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An experimental investigation of a putative linguistic universal: Marking and the indirect object
JOURNAL
OF
EXPERIMENTAL
An
CHILD
PSYCHOLOGY
Experimental
Universal: the
indirect
RICHARD Research
73-80 (1975)
Investigation
Linguistic
Medical
20,
Council
of a Putative Marking
and
Object F. CROMER
Developmental
Psychology
Unit,
England
Two experiments investigated how children acquire knowledge of the direct and the indirect object in terms of linguistic marking. This was done in order to test experimentally the psychological validity of a putative linguistic universal which holds that children should expect a marked linguistic form to be the indirect object. In the two experiments, an artificial language which marked these forms was used. This language eliminated the preposition “to” as well as word order as cues in learning the experimental forms. One group heard the indirect object as the marked form in the artificial language, and another group heard the direct object as the marked form. The linguistic theory would predict that the former group would be superior in learning the artificial language. However, using error scores, no difference was found between the two groups. This negative result was also independent of whether a child had achieved mastery of the normal English constructions involving direct and indirect object relationships. Reasons for the failure to find any evidence for this universal are discussed.
There has been a good deal of controversy over linguistic universals and their relation to the child’s acquisition of language. In 1941, Roman Jakobson proposed that the order of acquisition of phonological contrasts, conceptualized in terms of distinctive features, paralleled their degree of universality in the languages of the world. Contrasts which children initially make are those noted to occur in all or most languages of the world, while developmentally later appearing distinctions are progressively found in fewer and fewer languages. More recently, Chomsky (1965) has raised the issue of linguistic universals in relation to grammatical acquisitions. He attributes to children tacit knowledge of linguistic universals which they bring to bear on the language data to which they are exposed. Unfortunately, there has been little experimental work on such universals. and some investigators have dismissed them outright since they do not conform to their notions of the human mind as a tabuh YUS~. It would thus be of theoretical as well as practical importance to study experimentally whether or not linguistic universals have “psychological validity”-i.e., whether children employ strategies I wish to thank Mr. C. G. Rouse, Headmaster of St. Albans Holbom Primary School; Miss M. I. Durden, Headmistress of Fox Primary School; and Mrs. M. Downes, Headmistress of Peterborough Infants School, for providing subjects and facilities. 73 Copyright 0 1975 by Academic Pres, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
74
RICHARD
F.
CROMER
which correspond to these universals even when such universals are not exhibited in the structure of the particular language they are acquiring. McNeill, Yukawa, and McNeill (1971) have provided some data from Japanese children on the use of strategies related to linguistic universals in the interpretation of sentences containing direct and indirect objects. In Japanese, post-position particles indicate both which noun is the direct object of the verb and which is the indirect object; word order is unimportant. Thus, in the Anglicized example, “Push the turtle-ni the fish-o” and “Push the fish-o the turtle-ni,” the interpretation would be the same, viz., “Push the fish to the turtle,” since “ni” is attached to the noun serving as indirect object and “0” is attached to the direct object. The particles “ni” and “0” can be said to “mark” the nouns for appropriate interpretation. McNeil1 et al. make use of the notion that in many languages the direct object is the unmarked or primary form, as contrasted with the indirect object which is the marked or secondary form. Japanese provides marking for both forms by means of differing particles. However, McNeil1 et al. claim that in accordance with the universal principle of marking, children should seek overt marking for secondary forms, i.e., for the indirect object. When Japanese children were presented with slightly deviant sentences in which only one form retained its overt marking, some of them performed in accordance with this expectation. They performed better when only the indirect object was marked than when both indirect and direct objects were marked as is normally done by adult Japanese. They did poorest when only the direct object was marked, treating it as the indirect object. Such results are not definitive, however, since other factors associated with exposure to these particles may influence the use the Japanese child makes of them. If it is truly a universal expectation that the marked form in similar constructions is the indirect object, then children learning other languages should show the same expectations. Children learning English are especially useful in this regard since English does not make use of inflectional endings or post-position particles to indicate the direct/indirect object relationship. In English, there are two common ways to express the direct and indirect object relationship. The most frequent of these is the use of the. indirect object in a prepositional phrase with “to,” as for example in “Give the cheese to the mouse.” The order here is Direct Object-“to”Indirect Object, which we can abbreviate to DO-to-IO. The less frequent form has no preposition, and the order is reversed. The order for “Give the mouse the cheese” is IO-DO. In this example, interpretation is supported by semantic context, but there are many sentences where only the grammatical contrast itself serves to convey the relationships, as in the contrast pair, “The man shows the cat the mouse” and “The man shows the mouse the cat.” The form without the preposition “to” ap-
