- Email: [email protected]
Desarrollo de la comprensión infantil de la sintaxis espan̂ola
162
REVIEWS
television. ‘Who are they, darling?’ was a question constantly asked by a certain lady, whom Richard Buckle quotes - this lady being the daughter of a duke, the half-sister of a duke, the widow of a duke, the mother of two dukes and the mother-in-law of two more (75). From such mothers and such fathers comes the demand that this book goes to supply. Jean Ure University of Edinburgh English Studies (Foreign Students) 25 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh, EH8 9LN Scotland
REFERENCES ASHFORD, Daisy (1919) The Young Visitors (sic) or, Mr Salteenas Plan. London: Chatto and Windus. MITFORD, Nancy (1956)Noblesse Oblige. An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy. London: Hamish Hamilton. (Penguin Books 1959). ROSS, Alan S. C., (1954) Linguistic Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Helsinki.
Class
Indicators
in Present
Day English,
Echeverria, Max Sergio, Desarrollo de la comprensidn infantil de la sintaxis espafiola. Conception, Chile: Editorial de la Universidad de Conception, 1978, 174~~. DM28, (Serie Lingiiistica Nr. 3). European scholars interested in psycholinguistics had two opportunities, in the summer of 1980, to attend workshops on speech production and comprehension; the one organized at the University (Gesamthochschule) of Kassel on ‘Psycholinguistic Models of Production’, and the other held in Paris (Universites de Paris III et XII) on ‘La Comprehension du Langage’. However, much of the discussion at the Kassel workshop concentrated on problems of comprehension. At the Paris meeting, a number of interesting papers on neurological aspects of language use were presented, as well as papers on assorted topics from linguistics (featuring some old favorites like ‘theme’ vs ‘rheme’), but psycholinguistic aspects of language comprehension hardly ever came up. Nevertheless, there seems to be general agreement that our knowledge of speech production and comprehension is still minimal, but needs be increased immediately since a number of crucial issues in psycholinguistics, as well as in linguistics, depend on new insights concerning such processes of speech activity. Consequently, every well-founded contribution to this field is very welcome. Looking at it from this angle, the book by M. S. Echeverria deserves to be recommended. It is a revised version of his Ph. D. Dissertation (University of Washington, Seattle, 1975) on
REVIEWS
163
‘Late Stages in the Acquisition of Spanish Syntax’. The theoretical questions raised, the experimental design, the method of analysis and even some of the conclusions arrived at do not represent a truly innovative contribution; large parts of the book follow rather closely the research developed by Carol Chomsky (1969), and in view of the literature referred to, Echeverria’s work is really part of the discussion of the early seventies. But since we are still far from being able to answer those questions in a satisfactory manner, an investigation of some specific problems, rather restricted in scope but very thorough in execution, will no doubt prove useful. This is what Echeverria offers. Furthermore, this is the first publication of the kind dealing with Spanish, thus providing some data and analyses of a language other than English. As far as I know it is still the only work on advanced stages in the acquisition of Spanish (Ll); the literature on the acquisition of Spanish (Ll) is very scarce anyway, and studies in a generative-transformational framework, such as the present one, are practically nonexistent. The book consists of seven parts: a short introduction, a chapter presenting the kind of work to be done and earlier publications on similar problems, a chapter explaining the experimental design, one large chapter (4), giving a detailed description of the various tests applied and the results obtained, another chapter summarizing the conclusions, and finally the bibliography and an appendix containing all the tests used, a list of the diagrams and a list of the tables. The introduction and chapter 2, ‘Naturaleza y extension de1 trabajo’, show some traces of the book’s original format as a Ph. D. Dissertation. There are some very broad claims and statements about generative grammar and cognitive psychology which may not be generally subscribed to, especially after developments since the dissertation was written. Chapter 2 also gives a review of some earlier publications on the acquisition of Spanish (Ll); this review is rather negative, but justly so, I believe. Echeverria concludes that there is no research dealing with the acquisition of Spanish syntax using reliable empirical methods. Chapter 3, ‘Metodos y procedimientos’, describes and justifies the research