The 12th Biennial Rice University Symposium on Language

Abstracts

  1. Diachronic development:
  2. Child development:
  3. Cognitive and & neurological aspects:
  4. Biology and evolution:



Bernd Heine (Köln) and Tania Kouteva (Düsseldorf)
"A grammaticalization perspective on the rise of syntactic complexity"

The study of the rise of syntactic complexity, in particular of clause subordination and recursive language structures has more recently become the topic of intense discussion. The present paper builds on the reconstruction of grammatical evolution as proposed in Heine and Kuteva (2007) to present a scenario of how new forms of clause subordination may arise. Taking examples from attested cases of grammatical development as well as using evidence that has become available on grammaticalization in African languages, it is argued that there are two major pathways leading to the emergence of clause subordination: either via the integration of coordinate clauses or via the expansion of existing clauses.

Reference
Givón, T. 2007. "Toward a diachronic typology of relative clauses" University of Oregon (ms)
Heine, B. and T. Kuteva 2007. The Genesis of Grammar: A Reconstruction. Oxford: OUP

Back to page top



Claire Bowern (Rice)
"Defining complexity: Arguments from historical reconstruction"

I use data from subordination strategies in Nyulnyulan languages (Non Pama Nyungan, Northern Australia) in order to investigate various alternative means of defining and quantifying 'complexity'. While Edmonds (1999) defines 48 distinct types of complexity (concentrating on social and natural sciences), in this paper I concentrate on three facets of complexity: descriptive complexity, ontological complexity, and parsimony in reconstruction. While historical linguists tend to maximise parsimony, in Nyulnyulan languages the minimisation of one aspect of complexity necessarily adds complication elsewhere, and it therefore serves as an appropriate case study of the interdependencies between ontology, syntactic modeling, and language change.

Back to page top



Guy Deutscher (Leiden)
"Nominalization and the origin of subordination"

My paper will raise, tentatively, a few perhaps heretical questions about the origin of subordination. I want to ask whether the processes that are often portrayed as the emergence of subordinate clauses are in fact just the cycles by which markers introducing subordinate clauses are renewed, whereas the syntactic cognitive underpinning of subordination is in danger of being overlooked, and in particular, the process of nominalization: the ability of a language to reify a verbal predicate, and to present it as an argument or modifier. Let us, with Heine and Kuteva, call the two main channels that lead to subordination expansion (of nominal(ized) argument to a clause) and integration (of two independent clauses into one).

Discussions of expansion usually take the nominalized verb for granted, and concentrate on the extension from this nominalized form to a more finite looking clause. The implication (e.g. in Heine and Kuteva’s recent monograph) is that by explaining this stage of expansion, we have actually explained the emergence of a subordinate clause. But have we? It seems to me that we have only explained the cognitively trivial part of the process, whereas the really tough part has been ignored: how a verb could have been nominalized in the first place, how an action has been re packaged as an argument or modifier.

Given that nominalization is a crucial element in subordination, its genesis seems to be strangely neglected. Discussions in the grammaticalization literature mostly seem to involve processes by which e.g. dative case markers turn into infinitive markers. But in languages where verbal and nominal stems are easily distinguished (e.g. Semitic), we can see that such datives are added to verbal forms that were already nominalized. So the grammaticalization of a dative marker into an infinitive marker does not explain the ultimate origin of nominalization itself, it merely shows the renewal of markers on an already nominalized verb.

The ultimate origin of nominalizers is very little discussed, except perhaps in Tibeto Burman and some other East Asian languages. In Heine and Kuteva’s comprehensive lexicon of grammaticalization, there is no mention of the origin of any nominalizing marker. In European languages, nominalizers generally seem to have convoluted and not very well understood histories, and seem to assume their nominalizing role in circuitous routes. These need to be explored in far greater depth than has been done so far.