LINGUISTIC
UNIVERSAL
AND
MARKING
75
pears to be a late acquisition. For example, it is shown as developmentally the most difficult form on the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test (Lee, 1970). When it is acquired, the English speaker must observe the rule that when “to” is used, the order is Do-to-IO; without the preposition “to,” the order is IO-DO. Since English does not use inflectional endings or post-position particles to indicate these relationships, it is readily possible to test which forms would be preferred or easier to learn in an artificial language game where there is no preposition and where experimental manipulation eliminates the use of any constant word order in achieving solution. METHOD
Subjects A total of 57 children from two schools in central London participated in the first of two experiments. Their chronological ages ranged from 6 : 9 to 8 : 10 (median = 7 : 7). Their mental ages, as measured on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, ranged from 5 : 5 to over 13 : 2 (median = 8 : 3). No child was used in the experiment whose IQ was below 80 or whose parents were not both native English speakers. Materials The materials consisted of a set of toy animals of varying sizes, approximately 4 x 8 cm. These animals were situated in pairs, one animal on each side of a flat, white cardboard surface, 20 x 10 cm. Procedure Each child was initially given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) to determine his mental age and IQ. The child was then told about a “secret language game” he could play. First, the child was asked to name all the animals on the table. Then, as a warm-up, he carried out the instructions “Push the cow to the horse” and “Push the horse to the cow.” It was then explained to him that in the game, he would push one animal to the other as he had just done, but that he would be told “which way to do it” in a secret language. After each trial he would be told whether he was right or wrong, and if he listened very carefully soon he would learn the secret language and get them all right. There were three sets of animals in the main part of the experiment. The name of one animal in each set was marked by a post-position particle. The children were divided into two groups. Children in the indirect object (“IO”) group were told they were correct whenever they treated the marked form as the indirect object and pushed the other animal to it. Children in the direct object (“DO”) group were treated as answering correctly whenever they used the marked form as the direct object and
76
RICHARD
F.
CROMER
pushed that animal to the other. In one pilot experiment, the post-position particle “0” was used, as in “Push bear-o alligator” or “Push bear alligator-o.” Many children treated this particle as if it meant “over,” thus biasing their interpretation. Further pilot testing revealed that children spontaneously invented interpretations for almost any sound which was used as a post-position particle. Therefore, it was decided that marking should be done by repeating the first syllable of the animal’s name at the end of that name. Controlling for order of mention and which of the two terms was “marked,” 12 combinations were possible. After the child named all of the animals and had been given the two warm-up sentences, he was presented with the language game sentences. Below are shown the 12 sentences heard by children in the IO group: 1. Push turkey-turk lion (correct answer = pushing lion to the turkey) 2. Push hippopotamus-hip alligator 3. Push rhinoceros pelican-pel 4. Push lion turkey-turk 5. Push alligator-al hippopotamus 6. Push pelican-pel rhinoceros 7. Push turkey lion-li 8. Push hippopotamus alligator-al 9. Push pelican rhinoceros-rhi 10. Push lion-li turkey 11. Push alligator hippopotamus-hip 12. Push rhinoceros-rhi pelican. The DO group received the complementary set of sentences in which the opposite animal was marked. For example, sentence 1 for the DO group was “Push turkey lion-li,” but as their correct answer is to treat the marked form as a direct object, they should also push the lion to the turkey. Thus, the correct response for sentence 1 by both the IO and DO groups was to treat the second-named animals as the direct object, but for the IO group, this was the unmarked form, while for the DO group it was the marked form. This method of presentation was devised because a pilot experiment revealed that nearly all children (92% of 50 children in one pilot study) begin with a position bias consisting of pushing the first named animal on the initial trial. Waryas and Ruder (1973) have found a similar preference for children to treat the first mentioned noun as the direct object in double object constructions. The above order of presentation, therefore, prevents one group from obtaining an initial advantage over the other in error scores, and forces both groups equally to break their order preference.
