is likely to be a critical mechanism for the emergence of epileptic phenotype. Targeting ferroptosis process or combination treatment with multiple cell death pathway inhibitors may shed new light on the therapy of epilepsy.
Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 10-2005
Like dishwashing detergents, all analogies are not the same: A commentary on Ambridge (2020)
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 06-02-2020
Abstract: This response argues against the proposal that novel utterances are formed by analogy with stored exemplars that are close in meaning. Strings of words that are similar in meaning or even identical can behave very differently once inserted into different syntactic environments. Furthermore, phrases with similar meanings but different underlying syntactic structures can give rise to disparities in meaning in particular contexts. In short, analogy falls short of explaining both adult knowledge of language and children’s syntactic development.
Understanding Prosodic Focus Marking in Mandarin Chinese: Data from Children and Adults.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-04-2019
DOI: 10.1007/S10936-018-9580-9
Abstract: This study investigated whether Mandarin speakers interpret prosodic information as focus markers in a sentence-picture verification task. Previous production studies have shown that both Mandarin-speaking adults and Mandarin-speaking children mark focus by prosodic information (Ouyang and Kaiser in Lang Cogn Neurosc 30(1-2):57-72, 2014 Yang and Chen in Prosodic focus marking in Chinese four-and eight-year-olds, 2014). However, while prosodic focus marking did not seem to affect sentence comprehension in adults Mandarin-speaking children showed enhanced sentence comprehension when the sentence focus was marked by prosodic information in a previous study (Chen in Appl Psycholinguist 19(4):553-582, 1998). The present study revisited this difference between Mandarin speaking adults and children by applying a newly designed task that tested the use of prosodic information to identify the sentence focus. No evidence was obtained that Mandarin-speaking children (as young as 3 years of age) adhered more strongly to prosodic information than adults but that word order was the strongest cue for their focus interpretation. Our findings support the view that children attune to the specific means of information structure marking in their ambient language at an early age.
Acquisition of Quantifiers
Publisher: Annual Reviews
Date: 14-01-2017
DOI: 10.1146/ANNUREV-LINGUISTICS-011516-033930
Abstract: Explaining children's nonadult interpretations of sentences with quantifiers has been the objective of extensive research for more than 50 years. This article reviews four areas of research, each of which began with the observation that children and adults respond differently to sentences with quantifiers. The observed differences have been subject to considerable debate, often drawing upon linguistic theory for answers and sometimes resulting in changes to the theory. This article begins by discussing children's comprehension of sentences with pronouns with quantificational versus referential antecedents. The next topic is children's nonadult responses to sentences with quantifiers and negation. The third topic is children's analysis of scope phenomena. I conclude with a discussion of children's understanding of the focus adverb only, which is used to expose some common properties of historically distinct languages. Progress in each of these four areas has revealed children's deep understanding of the basic meanings of quantifiers and how quantifiers interact with other logical expressions. I conclude that children's nonadult interpretations of quantifiers are consistent with the theory of Universal Grammar.
Is Generative Grammar deceptively simple or simply deceptive?
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2006
The Use of Grammatical Morphemes by Mandarin-Speaking Children with High Functioning Autism
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 08-11-2014
DOI: 10.1007/S10803-014-2304-6
Abstract: The present study investigated the production of grammatical morphemes by Mandarin-speaking children with high functioning autism. Previous research found that a subgroup of English-speaking children with autism exhibit deficits in the use of grammatical morphemes that mark tense. In order to see whether this impairment in grammatical morphology can be generalised to children with autism from other languages, the present study examined whether or not high-functioning Mandarin-speaking children with autism also exhibit deficits in using grammatical morphemes that mark aspect. The results show that Mandarin-speaking children with autism produced grammatical morphemes significantly less often than age-matched and IQ-matched TD peers as well as MLU-matched TD peers. The implications of these findings for understanding the grammatical abilities of children with autism were discussed.
Two negations for the price of one
Publisher: Open Library of the Humanities
Date: 08-11-2016
DOI: 10.5334/GJGL.4
Abstract: Standard English is typically described as a double negation language. In double negation languages, each negative marker contributes independent semantic force. Two negations in the same clause usually cancel each other out, resulting in an affirmative sentence. Other dialects of English permit negative concord. In negative concord sentences, the two negative markers yield a single semantic negation. This paper explores how English-speaking children interpret sentences with more than one negative element, in order to assess whether their early grammar allows negative concord. According to Zeijlstra’s (2004) typological generalization, if a language has a negative syntactic head, it will be a negative concord language. Since Standard English is often analysed as having a negative head, it represents an apparent exception to Zeijlstra’s generalization. This raises the intriguing possibility that initially, children recognize that English has a negative head (i.e., n’t) and, therefore, assign negative concord interpretations to sentences with two negations, despite the absence of evidence for this interpretation in the adult input. The present study investigated this possibility in a comprehension study with 20 3- to 5-year-old children and a control group of 15 adults. The test sentences were presented in contexts that made them amenable to either a double negation or a negative concord interpretation. As expected, the adult participants assigned the double negation interpretation of the test sentences the majority of the time. In contrast, the child participants assigned the alternative, negative concord interpretation the majority of the time. Children must jettison the negative concord interpretation of sentences with two negative markers, and acquire a double negation interpretation. We propose that the requisite positive evidence is the appearance of negative expressions like nothing in object position. Because such expressions exert semantic force without a second negation, this informs children that they are acquiring a double negation language.