Discussions of ‘integration’, the other main channel for the emergence of subordinate clauses, also run the danger of mistaking relatively superficial processes of renewal of markers with the ultimate origin of subordination. Consider relative clauses. One of the common sources of relativizers is demonstratives. This fact is often taken to show that embedded relative clauses originate from non embedded clauses headed by demonstratives. The implication is that we have a process of integration whereby two independent clauses are integrated into one, and in the process the second clause somehow becomes embedded in the first (simplistically sketched in (1)):

(1) I saw a dog; that (one) barked > I saw a dog[that barked]

But in languages where the morphological set up is clear, for example in Akkadian, we see a somewhat different picture. While the origin of the relativizer is indeed a demonstrative of some kind, the process of integration did not start from two independent clauses as in (1), but relied on an already existing relative clause structure, as in (2):

(2) I saw a dog, that (one)[(which) barked] > I saw a dog[that barked].

Thus, the integration was of an independent clause and a relative clause headed by a demonstrative. In other words, an already existing relative clause structure was bolstered by a new more emphatic construction. Then, the head of the relative clause (the demonstrative) was degraded to merely a relativizer. But this is not the emergence of relativization, merely the renewal of a marker. In fact, the origin of the older relative structure in Akkadian (and Semitic) must be the expansion of a genitive construct, presumably through nominalized verbs, which again brings us to the crucial but under explored role of nominalization.

Back to page top



Östen Dahl (Stockholm)
"Two Pathways of Grammatical Evolution"

In the paper ”Toward A Diachronic Typology Of Relative Clauses”, distributed to the participants of this symposium, Tom Givón suggests three stages that characterize the diachronic rise of both complex verb phrases and relative clauses, and presumably of various other grammatical phenomena:

(1)
(a) Parataxis: two separate intonation contours.
(b) Syntaxis: one single intonation contour.
(c) Lexis: co-lexicalization into a single word.

In the study of grammaticalization processes, a schema with roots in the 18th century has been proposed for the development of grammatical forms:

(2) free > periphrastic > affixal > fusional

These two diachronic schemas are reminiscent of each other, and sometimes conflated in the literature -- Givón’s early slogan “"Today's morphology is yesterday's syntax" would appear to cover both. I would suggest, however, that they represent two different processes which are intimately interconnected. (1) can be said to represent the tightening or condensation process that constructions undergo in their life-cycles; (2), on the other hand, highlights the evolution of grammatical elements that are employed in those constructions. In particular, (2) can be said to characterize the diachronic rise of inflectional morphology. Although inflections are born out of syntax in the sense that inflectional elements develop out of free morphemes, inflectional morphology cannot be seen as something that follows and replaces syntax, as perhaps suggested by Givón’s slogan, but rather something that presupposes syntax and is a virtually obligatory component of central syntactic phenomena such as agreement. Somewhat paradoxically, however, inflections do not have such a central role in tighter constructions, that is what at the stage that Givón calls “Lexis”. Thus, incorporated arguments are not normally case-marked but rather just “glued” to the word-stem; likewise, in languages where adjectives agree with nouns in syntactic constructions, adjectives appearing in compounds do not. Thus, inflection is crucially bound up with Givón’s “Syntaxis” stage.

Back to page top



Holger Diessel (Jena)
"The emergence of relative clauses in early child language"

This paper argues that the acquisition of relative clauses involves the emergence of a network of constructions. Children acquire this network in a piecemeal bottom up fashion. The development originates from relative clauses that are only little different from simple sentences and ends with relative clauses that are maximally different from all other relative clauses. The paper argues that the acquisition process is driven by multiple factors: the frequency of the relative construction in the ambient language, the information structure of the sentence in which the relative clause is embedded, the pragmatic function of the construction, and, most importantly, the similarity between the various relative clauses and other constructions in the child's grammar.