LINGUISTIC
UNIVERSAL
AND
MARKING
77
The repetitiveness of the task was broken after every 12 sentences with a short comment such as “Do you like the game so far?” etc. Testing was continued until the child reached a criterion of 12 consecutive correct answers, or, if he failed to solve the problem, to a limit of 60 sentences. The child was then given four generalization trials to ensure that those who had reached the 12-correct criterion, had truly acquired the rule. The generalization sentences were: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Push Push Push Push
tiger-ti panda ostrich-os camel panda tiger-ti camel ostrich-os.
It should be noted that the child could not perform these correctly merely by alternation. He was then asked to vebalize his solution. Finally, the child, after a task to return him to thinking of “the way we really talk” (“Give the cow to the horse”; “Give the horse to the cow”), was given two sentences of the advanced normal structure: 1. Give the panda the tiger 2. Give the camel the ostrich. Testing was continued until there were 15 children in each group who solved the problem, in order to compare error scores on equal numbers of children. It could be objected that this experiment may not really test the direct/indirect object relationship at all. Telling the child to “push” one animal to the other could be viewed as activating locative concepts. If this is the case, there would be the possibility that the child would not bring to bear linguistic strategies which would be used with direct and indirect objects in relation to object and recipient semantic notions. In order to control for this, a second experiment was carried out identical to the first except that in all sentences the word “give” was substituted for the word “push.” In the second experiment, children were tested until there were 10 in each group who solved the problem. This entailed testing a total of 30 new children. The chronological ages of this second group ranged from 7 : 6 to 8 : 6 (median = 7 : 10). The hypothesis that children will expect the marked form to indicate the indirect object would be supported in these experiments by results showing a significantly lower mean number of errors by children solving the problem in the IO group than by children in the DO group. RESULTS
The error scores for children in the two groups in both experiments are shown in Table 1. In both experiments, the mean number of errors by the DO group is not significantly different from the mean number of
78
RICHARD
F.
CROMER
TABLE MEAN
NUMBER
OF ERRORS
Direct object group Experiment I (“push”) II = 15 in each group Experiment II (“give”) II = 10 in each group
1
BY CHILDREN
LEARNING
THE
LANGUAGE
Indirect object group
RULE
Significance
5.80
8.07
N.S.(r
= 1.00, 28 dJ)
10.60
13.30
N.S.(r
= .87. 18 df)
errors by the IO group. Indeed, the small discrepancy between the means is in both cases the opposite of the predicted direction. One possible explanation for these negative results may be that children who have mastered the advanced normal structure (e.g., “Give the panda the tiger”), and who have thus acquired the rule, “When no preposition appears, treat the order as IO-DO,” will no longer evidence more basic strategies related to the marked/unmarked phenomenon. To check this, the children in the experiment were divided into those who had fully mastered the direct/indirect object relationship as it is expressed in English, and those who had not. First, it is possible to note the age at which children acquire the advanced structure. Table 2 shows the number and percentage of children in the two experiments (N = 87) who have acquired the advanced structure (defined by correct interpretation of both post-test sentences) as divided into several chronological age categories. It can be seen that only after the age of 8 : 6 years, have two-thirds of the children acquired the advanced normal double object form. By dividing children into those who had acquired the advanced form and those who had not, one can compare the mean number of errors by the four subgroups formed by IO vs DO group. Furthermore, as the second experiment constituted merely an additional condition (use of TABLE NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE NORMAL STRUCTURE
Age level Below 7 : 0 7:0-7:s 7:6-7: 11 8:0-8:5 8 : 6 and above
2
OF CHILDREN WHO HAVE AT VARIOUS CHRONOLOGICAL
Number possessing advanced form 3 7 14 12 8
ACQUIRED THE ADVANCED AGE LEVELS (N = 87)
the II 6 16 33 20 12
% 50.0 43.75 42.4 60.0 66.7
LINGUISTIC
UNIVERSAL TABLE
MEAN NUMBER OF ERRORS BY CHILDREN BY SUBGROUPS
OF THOSE
PASSING
AND
AND
3 IN THE Two EXPERIMENTS AS DIVIDED FAILING THE ADVANCED NORMAL FORM
Experiment I (“push”)
Pass advanced normal form Fail advanced normal form
79
MARKING
Experiment II (“give”)
IO
DO
IO
DO
6.38 (n = 8)
5.75 (tz = 8) 5.86 (12 = 7)
14.14 (12 = 7) 1 I .33 (n = 3)
9.75 (n = 4) 11.17 (n = 6)
10.00 (n = 7)
“give” instead of “push”), an overall three-way analysis of variance on all eight subgroups can be made. The eight means are shown in Table 3. The three-way analysis of variance revealed no significant interactions (all F’s < 1). The main effect of experimental group (IO or DO) was not significant (F = 1.36; 1, 42 &, N.S.). Similarly the main effect of passing or failing on the advanced normal sturcture was not significant (F < 1). However, there was a significant difference between the “push” and “give” conditions (F = 5.31; 1, 42 df, p < .05). Thus, the overall mean number of errors in Experiment I using “push” (6.93) was significantly less than the mean number of errors by children in Experiment II using “give” (11.95). DISCUSSION