methods applied. With only minor changes, the experimental design is the one used by C. Chomsky (1969): children are required to act out with dolls the meaning of a number of utterances, and in two instances they are also asked to verbalize what the dolls might have said to each other. These tests are very carefully designed, avoiding possible verbal clues as to the interpretation of the tested sentences. For this reason, the investigator has to stick to the prepared insructions, whereas C. Chomsky allowed spontaneous reactions to the children’s utterances. I believe that Echeverria has fulfilled his goals, namely: (a) careful control of the test situation, (b) avoidance of semantic or situational clues, (c) ensuring the child understands the lexical material used in the test, (d) ensuring that a correct answer can only be given if the syntactic construction has been understood. Quite a different question, however, is how much this can possibly tell us about natural language use, or rather about children’s comprehension of language in every day communication where they make use of situational clues. Echeverria observes that the results of his tests frequently fall behind what children apparently comprehend normally l, and he finds that one of the structures investigated is not acquired by any of the children tested. Now, it may well be that successful communication does not reveal how much is actually understood correctly and it may be that some structures are acquired at a later age (above 10 years), but it is also possible that the kind of knowledge tested here is only of marginal importance for language use. Some
164
REVIEWS
linguists and psycholinguists will not be frightened by such a thought;-their definition of ‘competence’ does not imply that it need be used for anything other than grammaticality judgements and the like. This issue is, unfortunately, not even touched upon by Echeverria. Another problem is that such tests, as well as others used by psycholinguists and by psychologists like Piaget, can only be applied to children above the age of 4. How, then, can we investigate comprehension in smaller children? this has to be kept in mind since Echeverria makes a number of claims about the acquisition of comprehension below the age of5. The sample of Echeverria’s study consists of 55 children, 29 male, 26 female (sex differences are not further investigated in the course of this work), all at the same school in Conception, Chile. They are all lower middle class Spanish monolinguals, and their ages range from 5-10 years. For some unexplained reason they are divided into groups of lo-12 each, which gives five groups according to age: 5-5.11,6-6.11,7-7.11, g-8.11, 9-10.11. It would have made more sense to group them according to some developmental (linguistic) criterion; this would certainly have lead to more consistent results, for some children in each group obviously belong to a lower or higher developmental stage than the others. After a pilot study with seven children, the 55 children were tested by five experienced and trained teachers. Each child had to go through six ‘subtests’, the whole test lasting approximately 25 min. The smaller children therefore had to be visited twice. The testing was carried out in the children’s school. Chapter 4, ‘El test de comprension sintactica: description, resultados y discusion’, is the main part of the book discussing each of the six tests (or ‘subtests’, as Echeverria calls them) in some detail. For every test he first offers a brief description of the problem to be tested, referring to pertinent linguistic and psycholinguistic works. The test is then described, which makes superfluous appendix No. 1 where all six ‘subtests’ are given for a second time. This is followed by tables summarizing the results. Finally, the author interprets the results. This discussion is clearly written and illustrated by a number of diagrams which help focus one’s attention on certain aspects of the findings arrived at. These are as follows: I) Comprehension of active and passive sentences. Only reversible passives are tested. Spanish is of some interest, as compared, for example, to English since passive constructions with ser ‘to be’ are not very frequent in colloquial speech; thus input should be considerably lower for Spanish-speaking than for English-speaking children. As was to be expected, all children, with but two exceptions, did better with actives than with passives or passed the test without mistakes in either. Correct responses for actives vary from 82 - 98%. for passives from 38% (age 5-6) to 90% (age 9-10). Echeverria considers comprehension of these constructions to be acquired whenever 80% of the responses are correct. According to this criterion, actives have already been acquired before the age of 5, passives are acquired by a majority of subjects around age 8. Those children who could not interpret passives correctly, did not hesitate or not answer at all, they all seemed to believe they had understood correctly. More than half of the children from 5 to 6 interpreted reversible passives as actives; these findings parallel results obtained with English-speaking children. Echeverria explains these facts by means of Bever’s (1970) strategy D: ‘Any Noun- Verb-Noun (NVN) sequence within a potential