Back to page top



Brian MacWhinney (Carnegie-Mellon)
"The emergence of linguistic complexity through catalysis and usage"

This paper will present an analysis of how linguistic complexity arises from the retuning of preexisting mammalian neural structures. I will argue that the emergence of neuronal support for language can be best understood as a catalytic biological process, much like immune system defense or the Krebs cycle. Within this framework, cycles of additional complexity build upon earlier cyclic accretions. The four relevant cycles here include phonology, lexicon, item-based syntax, and clause-combining syntax. Support for audition is rooted in ancient multipurpose mammalian structures. Support for lexicon involves new cycles in primates that are added onto preexisting posterior association area control for the recall of embodied images. Support for phonation arises as frontal areas take over the control of phonation from subcortical areas. Then, an additional cycle is added to link phonation to lexicon. Support for item-based syntax arises from preexisting structures for control of motor sequences. New overlaid cycles link this substrate to the lexicon through a yet-undiscovered neural mechanism for slot filling. Support for clause combination arises as an elaboration of the primate system for perspective shifting. During conversation and narrative, speakers invent and grammaticalize specific morpho-syntactic devices primarily for the purpose of keeping track of shifts in the perspectives of agents.

Back to page top



Christian Koops (Rice) and Martin Hilpert (ICSI Berkeley)
"The co-evolution of syntactic and pragmatic complexity: Diachronic and cross-linguistic aspects of pseudoclefts"

In this paper we analyze the genesis and development of a syntactically and pragmatically complex construction type, pseudoclefts. Two questions are addressed. First, given that cleft constructions are made up of readily available components of grammar—relative clauses and copular clauses—do they grammaticalize instantaneously and appear in full-fledged form? To the extent that they emerge gradually, what constrains their development? Second, are cross-linguistic differences in the syntactic and pragmatic properties of pseudoclefts largely idiosyncratic, language-particular choices, or are they predictable from a general grammaticalization scenario? To address these questions, we first present a quantitative, corpus based analysis of the 300-year history of pseudoclefts in English. Using a variety of qualitative and quantitative measures, we identify relevant properties of pseudoclefts at different developmental stages. We then apply the same measures of grammaticalization in a synchronic, comparative analysis of pseudoclefts in contemporary English, German, and Swedish to determine the cross-linguistic validity of our parameters. We find that pseudoclefts do indeed develop gradually in a process characterized by subtle changes in the construction’s presuppositional structure. The construction becomes available in a widening range of presuppositional situations. Driving this process is the conventionalization of pragmatic accommodation, as suggested by Lambrecht (1994). Furthermore, our proposed grammaticalization scenario allows us to assign precise degrees of grammaticalization to the less developed pseudoclefts of German and Swedish—relative to English and relative to each other—and to explain why their synchronic discourse functions differ from those of English pseudoclefts.

Back to page top



Marjorie Barker and Eric Pederson (Oregon)
"Syntactic complexity and coordination in a verbal production task"

The origin of syntactic complexity is not completely clear. Some degree of syntactic complexity can be seen as the natural consequence of the evolution of a rich communication system, while much cross-linguistic variation must be attributed to historical circumstance with often unclear causal factors. This study addresses the synchronic issue of why speakers elect to employ greater or lesser syntactic complexity for expressive purposes.

We examine the extent to which changing the communicative intent of the speaker affects the degree and type of reliance on syntactic complexity. Participants viewed complex human action video stimuli and were asked to respond in detail to a single question concerning either what had happened in the scenario they had just watched or why a particular event in the video had occurred. Our prediction was that responses to the “why” question would have more syntactically complex constructions than responses to the “what” question. The experimental results with these stimuli did not uphold the hypothesis; however, there was significant difference in the amount of coordination within intonation units between the two conditions.