In the two experiments designed to test the proposition that children will expect the marked form to be the indirect object in sentences with a double object relationship, no evidence was found of any differential expectation. Experiment I may have activated locative rather than object and recipient semantic notions since the word “push” was used. In Experiment II, however, the instructions substituted the word “give” in the language game. This may well have activated different operations, for the mean number of errors in Experiment II was significantly greater than the mean number of errors in Experiment I. Nevertheless, within Experiment II, no significant difference was found between the error scores of children who heard the indirect object as the marked form and those who heard the direct object as the marked form. Furthermore, no differences were found between the IO and DO groups in either experiment when children were divided into those who had mastered the advanced form of the direct/indirect object relationship in English, and those who had not. Two theoretical interpretations of these results are possible. First, it may be that linguistic universals do not have psychological validity as
80
RICHARD
F.
CROMER
defined in the introduction; from these results it appears that children do not make use of learning strategies which are related to linguistic universals. It will be recalled that these linguistic universals are said to exist precisely because the innate properties of the organism lead to languages being organized in a particular manner (Chomsky, 1965). If this is untrue, then one is still left with the intriguing problem concerning why certain observed universals or near-universals should exist at all. Alternatively, it may be that this experiment does not test a valid universal. Use was made of the direct and indirect object relationship because English does not mark these by case markers or inflectional endings, and word order could be controlled in the language game. McNeil1 et al. (1971) claim that the indirect object is universally the marked form, but the linguistic literature does not abound with similar statements. It is difficult to find any linguist directly making this claim. There is, however, one factor in the experimental situation itself which may have affected the results. McNeil1 et al. (1971) used 3-, 4-, and Syear-olds in the study of Japanese children. In the experiments reported above, however, 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds were tested. It may be that the older children are no longer making use of the kinds of strategies which are said to be related to linguistic universals, although this is unlikely if one accepts Lenneberg’s view on a critical period for language acquistion which seems to extend until adolescence (Lenneberg, 1967). Nevertheless, it could be argued that the types of strategies being examined here would only evidence themselves in that earlier portion of the critical period in which rapid language acquistion takes place (ages 3 to 5 years). However this is viewed, one may still conclude that for the ages tested here, no evidence was found for the putative linguistic universal which was investigated. REFERENCES Chomsky, N. Aspects of the theor?/ of syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press. 1965. Jakobson, R. Child language aphasia and phonological universals. The Hague: Mouton. 1968 (originally published in 1941). Lee, Laura L. A screening test for syntax development. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 1970, 35, 103-l 12. Lenneberg, E. Biological foundations of language. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967. McNeill. D., Yukawa, R., & McNeill, N. B. The acquisition of direct and indirect objects in Japanese. Child Development. 1971, 42, 237-249. Waryas, Carol L. & Ruder, K. Children’s sentence processing strategies: The double-object construction. Parsons Research Center, Working Paper No. 296, 1973. RECEIVED:
March
11, 1974; REVISED:
August
7. 1974
OF
EXPERIMENTAL
An
CHILD
PSYCHOLOGY
Experimental
Universal: the
indirect
RICHARD Research
73-80 (1975)
Investigation
Linguistic
Medical
20,
Council
of a Putative Marking
and
Object F. CROMER
Developmental
Psychology
Unit,
England
Two experiments investigated how children acquire knowledge of the direct and the indirect object in terms of linguistic marking. This was done in order to test experimentally the psychological validity of a putative linguistic universal which holds that children should expect a marked linguistic form to be the indirect object. In the two experiments, an artificial language which marked these forms was used. This language eliminated the preposition “to” as well as word order as cues in learning the experimental forms. One group heard the indirect object as the marked form in the artificial language, and another group heard the direct object as the marked form. The linguistic theory would predict that the former group would be superior in learning the artificial language. However, using error scores, no difference was found between the two groups. This negative result was also independent of whether a child had achieved mastery of the normal English constructions involving direct and indirect object relationships. Reasons for the failure to find any evidence for this universal are discussed.