REVIEWS
internal unit in the surface structure corresponds to ‘actor-action-object’ (298). (2) Comprehension of word order. The question Echeverria asks is at which point children comprehend SVO, SOV, OVS and OSV, and whether there might be a ‘basic word order’ in Spanish which is easiest to acquire. His test sentences, however, are not totally unambiguous. There are examples such as ‘Al payaso el Tio Rico le pego’ (The clown, T. R. hit him) where the extraposed object is copied by a clitic (le). This is explained as OSV, but in fact it could be interpreted as OSOV. Ignoring this, Echeverria finds that all children studied had already acquired comprehension of SVO and SOV, whereas object initial constructions are acquired later: first OSV (around age 8) and then OVS (around age 9). Again, Bever’s strategy D explains part of these observations; comprehension of prepositions as object markers seems to come rather late in the children’s development. It is disappointing that at this point the role of intonation is not discussed at all. (3) Subject assignment to infinitive constructions and the minimal distance principle (MDP) in Spanish. Following C. Chomsky (1969), Echeverria studies the role of MDP in assigning the subject to infinitive constructions with the verb ‘pr’ometer’ (promise). Normally, the object NP of the main clause functions as the subject of the embedded clause ( = MDP): ‘Juan le pidio a Roberto cerrar la puerta’ (J. asked R. to close the door), but not so with ‘prometer’: ‘Juan le prometio a Roberto cerrar la puerta’ (the subject NP ‘Juan’ is also the subject of the infinitive construction ‘cerrar’). This difference appears in Spanish also in the following paraphrases: ‘Juan le pidio a Roberto que cerrara la puerta’ (subjuntivo) as compared to ‘Juan le prometio a Roberto que terraria la puerta’ (conditional). It was ensured that the children understood the meaning of the verb and they were, in addition, asked ‘what did X say?‘. Most children could not make the distinction between ‘prometer’ and MDP verbs; even among the 9-10 year-old children, only 54% were clearly able to differentiate correctly (criterion: 80% correct responses). Up to this age, the overwhelming majority interpreted ‘prometer’ consistently as an MDP verb. The verbal responses confirmed this result. (4) Comprehension of ‘contar’ (tell) and ‘preguntar’ (ask). Following Chomsky (1969) again and in accordance with observations of his own, Echeverria posited that ‘contar’ should be more complex than ‘preguntar’. A satisfactory definition of ‘more or less complex’ is not offered; the possible role of input frequency is not discussed either. The predictions are nevertheless borne out, except for age 7-8, where ‘contar’ is correctly comprehended in a greater number of cases than ‘preguntar’. Only at age 9 do the children achieve 80% correct results. Interestingly enough, a very large percentage of the children assign only one meaning to both verbs (100% for age 6-7). If ‘complexity’ is said to explain these facts, one would like to know why group 7-8 picked ‘contar’. I am not convinced that ‘preguntar’ is acquired first and presents a problem for the children only at the time when they begin to acquire ‘contar’. This is not only rather speculative, but also inconsistent with Echeverria’s own explanation. After all, before that moment, the children did not really understand ‘preguntar’ but rather assigned one meaning to both verbs, this includes the meaning of ‘contar’ at least to some degree.
REVIEWS
166
(3 Comprehension
of ‘decir’ (tell) + subjunctive (+-a) and ‘decir’ + conditional (ria). ‘Decir’ can be a MDP verb (compare test 3), meaning ‘request’ (subjunctive), or it can be constructed with a conditional in the embedded clause, meaning ‘inform’, whereby it joins the same class of verbs as ‘prometer’. This ambiguity is assumed to create learning problems for the child. Echeverria finds that in the first meaning, this verb is comprehended correctly in at least 80% of all sentences tested, by all age groups. However, whereas 48% of the children below the age of 8 years interpret all conditionals as subjunctives, only at this age does a majority correctly understand the MDP verb ‘decir’. At 9-10 years of age, the children did equally well for both meanings of the verb.
