Binding Principles in the Grammars of Young Children

McDaniel, Dana; Cairns, Helen Smith; Hsu, Jennifer Ryan

doi:10.1207/s15327817la0101_5

Cited by 102 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Matsuoka (1997) used story formats that closely parallel the example in (20) from Thornton and Wexler 1999, and hence it is unsurprising that Matsuoka found a similar QA. A pair of studies by McDaniel and colleagues found a QA in tasks that are described as grammaticality judgment tasks, although they are very similar to tasks that are described elsewhere as TVJTs (McDaniel, Cairns, andHsu 1990, McDaniel andMaxfield 1992). Given the similarity with TVJTs, it is very relevant that these tasks did not make the deictic reading of the target sentences accessible.…”

Section: The Quantificational Asymmetrymentioning

confidence: 97%

“…13 These findings have been taken to indicate that children know Principle C by the age of 3 to 5. See also Lust, Loveland, and Kornet 1980, Solan 1983, and McDaniel, Cairns, and Hsu 1990 for studies using other techniques, and Lust, Eisele, and Mazuka 1992 for a review of earlier studies on this topic. Therefore, the ''residue'' of the DPBE appears to be slightly elevated error rates in Principle B contexts relative to Principle C contexts.…”

Section: Principle B Versus Principle Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Equal Treatment for All Antecedents: How Children Succeed with Principle B

et al. 2009

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Children have repeatedly been found to exhibit Principle B violations, with some reports that these violations occur only with nonquantified antecedents. This quantificational asymmetry (QA) in the delay of Principle B effect (DPBE) has been taken as support for a theory that restricts the scope of binding theory to bound variable anaphora (Reinhart 1983). However, the QA has been challenged, on the basis of discrepant findings and methodological concerns (Elbourne 2005). Here, we resolve the status of the QA with 3 studies and a review of over 30 previous studies. Using improved experimental materials, we show that children disallow local pronoun binding with both referential and quantificational antecedents when Principle B is at issue (Experiment 1), but not when Principle B is neutralized (Experiment 2). When methodological flaws are reintroduced, we replicate the QA (Experiment 3). Drawing on evidence from adult language processing, we suggest that the role of Principle B as a filter on representations during sentence understanding, in concert with pragmatic infelicities in the tasks used, accounts for the wide variability in the DPBE in the literature.

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Section: The Quantificational Asymmetrymentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Principle B Versus Principle Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Equal Treatment for All Antecedents: How Children Succeed with Principle B

et al. 2009

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“…Children correctly interpret reflexives like adults from the age of 3;0 but they continue to perform poorly on the interpretation of pronouns even up to the age of 6;6 (Jakubowicz (1984); Koster and Koster (1986);Chien and Wexler (1990);McDaniel, Smith Cairns and Hsu (1990);McDaniel and Maxfield (1992); McKee (1992); see also Grimshaw and Rosen (1990) and Kaufman (1992) for a review). For example, presented in a context with two male referents, say Bert and Ernie, sentences like (1) are correctly understood from a young age (95% of the time according to some studies).…”

Section: Children's Comprehension Of Reflexives and Pronounsmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Production Precedes Comprehension: An Optimization Approach to the Acquisition of Pronouns