There has been a good deal of controversy over linguistic universals and their relation to the child’s acquisition of language. In 1941, Roman Jakobson proposed that the order of acquisition of phonological contrasts, conceptualized in terms of distinctive features, paralleled their degree of universality in the languages of the world. Contrasts which children initially make are those noted to occur in all or most languages of the world, while developmentally later appearing distinctions are progressively found in fewer and fewer languages. More recently, Chomsky (1965) has raised the issue of linguistic universals in relation to grammatical acquisitions. He attributes to children tacit knowledge of linguistic universals which they bring to bear on the language data to which they are exposed. Unfortunately, there has been little experimental work on such universals. and some investigators have dismissed them outright since they do not conform to their notions of the human mind as a tabuh YUS~. It would thus be of theoretical as well as practical importance to study experimentally whether or not linguistic universals have “psychological validity”-i.e., whether children employ strategies I wish to thank Mr. C. G. Rouse, Headmaster of St. Albans Holbom Primary School; Miss M. I. Durden, Headmistress of Fox Primary School; and Mrs. M. Downes, Headmistress of Peterborough Infants School, for providing subjects and facilities. 73 Copyright 0 1975 by Academic Pres, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
74
RICHARD
F.
CROMER
which correspond to these universals even when such universals are not exhibited in the structure of the particular language they are acquiring. McNeill, Yukawa, and McNeill (1971) have provided some data from Japanese children on the use of strategies related to linguistic universals in the interpretation of sentences containing direct and indirect objects. In Japanese, post-position particles indicate both which noun is the direct object of the verb and which is the indirect object; word order is unimportant. Thus, in the Anglicized example, “Push the turtle-ni the fish-o” and “Push the fish-o the turtle-ni,” the interpretation would be the same, viz., “Push the fish to the turtle,” since “ni” is attached to the noun serving as indirect object and “0” is attached to the direct object. The particles “ni” and “0” can be said to “mark” the nouns for appropriate interpretation. McNeil1 et al. make use of the notion that in many languages the direct object is the unmarked or primary form, as contrasted with the indirect object which is the marked or secondary form. Japanese provides marking for both forms by means of differing particles. However, McNeil1 et al. claim that in accordance with the universal principle of marking, children should seek overt marking for secondary forms, i.e., for the indirect object. When Japanese children were presented with slightly deviant sentences in which only one form retained its overt marking, some of them performed in accordance with this expectation. They performed better when only the indirect object was marked than when both indirect and direct objects were marked as is normally done by adult Japanese. They did poorest when only the direct object was marked, treating it as the indirect object. Such results are not definitive, however, since other factors associated with exposure to these particles may influence the use the Japanese child makes of them. If it is truly a universal expectation that the marked form in similar constructions is the indirect object, then children learning other languages should show the same expectations. Children learning English are especially useful in this regard since English does not make use of inflectional endings or post-position particles to indicate the direct/indirect object relationship. In English, there are two common ways to express the direct and indirect object relationship. The most frequent of these is the use of the. indirect object in a prepositional phrase with “to,” as for example in “Give the cheese to the mouse.” The order here is Direct Object-“to”Indirect Object, which we can abbreviate to DO-to-IO. The less frequent form has no preposition, and the order is reversed. The order for “Give the mouse the cheese” is IO-DO. In this example, interpretation is supported by semantic context, but there are many sentences where only the grammatical contrast itself serves to convey the relationships, as in the contrast pair, “The man shows the cat the mouse” and “The man shows the mouse the cat.” The form without the preposition “to” ap-
LINGUISTIC
UNIVERSAL
AND
MARKING
75