(6) Comprehension of relatives. The prediction is that type B relatives like ‘la sefiora que menciono el jefe esta mejor’ (The lady who the boss mentioned feels better) represent a complex learning task, since the relative pronoun refers to a noun phrase - ‘la sefiora’ - which functions as the subject for ‘esta’ and simultaneously as the object for ‘menciono’. In type A relative constructions, like ‘El gato que perseguia al perro choco con un camion (Thecat who chased the dog hit a truck), such problems should not exist; not so much because of the prepositional object marking (‘a’) which seems to be acquired fairly late (see test 2), but rather because of the non-violation of the SVO order in the relative clause. The results, however, gave a somewhat different picture. Subject assignment to the verb in the relative clause of type A constructions caused no problem for any age group. Subject assignment to the verb of the main clause showed the same result for type A and type B constructions: older childen tended to do better than the young ones, without however achieving better than 70% correct responses. Subject assignment to the verb of relative clauses of type B, on the other hand, was not mastered by any of the age groups studied. Again, Echeverria explains this fact mainly by referring to Bever’s perceptual strategy, In his final chapter 5, ‘conclusiones generales’, Echeverria summarizes his results and attempts to establish an ordered sequence of acquisition for all the phenomena studied. He emphasizes the presence of considerable individual variation. Although this is certainly correct, I believe he could have obtained more consistent results if the children had not been grouped according to age; this is well known from studies with younger children. It seems necessary to develop a criterion like ‘mean length of utterance (MLU)’ for advanced stages of language acquisition. The acquisitional sequence Echeverria proposes is as follows: Stage 0 - failure in all tests; Stage 1 - success in test 2 (word order) only; Stage 2 -success in tests I and 2 (passive); Stage 3 - success in tests 1, 2, 4 and 5 (conditional vs subjunctive with ‘decir’, and ‘contar’ versus ‘preguntar’); Stage 4 - success in tests 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (‘prometer’); Stage 5 (not achieved by the subjects of this study) -success in tests 1,2,3,4,5 and b(relatives). Although such an ‘implicational scale’ is not quite consistent and in spite of other drawbacks (a very low number of test sentences, arbitrary fixation of a criterion of acquisition ranging from 66 to 80% correct responses), the proposed order of acquisition appears to be well motivated and in accordance with findings from other languages. This fairly detailed presentation of the various problems investigated by M. S. Echeverria should show that the book contains a number of interesting facts and observations, making it obligatory reading for anybody studying the acquisition of Spanish and a recommended
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item on the reading list of those working on language comprehension. It is nevertheless regrettable that - in addition to the weaknesses criticized above, which are not all minor points - Echeverria’s study does not attempt to give well founded explanations of the observations reported, beyond referring to Bever’s perceptual strategies.
NOTE ’ Grimm, Schdler and Wintermantel (1975), working with German children arrive at similar conclusions; they also offer a detailed discussion of different ways to test comprehension.
REFERENCES BEVER, Thomas G. (1970)The Cognitive Basis for Linguistic Structures. In: J. R. Hayes, (ed.), Cognifion and the of Language. New York: John Wiley, pp. 279-362.
Development
CHOMSKY, Carol (1969) The Acquisition
of Syntux in Children from
GRIMM, H., H. SchOler, M. Wintermantel (1975) Zur Weinheim; F.R.G.: Beltz.
Entwicklung
5 to 10.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
sprachlicher
Strukturformen
bei Kindern.
Jtirgen M. Meisel Romanisches Seminar Universitat Hamburg von Melle - Park 6 2000 Hamburg 13 Federal Republic of Germany
Alexander, Richard, Elements of a Theory of Second Language Learning. Frankfurt, F.R.G.: Peter Lang, 1979, 26Opp., Sfr. 39.00 (Foreign Language Studies, Band 2). This is a daring undertaking, assembling a list of components of a theory of second language learning (SLL) with the intention to ‘organize reality so we can act on it’, i.e. so that the theory can contribute to teaching. The attempt is heartening for its confidence that the field has advanced sufficiently for a beginning to be made toward assembling the diverse elements. One ought not underestimate, nor does Alexander, the knowledge that will be required to understand second language learning. Second implies a first, which implies that initially, we must have a picture of acquiring a first language - surely no easy task. In addition, SLL theory must take elements from neurophysiology, psychology, sociology, and linguistics, and in ways that cross over disciplines. For example, second language learning is the creation of bilinguals, which suggests that bilingualism must be studied from its neurological side (how are a bilingual’s languages organized? How are his languages stored?) psychological side (what are the effects of personality structure on L2 acquisition/
REVIEWS
television. ‘Who are they, darling?’ was a question constantly asked by a certain lady, whom Richard Buckle quotes - this lady being the daughter of a duke, the half-sister of a duke, the widow of a duke, the mother of two dukes and the mother-in-law of two more (75). From such mothers and such fathers comes the demand that this book goes to supply. Jean Ure University of Edinburgh English Studies (Foreign Students) 25 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh, EH8 9LN Scotland
REFERENCES ASHFORD, Daisy (1919) The Young Visitors (sic) or, Mr Salteenas Plan. London: Chatto and Windus. MITFORD, Nancy (1956)Noblesse Oblige. An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy. London: Hamish Hamilton. (Penguin Books 1959). ROSS, Alan S. C., (1954) Linguistic Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, Helsinki.