Hendriks

Spenader

2006

Language Acquisition

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Data from child language comprehension shows that children make errors in interpreting pronouns as late as age 6;6, yet correctly comprehend reflexives from the age of 3;0. On the other hand, data from child language production shows that children correctly produce both pronouns and reflexives from the age of 2 or 3. Current explanations of this asymmetric delay in comprehension have either rejected the comprehension data outright or have argued that the problems are pragmatic or caused by processing limitations. In contrast our account, formulated in the framework of Optimality Theory, handles the comprehension data as well as the production data by arguing that children acquire the ability to reason about alternatives available to other conversation participants relatively late. It is this type of bidirectional reasoning, we argue, that is necessary for correctly interpreting pronouns. While our analysis is similar in spirit to the processing account given in Grodzinsky and Reinhart (1993) and Reinhart (to appear), it explains the data from the properties of the grammar, and is supported by related experimental evidence.. 1.Children's grasp of binding principles Children's comprehension of reflexives and pronounsThere is a well-known asymmetry in children's pattern of acquisition of the binding principles A and B. Children correctly interpret reflexives like adults from the age of 3;0 but they continue to perform poorly on the interpretation of pronouns even up to the age of 6;6 (Jakubowicz (1984); Koster and Koster (1986);Chien and Wexler (1990);McDaniel, Smith Cairns and Hsu (1990);McDaniel and Maxfield (1992); McKee (1992); see also Grimshaw and Rosen (1990) and Kaufman (1992) for a review). For example, presented in a context with two male referents, say Bert and Ernie, sentences like (1) are correctly understood from a young age (95% of the time according to some studies).However, children misinterpret the him in (2) as coreferring with the subject about half the time, which seems to be the result of chance performance.(1) Bert washed himself.(2) Bert washed him.For this Pronoun Interpretation Problem (also referred to as the Delay of Principle B Effect), a good explanation has yet to be given. 1.2Children's production of reflexives and pronouns 4Most experiments investigating the acquisition of the binding principles focus on comprehension. However, children's production data complicates the picture. The production research suggests that children do not have problems in producing reflexives or pronouns correctly.De Villiers, Cahillane and Altreuter (to appear) studied the production as well as the comprehension of reflexives and pronouns in 68 English speaking children between the ages of 4;6 and 7;2 (average age 6;2 years). Their study looked at two sentence types:two-sentence sequences like (3) and sentences with an embedded subordinate clause like (4). After being tested for comprehension with a truth-value judgment task, children were shown the pictures with the same type of content and aske...

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“…Chomsky, 1969;Lust, 1986;McDaniel, Cairns, & Hsu, 1990). Studies using a variety of methods including children's acting out tasks, truth-value judgments of auditory sentences (in relation to acting out by adults or to pictures), or grammaticality judgments suggest that most young children reliably follow Principles A (reflexives) and C (names and nouns), but appear to violate Principle B (pronouns) with referential NPs (The girl splashed her), but not with quantified NPs (e.g., Every girl splashed her) until they achieve full mastery somewhat later in development.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Processing Binding Relations in Specific Language Impairment

Schwartz

Hestvik

Seiger-Gardner

et al. 2016

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: This sentence processing experiment examined the abilities of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and children with typical language development (TD) to establish relations between pronouns or reflexives and their antecedents in real time. Method: Twenty-two children with SLI and 24 age-matched children with TD (7;3-10;11 [years;months]) participated in a cross-modal picture priming experiment to determine whether they selectively activated the correct referent at the pronoun or reflexive in sentences. Triplets of auditory sentences, identical except for the presence of a pronoun, a reflexive, or a noun phrase along with a picture probe were used.Results: The children with TD were slightly more accurate in their animacy judgments of pictures, but the groups exhibited the same reaction time (RT) pattern. Both groups were slower for sentences with pronouns than with reflexives or noun phrases. The children with SLI had longer RTs than their peers with TD. Conclusions: Children with SLI activated only the appropriate antecedent at the pronoun or reflexive, reflecting intact core knowledge of binding as was true for their TD peers. The overall slower RT for children with SLI suggests that any deficit may be the result of processing deficits, perhaps attributable to interference effects.

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Binding Principles in the Grammars of Young Children

Cited by 102 publications

References 3 publications

Equal Treatment for All Antecedents: How Children Succeed with Principle B

Equal Treatment for All Antecedents: How Children Succeed with Principle B

When Production Precedes Comprehension: An Optimization Approach to the Acquisition of Pronouns

Processing Binding Relations in Specific Language Impairment

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