pears to be a late acquisition. For example, it is shown as developmentally the most difficult form on the Northwestern Syntax Screening Test (Lee, 1970). When it is acquired, the English speaker must observe the rule that when “to” is used, the order is Do-to-IO; without the preposition “to,” the order is IO-DO. Since English does not use inflectional endings or post-position particles to indicate these relationships, it is readily possible to test which forms would be preferred or easier to learn in an artificial language game where there is no preposition and where experimental manipulation eliminates the use of any constant word order in achieving solution. METHOD
Subjects A total of 57 children from two schools in central London participated in the first of two experiments. Their chronological ages ranged from 6 : 9 to 8 : 10 (median = 7 : 7). Their mental ages, as measured on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, ranged from 5 : 5 to over 13 : 2 (median = 8 : 3). No child was used in the experiment whose IQ was below 80 or whose parents were not both native English speakers. Materials The materials consisted of a set of toy animals of varying sizes, approximately 4 x 8 cm. These animals were situated in pairs, one animal on each side of a flat, white cardboard surface, 20 x 10 cm. Procedure Each child was initially given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) to determine his mental age and IQ. The child was then told about a “secret language game” he could play. First, the child was asked to name all the animals on the table. Then, as a warm-up, he carried out the instructions “Push the cow to the horse” and “Push the horse to the cow.” It was then explained to him that in the game, he would push one animal to the other as he had just done, but that he would be told “which way to do it” in a secret language. After each trial he would be told whether he was right or wrong, and if he listened very carefully soon he would learn the secret language and get them all right. There were three sets of animals in the main part of the experiment. The name of one animal in each set was marked by a post-position particle. The children were divided into two groups. Children in the indirect object (“IO”) group were told they were correct whenever they treated the marked form as the indirect object and pushed the other animal to it. Children in the direct object (“DO”) group were treated as answering correctly whenever they used the marked form as the direct object and
76
RICHARD
F.
CROMER
pushed that animal to the other. In one pilot experiment, the post-position particle “0” was used, as in “Push bear-o alligator” or “Push bear alligator-o.” Many children treated this particle as if it meant “over,” thus biasing their interpretation. Further pilot testing revealed that children spontaneously invented interpretations for almost any sound which was used as a post-position particle. Therefore, it was decided that marking should be done by repeating the first syllable of the animal’s name at the end of that name. Controlling for order of mention and which of the two terms was “marked,” 12 combinations were possible. After the child named all of the animals and had been given the two warm-up sentences, he was presented with the language game sentences. Below are shown the 12 sentences heard by children in the IO group: 1. Push turkey-turk lion (correct answer = pushing lion to the turkey) 2. Push hippopotamus-hip alligator 3. Push rhinoceros pelican-pel 4. Push lion turkey-turk 5. Push alligator-al hippopotamus 6. Push pelican-pel rhinoceros 7. Push turkey lion-li 8. Push hippopotamus alligator-al 9. Push pelican rhinoceros-rhi 10. Push lion-li turkey 11. Push alligator hippopotamus-hip 12. Push rhinoceros-rhi pelican. The DO group received the complementary set of sentences in which the opposite animal was marked. For example, sentence 1 for the DO group was “Push turkey lion-li,” but as their correct answer is to treat the marked form as a direct object, they should also push the lion to the turkey. Thus, the correct response for sentence 1 by both the IO and DO groups was to treat the second-named animals as the direct object, but for the IO group, this was the unmarked form, while for the DO group it was the marked form. This method of presentation was devised because a pilot experiment revealed that nearly all children (92% of 50 children in one pilot study) begin with a position bias consisting of pushing the first named animal on the initial trial. Waryas and Ruder (1973) have found a similar preference for children to treat the first mentioned noun as the direct object in double object constructions. The above order of presentation, therefore, prevents one group from obtaining an initial advantage over the other in error scores, and forces both groups equally to break their order preference.
