Presented at Manchester Salford New Researchers Forum in Linguistics, University of Manchester, 3rd November 2012

1. The acquisition of dative alternation by
German-English and French-English
bilingual and monolingual children
Manchester Salford Forum in Linguistics
University of Manchester
3rd November 2012
Rebecca Woods Samir Zarqane
University of York University of Sheffield/Exeter
rlw523@york.ac.uk s.zarqane@exeter.ac.uk
1

2. Research Questions
• How do simultaneous bilingual children
acquire phenomena at the syntax/semantics
interface?
• In which ways do they diverge from the
monolingual ‘norm’?
• Is divergence permanent, or is it overcome in
the adult state?
2

3. Dative alternation
• Dative alternation is syntactic variation which
encodes subtle semantic differences in utterances
with ditransitive verbs
– Syntax-Semantics (internal) interface phenomenon
• Prepositional Construction (PC):
– The boy gives the ball to the dog
SUBJ ditransitive verb DO preposition IO
• Double-Object Construction (DOC):
– The boy gives the dog the ball
SUBJ ditransitive verb IO DO
3

4. Prepositional Construction (PC)
• The only available construction in French (when full
lexical NPs are used)
(1) Le garçon donne le ballon au chien
The boy gives theball to+the dog
• Available with most verbs in English
• Restricted in German
– Not possible with ‘zeigen’ (to show), pragmatically
restricted with ‘geben’ (to give), possible with ‘bringen’ (to
bring)
• Not semantically restricted, i.e. does not require an
animate possessor/recipient, does not have same level
of entailment
4

5. Double-Object Construction (DOC)
• Not possible with full lexical NPs in French
(2) *Le garçon donne le chien le ballon
The boy gives the dog the ball
• Restricted, though not uncommon, in English
• Available with many verbs in German
– The only possible option with ‘zeigen’, the neutral
option with ‘geben’, possible also with ‘bringen’
• Requires animate possessor/recipient
• Stronger entailment of possession/completion
(3) Beth taught French to the students vs
(4) Beth taught the students French
5

6. Our studies: Participants
• 25 German-English bilingual • 15 French-English bilingual
children (4;9-8;8) children (4;11-7;4)
• 29 monolingual English • 19 monolingual English
children (5;2-8;8) children (4;10-7;8)
• 5 German-English bilingual • 15 monolingual French
adults brought up in the same children (4;8-7;5),
context • 15 native English-speaking
• 7 native German-speaking and employees at the University of
6 monolingual (southern) Sheffield (7 polyglots, 8
English students at the monolinguals)
University of York
40 bilingual children
48 monolingual English children
(15 monolingual French children)
5 bilingual adults 6

7. Our studies: Procedure
• Children’s aptitude determined through parental
questionnaires/experimenter’s observations
– Children excluded if notably stronger in one language than
the other
– German tests preceded by a “Ring” test (Drenhaus and
Féry, 2008) to ensure knowledge of case marking
• Native speaker experimenters used where possible to
promote natural language environment
• Tests conducted during school hours in a quiet
space/participants’ homes – familiar surroundings
• Long breaks between tests in different languages
7

8. (6) Springe in dem Ring
Jump-IMP in the-DAT ring
‘Jump up and down in the
ring’
Dative
(5) Springe in den Ring
Jump-IMP in the-ACC ring
‘Jump into the ring’
Accusative 8

9. Our studies: Methodology
• Elicited Production task
– Watching clips (3-10 seconds each) of Tom and Jerry
cartoons depicting ditransitive actions; participant must
describe action
– Agent established as the topic of the stimulus question:
‘What did Jerry do?’
– Target words: give, show, throw, feed, bring, take, offer
9

10. Our studies: Methodology
• Act-out task
– Using toys provided, participant acts out stimulus
imperative sentences with ditransitive verbs (cf.
Cook, 1976)
e.g.
(7) Show the boy the banana
(8) Bring the orange to the girl
(9) Give the girl the cat
(10) Show the cat to the boy
(11) Give him the frog
10

11. Our studies: Methodology
• Grammaticality judgment task
– Puppet speaks stimulus sentences; participant
must recognise and correct ungrammatical
utterances
– Two types of ungrammatical
utterances
• Broad Range Rules =
form-predicting
• Narrow Range Rules =
existence predicting
(Pinker 1989)
11