Class
Indicators
in Present
Day English,
Echeverria, Max Sergio, Desarrollo de la comprensidn infantil de la sintaxis espafiola. Conception, Chile: Editorial de la Universidad de Conception, 1978, 174~~. DM28, (Serie Lingiiistica Nr. 3). European scholars interested in psycholinguistics had two opportunities, in the summer of 1980, to attend workshops on speech production and comprehension; the one organized at the University (Gesamthochschule) of Kassel on ‘Psycholinguistic Models of Production’, and the other held in Paris (Universites de Paris III et XII) on ‘La Comprehension du Langage’. However, much of the discussion at the Kassel workshop concentrated on problems of comprehension. At the Paris meeting, a number of interesting papers on neurological aspects of language use were presented, as well as papers on assorted topics from linguistics (featuring some old favorites like ‘theme’ vs ‘rheme’), but psycholinguistic aspects of language comprehension hardly ever came up. Nevertheless, there seems to be general agreement that our knowledge of speech production and comprehension is still minimal, but needs be increased immediately since a number of crucial issues in psycholinguistics, as well as in linguistics, depend on new insights concerning such processes of speech activity. Consequently, every well-founded contribution to this field is very welcome. Looking at it from this angle, the book by M. S. Echeverria deserves to be recommended. It is a revised version of his Ph. D. Dissertation (University of Washington, Seattle, 1975) on
REVIEWS
163
‘Late Stages in the Acquisition of Spanish Syntax’. The theoretical questions raised, the experimental design, the method of analysis and even some of the conclusions arrived at do not represent a truly innovative contribution; large parts of the book follow rather closely the research developed by Carol Chomsky (1969), and in view of the literature referred to, Echeverria’s work is really part of the discussion of the early seventies. But since we are still far from being able to answer those questions in a satisfactory manner, an investigation of some specific problems, rather restricted in scope but very thorough in execution, will no doubt prove useful. This is what Echeverria offers. Furthermore, this is the first publication of the kind dealing with Spanish, thus providing some data and analyses of a language other than English. As far as I know it is still the only work on advanced stages in the acquisition of Spanish (Ll); the literature on the acquisition of Spanish (Ll) is very scarce anyway, and studies in a generative-transformational framework, such as the present one, are practically nonexistent. The book consists of seven parts: a short introduction, a chapter presenting the kind of work to be done and earlier publications on similar problems, a chapter explaining the experimental design, one large chapter (4), giving a detailed description of the various tests applied and the results obtained, another chapter summarizing the conclusions, and finally the bibliography and an appendix containing all the tests used, a list of the diagrams and a list of the tables. The introduction and chapter 2, ‘Naturaleza y extension de1 trabajo’, show some traces of the book’s original format as a Ph. D. Dissertation. There are some very broad claims and statements about generative grammar and cognitive psychology which may not be generally subscribed to, especially after developments since the dissertation was written. Chapter 2 also gives a review of some earlier publications on the acquisition of Spanish (Ll); this review is rather negative, but justly so, I believe. Echeverria concludes that there is no research dealing with the acquisition of Spanish syntax using reliable empirical methods. Chapter 3, ‘Metodos y procedimientos’, describes and justifies the research methods applied. With only minor changes, the experimental design is the one used by C. Chomsky (1969): children are required to act out with dolls the meaning of a number of utterances, and in two instances they are also asked to verbalize what the dolls might have said to each other. These tests are very carefully designed, avoiding possible verbal clues as to the interpretation of the tested sentences. For this reason, the investigator has to stick to the prepared insructions, whereas C. Chomsky allowed spontaneous reactions to the children’s utterances. I believe that Echeverria has fulfilled his goals, namely: (a) careful