Unravelling competence, performance and pragmatics in the speech of young children

Abstract

Inferences about linguistic competence in children are typically based on spontaneous speech. This poses a problem since we know that other factors are also involved in speech production. Children who may use complex object and adverbial NPs do not use complex subject NPs. Is this a competence deficit, a performance problem, or simply a reflection of pragmatic factors? Evidence presented here suggests that children probably do not need complex subjects. An extensive use of pronouns in subject but not object position indicates that pragmatics may account for the distribution of clauses in their speech. A similar pattern in adult speech indicates there is no warrant to conclude children's lack of subject clauses reflects anything more than the nature of spontaneous speech.

Do What You Know: “Semantic Scaffolding” in Biclausal Raising and Control

“…MacWhinney (1982) cites data from Limber (1976) and Menyuk (1969;both cited therein) indicating that OO (object-modifying, object-extracted) and OS (object-modifying, subject-extracted) RCs emerge in spontaneous production before SO and SS types. I would argue that this acquisition pattern arises specifically from the desire to present clausal units as an uninterrupted whole: where subject-modifying relative clauses would disturb the contiguity of the matrix subject and its verb, object-modifying RCs do not.…”

Assessing Children's Understanding of Complex Syntax: A Comparison of Two Methods

“…A total of 110 typically developing children between the ages of 3 years 6 months and 5 years 0 months were recruited for the study. We chose this age range based on (a) pilot work where we found that the majority of children between the ages of 3 years and 3 years 5 months engaged in guessing and (b) the age at which one expects reasonable expressive knowledge of these structures to be present (Diessel & Tomasello, ; Jisa & Kern, ; Limber, ). Seven children were subsequently excluded as a result of speech and language delay (3), attention difficulties (2), failure on the hearing screening tests (1), and an unwillingness to participate (1).…”

Experimental cognitive ethology

“…For it is just these verbs and their sentential complements (e.g., think that such and such) that are the foundations of the traditional linguistic analysis of other minds (e.g., Margolis, 1978). Moreover, it is just these complex constructions that inevitably mark the beginnings of syntactic speech in children between two and three years (Limber, 1973).…”

“…It seems, for example, that the representational capacity of English far outstrips its use in everyday interpersonal communication (cf. Limber, 1976). What is exciting about the SR&B studies is that for the first time we can begin to think about experimentally studying the effects of mental representations themselves on animal behavior.…”