Movement‐related neuromagnetic fields in preschool age children
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-04-2014
DOI: 10.1002/HBM.22518
Cognitive profiles of reading-disabled children
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 05-1995
DOI: 10.1111/J.1467-9280.1995.TB00324.X
Abstract: A comprehensive cognitive appraisal of elementary school children with learning disabilities showed that within the language sphere, deficits associated with reading disability are selective Phonological deficits consistently accompany reading problems whether they occur in relatively pure form or in the presence of coexisting attention deficit or arithmetic disability Although reading-disabled children were also deficient in production of morphologically related forms, this difficulty stemmed in large part from the same weakness in the phonological component that underlies reading disability In contrast, tests of syntactic knowledge did not distinguish reading-disabled children from those with other cognitive disabilities, nor from normal children after covarying for intelligence
Language acquisition from a biolinguistic perspective
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2017
DOI: 10.1016/J.NEUBIOREV.2016.09.004
Abstract: This paper describes the biolinguistic approach to language acquisition. We contrast the biolinguistic approach with a usage-based approach. We argue that the biolinguistic approach is superior because it provides more accurate and more extensive generalizations about the properties of human languages, as well as a better account of how children acquire human languages. To distinguish between these accounts, we focus on how child and adult language differ both in sentence production and in sentence understanding. We argue that the observed differences resist explanation using the cognitive mechanisms that are invoked by the usage-based approach. In contrast, the biolinguistic approach explains the qualitative parametric differences between child and adult language. Explaining how child and adult language differ and demonstrating that children perceive unity despite apparent ersity are two of the hallmarks of the biolinguistic approach to language acquisition.
Acquisition of the polarity sensitive item renhe 'any' in Mandarin Chinese
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 24-07-2014
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000913000275
Abstract: The present study investigated Mandarin-speaking children's acquisition of the polarity sensitive item renhe ‘any’ in Mandarin Chinese. Like its English counterpart any , renhe can be used as a negative polarity item (NPI), or as a free choice (FC) item, and both the distribution and interpretation of renhe are governed by the same syntactic and semantic constraints as English any . Using a Truth Value Judgment Task, the present study tested five-year-old Mandarin-speaking children's comprehension of FC renhe in sentences containing the modal word neng ‘can’, and tested children's comprehension of NPI renhe in sentences containing the temporal conjunction zai…zhiqian ‘before’. Most children demonstrated knowledge of the interpretation of both FC renhe and NPI renhe despite a paucity of relevant adult input. Like adults, however, Mandarin-speaking children do not use renhe frequently in ordinary conversation, due to the availability of alternative colloquial expressions ( wh -pronouns) that also convey children's intended meanings.
Children’s Knowledge of the Quantifier Dou in Mandarin Chinese
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 09-11-2010
DOI: 10.1007/S10936-010-9161-Z
Abstract: The quantifier dou (roughly corresponding to English 'all') in Mandarin Chinese has been the topic of much discussion in the theoretical literature. This study investigated children's knowledge of this quantifier using a new methodological technique, which we dubbed the Question-Statement Task. Three questions were addressed: (i) whether young Mandarin-speaking children know that dou is a universal quantifier that quantifies over the elements to its left, (ii) whether they know that dou is an adverb of quantification (Q-adverb) which can (unselectively) bind any variable in its domain, and (iii) whether they know that dou can quantify over wh-words. The main finding was that, by age four, Mandarin-speaking children have the relevant knowledge. The results reflect the early availability of adult-like linguistic knowledge of dou-quantification.
Polarity sensitive expressions in child mandarin
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 21-08-2014
How the brain responds to any: An MEG study
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2012
DOI: 10.1016/J.BANDL.2011.08.006
Abstract: The word any may appear in some sentences, but not in others. For ex le, any is permitted in sentences that contain the word nobody, as in Nobody ate any fruit. However, in a minimally different context any seems strikingly anomalous: (*)Everybody ate any fruit. The aim of the present study was to investigate how the brain responds to the word any in such minimally different contexts - where it is permitted (licensed) and where it is not permitted (unlicensed). Brain responses were measured from adult readers using magnetoencephalography (MEG). The results showed significantly larger responses to permissible contexts in the left posterior temporal areas between 400-500 ms and 590-660 ms. These results clarify the anatomy and timing of brain processes that contribute to our judgment that a word such as any is or is not permitted in a given context.
The Compositionality of Logical Connectives in Child Italian
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 30-07-2018
DOI: 10.1007/S10936-018-9596-1
Abstract: This paper investigates the interpretation that Italian-speaking children and adults assign to negative sentences with disjunction and negative sentences with conjunction. The aim of the study was to determine whether children and adults assign the same interpretation to these types of sentences. The Semantic Subset Principle (SSP) (Crain et al., in: Clifton, Frazer, Rayner (eds) Perspective on sentence processing, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillside, 1994) predicts that children's initial scope assignment should correspond to the interpretation that makes sentences true in the narrowest range of circumstances, even when this is not the interpretation assigned by adults. This prediction was borne out in previous studies in Japanese, Mandarin and Turkish. As predicted by the SSP, the findings of the present study indicate that Italian-speaking children and adults assign the same interpretation to negative sentences with conjunction (conjunction takes scope over negation). By contrast, the study revealed that some children differed from adults in the interpretation they assigned to negative sentences with disjunction. Adults interpreted disjunction as taking scope over negation, whereas children were ided into two groups: one group interpreted disjunction as taking scope over negation as adults did another group interpreted negation as taking scope over disjunction, as predicted by the SSP. To explain the findings, we propose that Italian-speaking children initially differ from adults as dictated by the SSP, but children converge on the adult grammar earlier than children acquiring other languages due to the negative concord status of Italian, including the application of negative concord to sentences with disjunction.
Everybody knows
Publisher: Kluwer Academic Publishers
Date: 2006
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