control of the test situation, (b) avoidance of semantic or situational clues, (c) ensuring the child understands the lexical material used in the test, (d) ensuring that a correct answer can only be given if the syntactic construction has been understood. Quite a different question, however, is how much this can possibly tell us about natural language use, or rather about children’s comprehension of language in every day communication where they make use of situational clues. Echeverria observes that the results of his tests frequently fall behind what children apparently comprehend normally l, and he finds that one of the structures investigated is not acquired by any of the children tested. Now, it may well be that successful communication does not reveal how much is actually understood correctly and it may be that some structures are acquired at a later age (above 10 years), but it is also possible that the kind of knowledge tested here is only of marginal importance for language use. Some
164
REVIEWS
linguists and psycholinguists will not be frightened by such a thought;-their definition of ‘competence’ does not imply that it need be used for anything other than grammaticality judgements and the like. This issue is, unfortunately, not even touched upon by Echeverria. Another problem is that such tests, as well as others used by psycholinguists and by psychologists like Piaget, can only be applied to children above the age of 4. How, then, can we investigate comprehension in smaller children? this has to be kept in mind since Echeverria makes a number of claims about the acquisition of comprehension below the age of5. The sample of Echeverria’s study consists of 55 children, 29 male, 26 female (sex differences are not further investigated in the course of this work), all at the same school in Conception, Chile. They are all lower middle class Spanish monolinguals, and their ages range from 5-10 years. For some unexplained reason they are divided into groups of lo-12 each, which gives five groups according to age: 5-5.11,6-6.11,7-7.11, g-8.11, 9-10.11. It would have made more sense to group them according to some developmental (linguistic) criterion; this would certainly have lead to more consistent results, for some children in each group obviously belong to a lower or higher developmental stage than the others. After a pilot study with seven children, the 55 children were tested by five experienced and trained teachers. Each child had to go through six ‘subtests’, the whole test lasting approximately 25 min. The smaller children therefore had to be visited twice. The testing was carried out in the children’s school. Chapter 4, ‘El test de comprension sintactica: description, resultados y discusion’, is the main part of the book discussing each of the six tests (or ‘subtests’, as Echeverria calls them) in some detail. For every test he first offers a brief description of the problem to be tested, referring to pertinent linguistic and psycholinguistic works. The test is then described, which makes superfluous appendix No. 1 where all six ‘subtests’ are given for a second time. This is followed by tables summarizing the results. Finally, the author interprets the results. This discussion is clearly written and illustrated by a number of diagrams which help focus one’s attention on certain aspects of the findings arrived at. These are as follows: I) Comprehension of active and passive sentences. Only reversible passives are tested. Spanish is of some interest, as compared, for example, to English since passive constructions with ser ‘to be’ are not very frequent in colloquial speech; thus input should be considerably lower for Spanish-speaking than for English-speaking children. As was to be expected, all children, with but two exceptions, did better with actives than with passives or passed the test without mistakes in either. Correct responses for actives vary from 82 - 98%. for passives from 38% (age 5-6) to 90% (age 9-10). Echeverria considers comprehension of these constructions to be acquired whenever 80% of the responses are correct. According to this criterion, actives have already been acquired before the age of 5, passives are acquired by a majority of subjects around age 8. Those children who could not interpret passives correctly, did not hesitate or not answer at all, they all seemed to believe they had understood correctly. More than half of the children from 5 to 6 interpreted reversible passives as actives; these findings parallel results obtained with English-speaking children. Echeverria explains these facts by means of Bever’s (1970) strategy D: ‘Any Noun- Verb-Noun (NVN) sequence within a potential