LINGUISTIC
UNIVERSAL
AND
MARKING
77
The repetitiveness of the task was broken after every 12 sentences with a short comment such as “Do you like the game so far?” etc. Testing was continued until the child reached a criterion of 12 consecutive correct answers, or, if he failed to solve the problem, to a limit of 60 sentences. The child was then given four generalization trials to ensure that those who had reached the 12-correct criterion, had truly acquired the rule. The generalization sentences were: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Push Push Push Push
tiger-ti panda ostrich-os camel panda tiger-ti camel ostrich-os.
It should be noted that the child could not perform these correctly merely by alternation. He was then asked to vebalize his solution. Finally, the child, after a task to return him to thinking of “the way we really talk” (“Give the cow to the horse”; “Give the horse to the cow”), was given two sentences of the advanced normal structure: 1. Give the panda the tiger 2. Give the camel the ostrich. Testing was continued until there were 15 children in each group who solved the problem, in order to compare error scores on equal numbers of children. It could be objected that this experiment may not really test the direct/indirect object relationship at all. Telling the child to “push” one animal to the other could be viewed as activating locative concepts. If this is the case, there would be the possibility that the child would not bring to bear linguistic strategies which would be used with direct and indirect objects in relation to object and recipient semantic notions. In order to control for this, a second experiment was carried out identical to the first except that in all sentences the word “give” was substituted for the word “push.” In the second experiment, children were tested until there were 10 in each group who solved the problem. This entailed testing a total of 30 new children. The chronological ages of this second group ranged from 7 : 6 to 8 : 6 (median = 7 : 10). The hypothesis that children will expect the marked form to indicate the indirect object would be supported in these experiments by results showing a significantly lower mean number of errors by children solving the problem in the IO group than by children in the DO group. RESULTS
The error scores for children in the two groups in both experiments are shown in Table 1. In both experiments, the mean number of errors by the DO group is not significantly different from the mean number of
78
RICHARD
F.
CROMER
TABLE MEAN
NUMBER
OF ERRORS
Direct object group Experiment I (“push”) II = 15 in each group Experiment II (“give”) II = 10 in each group
1
BY CHILDREN
LEARNING
THE
LANGUAGE
Indirect object group
RULE
Significance
5.80
8.07
N.S.(r
= 1.00, 28 dJ)
10.60
13.30
N.S.(r
= .87. 18 df)
errors by the IO group. Indeed, the small discrepancy between the means is in both cases the opposite of the predicted direction. One possible explanation for these negative results may be that children who have mastered the advanced normal structure (e.g., “Give the panda the tiger”), and who have thus acquired the rule, “When no preposition appears, treat the order as IO-DO,” will no longer evidence more basic strategies related to the marked/unmarked phenomenon. To check this, the children in the experiment were divided into those who had fully mastered the direct/indirect object relationship as it is expressed in English, and those who had not. First, it is possible to note the age at which children acquire the advanced structure. Table 2 shows the number and percentage of children in the two experiments (N = 87) who have acquired the advanced structure (defined by correct interpretation of both post-test sentences) as divided into several chronological age categories. It can be seen that only after the age of 8 : 6 years, have two-thirds of the children acquired the advanced normal double object form. By dividing children into those who had acquired the advanced form and those who had not, one can compare the mean number of errors by the four subgroups formed by IO vs DO group. Furthermore, as the second experiment constituted merely an additional condition (use of TABLE NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE NORMAL STRUCTURE
Age level Below 7 : 0 7:0-7:s 7:6-7: 11 8:0-8:5 8 : 6 and above
2
OF CHILDREN WHO HAVE AT VARIOUS CHRONOLOGICAL
Number possessing advanced form 3 7 14 12 8
ACQUIRED THE ADVANCED AGE LEVELS (N = 87)
the II 6 16 33 20 12
% 50.0 43.75 42.4 60.0 66.7
LINGUISTIC
UNIVERSAL TABLE
MEAN NUMBER OF ERRORS BY CHILDREN BY SUBGROUPS
OF THOSE
PASSING
AND
AND
3 IN THE Two EXPERIMENTS AS DIVIDED FAILING THE ADVANCED NORMAL FORM
Experiment I (“push”)
Pass advanced normal form Fail advanced normal form
79
MARKING
Experiment II (“give”)
IO
DO
IO
DO
6.38 (n = 8)