Back to page top



Cecilia Rojas-Nieto (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
"'Starting Small' processes in the acquisition of early relative constructions in Spanish"

Early Spanish relative constructions (RCs) give evidence of various “starting small” processes (Elman, 1993) in children’s development of complexity:

  • Dialogue framing: half of the RCs are dialogical co-constructional results.
  • Adjunction, non embedding: headed RCs tend to adhere to NP in absolute position or do not present an intonation integration; headless RC themselves also occur in absolute position.
  • Independent RC structure: RCs are mostly similar to an independent clause type, with no gap nor genuine ‘pronominal’ function for the relative pronoun.
  • Exemplar based acquisition: Children do no present a default entrance but individually preferred constructional frames, related to child’s experienced use.

All these phenomena point towards a non-linear, frequency-affected and functionally oriented experience-based learning.

Back to page top



Andrew Pawley (Australian National University)
"On the origins of serial verb constructions in Kalam"

Kalam, a Trans New Guinea language spoken in Papua New Guinea, makes extensive use of several types of serial verb constructions (SVCs) in which one or more bare verb roots precedes a final, inflected verb, under a single intonation contour. This paper will describe four types that show different degrees or kinds of morphosyntactic compression -- narrative SVCs, compact SVCs, grammaticalized SVCs, and SVCs where verb roots have fused. It will speculate on their origins and their relevance to an enquiry into the nature of syntactic complexity.

In a narrative SVC, from two to five small predicate phrases, which report a sequence of discrete events that make up a familiar episode, are condensed into a single clause-like construction, e.g.

Kik am mon pu-wk d ap agi kn-ya-k.
they go wood hit-smash get come ignite sleep-3PL-PAST
‘They went and gathered firewood and brought it and made a fire for the night.’

The semantic constraints on narrative SVCs , governing the kinds of things that must be mentioned and their order, reflect conventions for telling a well-formed story. Syntactically, the closest relatives of narrative SVCs are sentences in which one or more coordinate-dependent (‘medial’) clauses, with verbs marked only for same subject and sequential relation, precede an independent clause. It is likely that narrative SVCs developed by clause union, as stripped down paraphrases of certain highly recurrent clause chains.

Compact SVCs contain from two to four verb roots that form a single predicate, semantically and syntactically very tight-knit, e.g. pug sug- (blow extinguish) ‘blow s.th. out’, tb kluk yok- (cut gouge displace) ‘gouge s.th. out’. Òb n9- ‘(consume perceive) ‘taste s.th’, ag Ò- (say transfer) ‘tell s.th. to s.o.’, tk Ò- (write transfer) ‘write s.th. to s.o.’, d am- (get go) ‘take’, d am yok (get go displace) ‘throw s.th. away’, d ap tan jak- (get come rise reach) ‘fill s.th. up’. Comparative evidence indicates that compact SVCs are a very old feature of the Trans New Guinea family and serve to augment a small, closed class of verb roots. Many, probably most such SVCs are not readily paraphrasable by a clause chain and appear to be learnt by children as lexicalized units, like English put out, brush off, push open.

In grammaticalized SVCs the final verb, while it carries TAM inflections itself, serves as a grammatical marker with scope over all preceding verbs. For example, at least four transitive verb roots have been recruited as emphatic completive markers and one intransitive verb, md- ‘stay, exist, live’, as a continuative marker. A few compact SVCs show morphological fusion in progress, where phonological reduction has blurred morpheme boundaries, e.g. tk + pag- > tpag-, pk + pag- > ppag-, pk + wk- > puk-.

I will then consider how all this relates to measures of ‘complexity’ and to the paradox that simplifying the task of speech planning, by chunking, leads to an increase in the morphosyntactic complexity of clauses.