REVIEWS
internal unit in the surface structure corresponds to ‘actor-action-object’ (298). (2) Comprehension of word order. The question Echeverria asks is at which point children comprehend SVO, SOV, OVS and OSV, and whether there might be a ‘basic word order’ in Spanish which is easiest to acquire. His test sentences, however, are not totally unambiguous. There are examples such as ‘Al payaso el Tio Rico le pego’ (The clown, T. R. hit him) where the extraposed object is copied by a clitic (le). This is explained as OSV, but in fact it could be interpreted as OSOV. Ignoring this, Echeverria finds that all children studied had already acquired comprehension of SVO and SOV, whereas object initial constructions are acquired later: first OSV (around age 8) and then OVS (around age 9). Again, Bever’s strategy D explains part of these observations; comprehension of prepositions as object markers seems to come rather late in the children’s development. It is disappointing that at this point the role of intonation is not discussed at all. (3) Subject assignment to infinitive constructions and the minimal distance principle (MDP) in Spanish. Following C. Chomsky (1969), Echeverria studies the role of MDP in assigning the subject to infinitive constructions with the verb ‘pr’ometer’ (promise). Normally, the object NP of the main clause functions as the subject of the embedded clause ( = MDP): ‘Juan le pidio a Roberto cerrar la puerta’ (J. asked R. to close the door), but not so with ‘prometer’: ‘Juan le prometio a Roberto cerrar la puerta’ (the subject NP ‘Juan’ is also the subject of the infinitive construction ‘cerrar’). This difference appears in Spanish also in the following paraphrases: ‘Juan le pidio a Roberto que cerrara la puerta’ (subjuntivo) as compared to ‘Juan le prometio a Roberto que terraria la puerta’ (conditional). It was ensured that the children understood the meaning of the verb and they were, in addition, asked ‘what did X say?‘. Most children could not make the distinction between ‘prometer’ and MDP verbs; even among the 9-10 year-old children, only 54% were clearly able to differentiate correctly (criterion: 80% correct responses). Up to this age, the overwhelming majority interpreted ‘prometer’ consistently as an MDP verb. The verbal responses confirmed this result. (4) Comprehension of ‘contar’ (tell) and ‘preguntar’ (ask). Following Chomsky (1969) again and in accordance with observations of his own, Echeverria posited that ‘contar’ should be more complex than ‘preguntar’. A satisfactory definition of ‘more or less complex’ is not offered; the possible role of input frequency is not discussed either. The predictions are nevertheless borne out, except for age 7-8, where ‘contar’ is correctly comprehended in a greater number of cases than ‘preguntar’. Only at age 9 do the children achieve 80% correct results. Interestingly enough, a very large percentage of the children assign only one meaning to both verbs (100% for age 6-7). If ‘complexity’ is said to explain these facts, one would like to know why group 7-8 picked ‘contar’. I am not convinced that ‘preguntar’ is acquired first and presents a problem for the children only at the time when they begin to acquire ‘contar’. This is not only rather speculative, but also inconsistent with Echeverria’s own explanation. After all, before that moment, the children did not really understand ‘preguntar’ but rather assigned one meaning to both verbs, this includes the meaning of ‘contar’ at least to some degree.
REVIEWS
166
(3 Comprehension
of ‘decir’ (tell) + subjunctive (+-a) and ‘decir’ + conditional (ria). ‘Decir’ can be a MDP verb (compare test 3), meaning ‘request’ (subjunctive), or it can be constructed with a conditional in the embedded clause, meaning ‘inform’, whereby it joins the same class of verbs as ‘prometer’. This ambiguity is assumed to create learning problems for the child. Echeverria finds that in the first meaning, this verb is comprehended correctly in at least 80% of all sentences tested, by all age groups. However, whereas 48% of the children below the age of 8 years interpret all conditionals as subjunctives, only at this age does a majority correctly understand the MDP verb ‘decir’. At 9-10 years of age, the children did equally well for both meanings of the verb.