12. Grammaticality Judgment Task Stimuli
• Broad Range Rules (form-predicting)
– Key semantic criteria for DOCs, e.g. in English, the notion
of “cause-to-have”, either physically or metaphorically
– Good example
(12) The boy gives the girl the flower
– Violation
(13) *The man opens the woman the door
• Narrow Range Rules (existence-predicting)
– Language-specific rules determining alternation, e.g. in
English ballistic motion “throw” can alternate, but
continuous motion “pull” cannot. Also ‘morphophonemic’
restrictions on Latinate verbs
– Violation:
(14) *The man describes the woman the picture
12

13. Hypotheses
Production Task
- Transfer from the less complex language to the more
complex language (in terms of evidence for alternation)
Act-out Task
- No transfer
- No difference in comprehension between bilinguals and
monolinguals
- Earlier comprehension of DOCs in German due to overt
case marking
Grammaticality Judgment Task
- No transfer
- Delay in bilinguals compared with monolinguals
13

14. Production task results
• English
– monolingual children use 68% PCs, 21 different verbs. No
ungrammatical constructions.
– bilingual children use 60.4% PCs with 22 different verbs. Only 1
ungrammatical construction
• German
– bilingual children use 52.5% PCs, with 15 different verbs. 28% of
responses featured incorrect/pragmatically inappropriate
constructions :
(15)*Tom zeigt das Buch zu Jerry
Tom shows the book to Jerry
• Bilingual adults behaved like their monolingual
counterparts in both languages: 67% PCs in English vs 35%
PCs in German ; only 2 pragmatic errors
14

15. Bilinguals’ production of dative constructions in each language
90
(German-English study, PCs = block colour; DOCs = patterned)
80
70
60
50
Mean (%)
English PC
English DOC
40
German PC
German DOC
30
20
10
0
Reception Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Adult
Age
15

16. Production task results
• English
– monolingual children use 39% PCs, 7 verbs
– bilingual children use 72% PCs, 8 verbs
• French
– monolingual children use 89% PCs with canonical
word order, 9 verbs
– bilingual children use 85% PCs with canonical
word order, 13 verbs
16

17. Production of dative constructions in English (French-English study)
17

18. Bilinguals’ production of dative constructions in French and English
70
60
50
40
Mean
English PC
English DOC
30
French PC
French DOC
20
10
0
Reception Year Year one Year two
Age
18

19. Production task:
Discussion and Comparison
• Transfer from the less • Transfer from the most
restricted language (Eng) to restricted language (Fre) to
the more restricted language the less restricted language
(Ger) (Eng)
•Vocabulary use suggests bilinguals and monolinguals have the
same lexical knowledge
• Bilingual children use alternation similarly in each
language, suggesting TRANSFER, leading to non-monolingual-like
constructions in the language with the more subtle paradigm
• Eng-Ger evidence suggests that between the ages of 8;0 and
adulthood, bilinguals learn the semantic restrictions of the language
affected by transfer, so transfer ceases
19

20. Act-out task:
Discussion and Comparison
• Bilingual and monolingual • Bilingual and monolingual
children show same level of children show same level of
comprehension comprehension
– Problems throughout all – Some problems with
age groups with Animacy Animacy for older
bilinguals
• High degree of accuracy from a young age
• Animacy is problematic in all DOCs and some PCs in children
• By adulthood, animacy no longer affects comprehension
20

21. Grammaticality judgment task results
• Only Y2-Y3 (6;9-8;8) responses analysed due to difficulty
of task
• English
– All groups recognise grammatical stimuli to at least 75%
accuracy
– Monolingual children recognise ungrammatical stimuli
between 62-100% of BRR cases and 50-67% of NRR cases
– Bilingual children below 33% accuracy on all ungrammatical
stimuli
– Significant effects of Constraint*Age
(p<0.01), Constraint*Language (p<0.01), Language (p<0.001)
and Age*Language (p<0.001).
• Bilingual adults
– Not significantly different from monolingual adults
21

22. Responses to the Grammaticality Judgement task in English
(German-English study)
100.00
90.00
80.00
70.00
60.00
Mean (%)
50.00
Grammatical
40.00 BRR
NRR
30.00
20.00
10.00
0.00
Monolingual Bilingual Monolingual Bilingual Monolingual Bilingual
Year 2 Year 3 Adult
Language grouped by Age
22

23. Grammaticality judgment task results
• German 100.00
90.00
– Bilingual children show 80.00
similar pattern to
70.00
English: 75-90% accuracy
60.00
with grammatical
Mean (%)
50.00
stimuli; Grammatical
BRR
27-37% accuracy with 40.00
NRR
ungrammatical stimuli 30.00
• Bilingual adults
20.00
10.00
– Unexpectedly weaker on 0.00
NRR violations, but still Year 2 Year 3 Bilingual
adult
Monolingual
adult
accurate above chance Age
23