Back to page top



Masayoshi Shibatani (Rice)
"Elements of complex structures, where recursion isn't"

The Chomskyan recursive notation for clausal embedding in both nominal (relative clauses and noun complements) and verbal domains (verb complementation) in the form of S → X, Y … Z→ W, (S) has had unfortunate consequences by ignoring a crucial difference between sentences and clauses, on the one hand, and by implicating, on the other hand, that full clauses or sentences are embedded in complex structures which undergo some kind of deletion of an element under identity with a matrix element. Following my recent work on the relativization and complementation in Austronesian languages and Japanese, I will argue, apparently along with Guy Deutscher, that nominalization plays a major role in the rise of complex structures of these types and that these complement clauses differ in function, if not in form, from (main) sentences. Attention is drawn to an important distinction between formal finiteness and the function underlying finiteness, the latter of which distinguishes between sentences and clauses. I take it that the process of nominalization or desententialization of some kind is crucial even for the diachronic scenarios for the rise of complex structures as offered by Givón, Heine and others. In other words, formation of complex structures involves cognitive processes more abstract than mechanical adjoining (parataxis) and compressing (integrating) sentences into a single intonation unit or simple symbol manipulation as in the formal notation of recursion. I even venture that the lack of the ability to nominalize or, more generally, to turn a predicative expression into a non-predicative one may account for the lack of complexity in animal communication.

Back to page top



Marianne Mithun (UC Santa Barbara)
"Re(e)volving Complexity: Adding Intonation"

Givón (2006, 2007), Heine (2007), Heine and Kuteva (2007), and others have identified general pathways by which complexity can develop in languages. The most common is clause chaining or integration: two independent sentences merge into one. Givón explicitly includes intonational integration in his definition of complexity: Such complex structures in natural language fall under a single intonation contour (‘breath unit’, ‘mental processing unit’)’. Intonational integration appears to be among the first features to appear in the development of complex constructions, but at present we have relatively little evidence of the nature of intonation at these early stages. A traditional methodology for tracing the steps by which grammatical constructions develop over time has been the examination of centuries of written texts, primarily of European languages. While this documentation has provided detailed and reliable information about some aspects of language change, it tells us less about shifts in prosodic structure and how these correlate with other changes. The situation calls for a different methodology, in which inferences are drawn from comparisons of synchronic constructions at different stages of development.

Even now, however, relatively little attention is typically paid to the prosodic structures inherent in spontaneous, connected speech, the kind of speech that serves as the basis for language change. The neglect of prosody has led some researchers to conclude that certain languages lack complexity altogether. Once prosody is taken into account, however, complex structure can emerge robustly, even when segmental markers are absent. Such structure can be seen in Mohawk, an Iroquoian language of northeastern North America. Here we first consider some Mohawk structures that lack any apparent grammatical trappings of subordination or dependency, but that are systematically translated by bilingual speakers as complement and relative constructions. On paper, they are indistinguishable from sequences of independent sentences. A look at their intonation, however, reveals clear structure: the associated clauses are pronounced under a single intonation contour. The intonation patterns of these structures actually show more than integration; they reflect aspects of information status beyond that specified by the subordinating grammar of the translations.

Some of the most common sources of markers of complement and relative clause constructions are demonstratives. In complement constructions, the demonstrative has been hypothesized to originate in the precursor to the matrix clause and refer to the precursor to the subordinate clause: I know that. You like him. In relative clause constructions, the demonstrative is said to originate in the precursor to the subordinate clause and refer to an argument of the precursor to the matrix clause: I saw the car. That one you like. Though simple juxtaposition is the most frequent strategy in the Mohawk counterparts of complement and relative constructions, both do on occasion contain demonstratives. A closer look at these constructions, complete with their prosody, suggests that they have arisen from slightly different source constructions. In the complement constructions, the demonstratives are part of the complement clause, both prosodically and semantically. In the relative constructions, the demonstratives are part of the matrix. In both cases, the demonstratives still show their proximal/distal semantics, but they have begun to show some phonological erosion.

A possible explanation behind their development to this stage could lie in certain mechanisms speakers have developed for manipulating the flow of information where so much information can be contained in a single word. The fact that the Mohawk constructions described here appear to represent early stages in the development of structural complexity does not of course indicate that the language as a whole contains little complexity overall. Its rich morphology provides ample evidence of older complex constructions now at very late stages of development.