(6) Comprehension of relatives. The prediction is that type B relatives like ‘la sefiora que menciono el jefe esta mejor’ (The lady who the boss mentioned feels better) represent a complex learning task, since the relative pronoun refers to a noun phrase - ‘la sefiora’ - which functions as the subject for ‘esta’ and simultaneously as the object for ‘menciono’. In type A relative constructions, like ‘El gato que perseguia al perro choco con un camion (Thecat who chased the dog hit a truck), such problems should not exist; not so much because of the prepositional object marking (‘a’) which seems to be acquired fairly late (see test 2), but rather because of the non-violation of the SVO order in the relative clause. The results, however, gave a somewhat different picture. Subject assignment to the verb in the relative clause of type A constructions caused no problem for any age group. Subject assignment to the verb of the main clause showed the same result for type A and type B constructions: older childen tended to do better than the young ones, without however achieving better than 70% correct responses. Subject assignment to the verb of relative clauses of type B, on the other hand, was not mastered by any of the age groups studied. Again, Echeverria explains this fact mainly by referring to Bever’s perceptual strategy, In his final chapter 5, ‘conclusiones generales’, Echeverria summarizes his results and attempts to establish an ordered sequence of acquisition for all the phenomena studied. He emphasizes the presence of considerable individual variation. Although this is certainly correct, I believe he could have obtained more consistent results if the children had not been grouped according to age; this is well known from studies with younger children. It seems necessary to develop a criterion like ‘mean length of utterance (MLU)’ for advanced stages of language acquisition. The acquisitional sequence Echeverria proposes is as follows: Stage 0 - failure in all tests; Stage 1 - success in test 2 (word order) only; Stage 2 -success in tests I and 2 (passive); Stage 3 - success in tests 1, 2, 4 and 5 (conditional vs subjunctive with ‘decir’, and ‘contar’ versus ‘preguntar’); Stage 4 - success in tests 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (‘prometer’); Stage 5 (not achieved by the subjects of this study) -success in tests 1,2,3,4,5 and b(relatives). Although such an ‘implicational scale’ is not quite consistent and in spite of other drawbacks (a very low number of test sentences, arbitrary fixation of a criterion of acquisition ranging from 66 to 80% correct responses), the proposed order of acquisition appears to be well motivated and in accordance with findings from other languages. This fairly detailed presentation of the various problems investigated by M. S. Echeverria should show that the book contains a number of interesting facts and observations, making it obligatory reading for anybody studying the acquisition of Spanish and a recommended
167
REVIEWS
item on the reading list of those working on language comprehension. It is nevertheless regrettable that - in addition to the weaknesses criticized above, which are not all minor points - Echeverria’s study does not attempt to give well founded explanations of the observations reported, beyond referring to Bever’s perceptual strategies.
NOTE ’ Grimm, Schdler and Wintermantel (1975), working with German children arrive at similar conclusions; they also offer a detailed discussion of different ways to test comprehension.
REFERENCES BEVER, Thomas G. (1970)The Cognitive Basis for Linguistic Structures. In: J. R. Hayes, (ed.), Cognifion and the of Language. New York: John Wiley, pp. 279-362.
Development
CHOMSKY, Carol (1969) The Acquisition
of Syntux in Children from
GRIMM, H., H. SchOler, M. Wintermantel (1975) Zur Weinheim; F.R.G.: Beltz.
Entwicklung
5 to 10.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
sprachlicher
Strukturformen
bei Kindern.
Jtirgen M. Meisel Romanisches Seminar Universitat Hamburg von Melle - Park 6 2000 Hamburg 13 Federal Republic of Germany
Alexander, Richard, Elements of a Theory of Second Language Learning. Frankfurt, F.R.G.: Peter Lang, 1979, 26Opp., Sfr. 39.00 (Foreign Language Studies, Band 2). This is a daring undertaking, assembling a list of components of a theory of second language learning (SLL) with the intention to ‘organize reality so we can act on it’, i.e. so that the theory can contribute to teaching. The attempt is heartening for its confidence that the field has advanced sufficiently for a beginning to be made toward assembling the diverse elements. One ought not underestimate, nor does Alexander, the knowledge that will be required to understand second language learning. Second implies a first, which implies that initially, we must have a picture of acquiring a first language - surely no easy task. In addition, SLL theory must take elements from neurophysiology, psychology, sociology, and linguistics, and in ways that cross over disciplines. For example, second language learning is the creation of bilinguals, which suggests that bilingualism must be studied from its neurological side (how are a bilingual’s languages organized? How are his languages stored?) psychological side (what are the effects of personality structure on L2 acquisition/