5.75 (tz = 8) 5.86 (12 = 7)
14.14 (12 = 7) 1 I .33 (n = 3)
9.75 (n = 4) 11.17 (n = 6)
10.00 (n = 7)
“give” instead of “push”), an overall three-way analysis of variance on all eight subgroups can be made. The eight means are shown in Table 3. The three-way analysis of variance revealed no significant interactions (all F’s < 1). The main effect of experimental group (IO or DO) was not significant (F = 1.36; 1, 42 &, N.S.). Similarly the main effect of passing or failing on the advanced normal sturcture was not significant (F < 1). However, there was a significant difference between the “push” and “give” conditions (F = 5.31; 1, 42 df, p < .05). Thus, the overall mean number of errors in Experiment I using “push” (6.93) was significantly less than the mean number of errors by children in Experiment II using “give” (11.95). DISCUSSION
In the two experiments designed to test the proposition that children will expect the marked form to be the indirect object in sentences with a double object relationship, no evidence was found of any differential expectation. Experiment I may have activated locative rather than object and recipient semantic notions since the word “push” was used. In Experiment II, however, the instructions substituted the word “give” in the language game. This may well have activated different operations, for the mean number of errors in Experiment II was significantly greater than the mean number of errors in Experiment I. Nevertheless, within Experiment II, no significant difference was found between the error scores of children who heard the indirect object as the marked form and those who heard the direct object as the marked form. Furthermore, no differences were found between the IO and DO groups in either experiment when children were divided into those who had mastered the advanced form of the direct/indirect object relationship in English, and those who had not. Two theoretical interpretations of these results are possible. First, it may be that linguistic universals do not have psychological validity as
80
RICHARD
F.
CROMER
defined in the introduction; from these results it appears that children do not make use of learning strategies which are related to linguistic universals. It will be recalled that these linguistic universals are said to exist precisely because the innate properties of the organism lead to languages being organized in a particular manner (Chomsky, 1965). If this is untrue, then one is still left with the intriguing problem concerning why certain observed universals or near-universals should exist at all. Alternatively, it may be that this experiment does not test a valid universal. Use was made of the direct and indirect object relationship because English does not mark these by case markers or inflectional endings, and word order could be controlled in the language game. McNeil1 et al. (1971) claim that the indirect object is universally the marked form, but the linguistic literature does not abound with similar statements. It is difficult to find any linguist directly making this claim. There is, however, one factor in the experimental situation itself which may have affected the results. McNeil1 et al. (1971) used 3-, 4-, and Syear-olds in the study of Japanese children. In the experiments reported above, however, 6-, 7-, and 8-year-olds were tested. It may be that the older children are no longer making use of the kinds of strategies which are said to be related to linguistic universals, although this is unlikely if one accepts Lenneberg’s view on a critical period for language acquistion which seems to extend until adolescence (Lenneberg, 1967). Nevertheless, it could be argued that the types of strategies being examined here would only evidence themselves in that earlier portion of the critical period in which rapid language acquistion takes place (ages 3 to 5 years). However this is viewed, one may still conclude that for the ages tested here, no evidence was found for the putative linguistic universal which was investigated. REFERENCES Chomsky, N. Aspects of the theor?/ of syntax. Cambridge, Massachusetts: M.I.T. Press. 1965. Jakobson, R. Child language aphasia and phonological universals. The Hague: Mouton. 1968 (originally published in 1941). Lee, Laura L. A screening test for syntax development. Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 1970, 35, 103-l 12. Lenneberg, E. Biological foundations of language. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1967. McNeill. D., Yukawa, R., & McNeill, N. B. The acquisition of direct and indirect objects in Japanese. Child Development. 1971, 42, 237-249. Waryas, Carol L. & Ruder, K. Children’s sentence processing strategies: The double-object construction. Parsons Research Center, Working Paper No. 296, 1973. RECEIVED:
March
11, 1974; REVISED:
August
7. 1974