References
Givón, T. (2006) " Multiple routes to clause-union: The diachrony of complex verb phrases". (in this symposium)
------- (2007) "Toward a diachronic typology of relative clauses" (in this symposium)
Heine, Bernd (2007) "From nominal to clausal morphosyntax: Complexity via expansion" (in this symposium)
Heine, Bernd and Tania Kuteva 2007. The Genesis of Grammar: A Reconstruction. Oxford University Press.

Back to page top



Derek Bickerton (Hawaii)
"How central is recursivity?"

In this paper I will first trace out the intellectual provenance of Chomsky's approach to language evolution. I will then critique of a paper by Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch (2002) on 'recursivity', suggesting that the emphasis on this as the key to syntactic complexity is misplaced. The non combinability of units in nonhuman communication systems (NCSs) can be attributed not to any structural limitation on NCSs but rather to the non referential nature of the units involved. Once animals had begun to create referential units, simple concatenation became not only possible but necessary (single referents do not constitute a message), but until the establishment of neural connections between representations of such units, concatenation could not take place brain internally (as is necessary in true language) but rather each unit (word) had to be dispatched separately to the motor organs of speech. It is this that accounts for the beads on a string construction of protolanguage. The operation "merge" developed once it was possible to preconstruct hierarchically up to at least phrase level in the brain prior to utterance. But once hierarchical as opposed to linear structuring is possible, recursion follows trivially, since it involved no more than the attachment of pre constructed chunks.

Back to page top



Don M. Tucker, Phan Luu, & Catherine Poulsen (Oregon & Electrical Geodesics)
"Neural Mechanisms of the Language Process"

Complexity in grammatical clause organization provides a hierarchic organization that allows efficient constructions of meaning. To understand the scarcity of neural resources that make such efficiency important, it we examine current neuropsychological models of the mechanisms of memory that are relevant to the language process. Cognitive memory systems can be separated into hippocampal (mesial temporal) configurational memory, and amygdala (anterior temporal) object memory. Whereas the object memory system is clearly essential to linguistic representations (supporting and integrating Broca's and Wernicke's areas), the configurational memory system is also important to language, as shown by transcortical global aphasia with dorsal corticolimbic lesions. Although procedural memory mechanisms are often relegated to motor habits, these may be integral to language as well, particularly to the grammatical structures such as nested clauses that can be acquired by the flexible child brain but not by the adult brain.

Back to page top



Diego Fernández-Duque (Villanova)
"Cognitive underpinnings of syntactic complexity: A possible role for 'chunking'?"

The more I known about chunking and expert performance, the less compelling seems to me the case for commonalities between these general cognitive processes and syntactic complexity.

One could of course point to some shared features, such as 'automaticity' or lack thereof (i.e. the phenomenological ease with which the process is experienced, and some other defining traits of 'automaticity'). But even finding that at their end points, syntactic complexity and chunking/ expertise have some features in common, we're still a long way from showing that the two are functionally (cognitively, neurologically) related. For that, one would need to show other, more specific commonalities between chunking and syntactic complexity: The rate of developmental progression (learning? acquisition?), the range of end result (how big is a chunk? how complex is the syntax?), the reliance or non-reliance on other cognitive resources (attention, working memory), domain specificity (perception vs. production), and the specific anatomy (neurology), just to name a few.

One possibility is to stick with the initial hypothesis: Give a tutorial on chunking, go through the argument, and provide evidence for the negative conclusion--that chunking may not be the central mechanism in the development syntactic complexity.

The other route one could take would be to broaden the scope. I would still discuss the chunking hypothesis, but I would also look for other possible 'general process' mechanisms (i.e., processes not limited to language domain) that may help account for syntactic complexity. I will then propose how one could empirically test the purported relation between attention/automaticity and syntax; i.e. what kind of experiment would allow us to find the similarity. For example, the working memory cost of reading an embedded sentence vs. doing some embedded action. This broader track, while still underdeveloped, would allow a more natural scope for the paper.