24. Grammaticality judgment task results
• English
– Significant effect for Construction (p<0.05)
– Morphological constraint (NRR) on dative
alternation is problematic for all children
– Semantic constraint (BRR) seems to be acquired
before the morphological one
– Children also tend to reject grammatical sentences
– Adult monolinguals unexpectedly reject
grammatical sentences
24

25. Responses to the Grammaticality Judgement task
in English (French-English study)
25

26. Grammaticality judgment test results
• French
– Bilinguals tend to
accept ungrammatical
sentences in French
– Reception/Y1s
considerably less
accurate with
ungrammatical than
with grammatical
stimuli
– Slight advantage for
monolinguals in Y2
26

27. Grammaticality Judgment task:
Discussion and Conclusion
• Bilingual children between • Bilingual children between
6;9 and 8;8 do not recognise 6;9 and 7;8 are less accurate
either kind of ungrammatical at recognising both
stimuli, though monolingual grammatical and
children do ungrammatical stimuli
• Bilingual children show equal competence in both languages
• They usually recognise grammatical stimuli but do not reject
ungrammatical stimuli
• Between the ages of 8;8 and adulthood, the full range of semantic
rules/features are acquired, and bilingual adults largely behave like
their monolingual peers – semantic acquisition is DELAYED
• However, attrition seems to occur if exposure to one of the languages
is not maintained
27

28. Discussion
• Limitations of the study include small sample
sizes, all bilinguals are based in England, and
more age groups are needed
• Effects of one language upon the other tend to be
quantitative, i.e. transfer in task 1 and delay in
task 3, rather than qualitative, i.e. acquiring
phenomena in different orders
• Two types of competence in evidence:
– Bilinguals’ syntactic competence = monolingual
competence
– Bilinguals’ semantic competence =/= monolingual
competence 28

29. Discussion cont.
• Implications for acquisition at the interfaces
– The syntax-semantics interface, an internal
interface, is susceptible to cross-linguistic
influence, just like external interfaces e.g. the
syntax-pragmatics interface
– The interfaces play a role in non-“endstage”
contexts (cf. Sorace and Filiaci’s Interface
Hypothesis), but in the acquisition process also
29

30. Conclusions and future research
• Reduced input in each language compared to
monolinguals appears to result in underdetermination of
the more complex semantic system in bilinguals
• Bilinguals’ syntactic competence is, however, the same as
their monolingual peers
• Bilingual children seem to overcome instances of transfer
and delay as they enter the adult state, as long as quality
and quantity of input and exposure are maintained
• Areas for future research
– Larger sample groups; also German monolingual children
– Older children (up to around 12;0)
– Ultimately examining multiple interfaces in the same
experimental sample to learn more about how the interfaces
differ 30

31. References
• Cook, Vivian J. (1976). A note on indirect objects. Journal of Child Language, 3(3), 435-437.
• Drenhaus, Heiner, & Féry, Caroline (2008). Animacy and child grammar: an OT account.
Lingua, 118, 222-244.
• Meisel, Jürgen M. (2004). The bilingual child. In: Tej K. Bhatia & William C. Ritchie, eds. The
Handbook of Bilingualism (Chapter 4). Malden, MA.: Blackwell.
• O’Grady, William (1997). Syntactic Development. Chicago, IL.: University of Chicago Press.
• Pinker, Steven (1989). Learnability and Cognition: the Acquisition of Argument Structure.
Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press
• Roeper, Thomas, Lapointe, Steve, Bing, J., & Tavakolian, Susan (1981). A lexical approach to
language acquisition. In: Susan Tavakolian, ed. Language acquisition and linguistic theory.
Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.
• Romaine, Suzanne (1995). Bilingualism. Malden, MA.: Blackwell
• Sorace, Antonella, & Filiaci, Francesca (2006). Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of
Italian. Second Language Research, 22(3), 339-368.
• Sorace, Antonella (2012, 14 March). The bilingual native speaker [Department of Language
and Linguistic Science Colloquium Series]. University of York.
• Woods, Rebecca (2012). Dative alternation and its acquisition by German-English bilingual
and English monolingual children. Unpublished Masters dissertation, University of York.
• Zarqane, Samir (2009). Dative constructions in English-French bilingual and monolingual
acquisition. Unpublished Masters dissertation, University of Sheffield. 31