Back to page top



Nathan Tublitz (Oregon)
"Neural plasticity: a window into the complexity of the brain"

The ability of the human nervous system to process information, perform complicated simultaneous mental and physical tasks, and express feelings and emotions is peerless. Because of its complexity, the human brain is the seminal achievement of biological evolution on our planet. This paper focuses on one aspect of brain complexity, neural plasticity, the ability of the nervous system to alter its output in response to changing stimuli. Several aspects of plasticity are presented, all of which have physiological and/or behavioral consequences. The examples presented provide a basis for the premise that neural complexity arose from the need to perform complex functions. These examples also lend support for the notion that complex adaptive functions are subdivided into separate neural pathways which are oftentimes anatomically distinct.

Back to page top



Tom Givón (Oregon)
"Two routes to clause union: The diachrony of complex VPs"

This paper suggests that two major diachronic routes can lead to verb complementation and clause union: Clause chaining and nominalized clausal objects. In both, the general trend from parataxis to syntaxis is evident, whereby in the source paratactic construction the two clauses appear under separate intonation contours, while the 'condensed' syntactic structures appears under a single, combined intonation contour.

"Toward a diachronic typology of REL-clauses"

This paper investigates the diachronic routes leading to complex NPs, specifically embedded REL-clauses. Two major pathways are identified, both starting with a paratactic construction in which the 'main' and 'relative' clause appear under separate intonation contours. (i) Clause chaining; and (ii) non-restrictive (parenthetical) clauses. The role of nominalization is then discussed, and it is suggested that nominalized REL-clauses can arise through both diachronic pathways. The interaction between REL-clause typology and word-order type is also discussed.

"The acquisition of complex VPs: How children learn to negotiate fact and desire"

The acquisition of complex predications is studies in native English-speaking children at the age span of 2;0 to 2;8, following and elaborating on Diessel's (2005) study. Complex VPs appear in the context of "modal interaction units" (MIU) in conversation with the adult. These MIUs are modal negotiations driven by either deontic (intention) or epistemic (belief) goals, in which the so-called 'complement' clause is the semantic core, and the 'main' verbs act as epistemic or deontic quantifiers on it (Diessel 2005). At the early stages, the complex VP construction is spread over adjacent child-adult or adult-child turns (Ochs et al 1979). Only later does it appear in independent child turn. In a peculiar way, this then conforms to the paratactic-to-syntactic diachronic trend.

"The acquisition of REL-clauses: How children learn to negotiate reference"

The acquisition of REL-clauses along the age range of 2;6 to 4;5 is studies in native English-speaking children, following Diesssel (2005). These complex-NP constructions are acquired in the context of child-adult negotiations about referential identification. Three major referent-identification goals are identified: (i) Identifying a previously-introduced (anaphoric-definite) referent following a considerable absence (episodic-memory trace). (ii) Identifying a referent present in the immediate (deictic) speech situation under conditions of referential competition (working-momory/attention trace). And (iii) identifying a newly-introduced referent (cataphoric-indefinite) (currently-constructed episodic-memory). A number of early precursors constructions are identified, whose syntactic complexity is much lower than that of full-fledged REL-clauses. It is shown that in the earlier stages, the REL-clause construction is spread over either adjacent child-adult or adult-child turns, or more commonly over two or more separate intonation units/clauses produced by the child. This again conforms to the paratactic-to-syntactic diachronic trend. It is finally suggested that the acquisition of the two main complex-clause patterns takes place under totally distinct adaptive-communicative contexts, is driven by totally distinct communicative goals, and yields very different syntactic end-products (clause union vs. embedded REL-clauses). 'Recursivity', and thus syntactic complexity, may therefore be an epiphenomenon, falling out of the need to use verbal clauses either to furnish modal quantification to focal event/state clauses (V-complements), or to identify important referents in more complex referential environments (REL-clauses).

Back to page top