Psychology without linguistics = language without grammar

Cognition, 10 (1981) 275 -280 @ Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne - Printed in The Netherlands

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Psychology without linguistics = language without grammar DAN I. SLOBIN’ University of Californi-8, Berkeley

“Developmental psycholinguistics”, or the modern cdd;r of child language development, began about 20 years ago with a search for the early structurd principles underlying children’s speech in English. Cuided by Piagetian psycholog/ and Chomskyan linguistics, we approached language development as a phenomenon of successive grammatical structuration. The dominant theoretical issues of the sixtics dealt with the degree of innateness of the underlying principles, the extent to which they were specialized for language behavior, and their fit to current models of transformational grammar and its descendants. Psychologists and linguists discussed these problems in common terms , ar
solved by the child. With these two central figures explicitly ignoring the developmental dimension of linguistic competence, many social and behavioral Gent&s have been concerned with the web of nonlinguistic factors in which language acquisition is situated. These concerns have added richness and complexity to the tasks of developmental psycholinguistics, but they have hardly touched the problem of how it is that the child discovers and constructs Iinguistic form. The seven terms listed above reflect three intersecting groups of variables which lie outside of linguistic structure per se, but must play their roles in the acquisition of that structure: ( 1) 7 ;leoreticians of semantic and contextual factors emphasize that early messages MC supported by situational as we!! as linguistic irlformation in both comprehension and production. (2) Theoreticians of input,pragmatics,and discourse emphasize that much of meaning is carried by the structure and content of social interaction. (3) Theoreticians of cognition and language processing strategies argue that syntax is a reflection of more broadly-based structures and processes. There is no question that all of these factors are involved in language acquisition. However, taken in combination, advocates of these extralinguistic variables often seek to reduce language to something else, allowing it to arise “naturally” from processes not specially ad;rpted to the peculiar structures of ~yntax and morphology. However, tiiese structures and the course of their acquisition remain a puzzle to psycholinguists. The seven popular terms cannot be used to solve the puzzle without an eighth term, grammar. The formal medium that carries human discourse functions and is sequentially processed in perceptual and articulatory modalities- that is, structursd language-has peculiar attriba.ltes of its own. These attributes are best studied in conjunction with crosslinguistic comparison, where both diversity and. uniformity, particular and unversal features of language come to light. The existence of crosslinguistic diversity allows for a spectrum of “‘natural experiments” in which form and function can be profitably varied and juxtaposed. I have found comparative acquisition studies especially useful in developing notions of the processes underlying the path from child to adult grammar. (For details see references.) The importa-It preliminary conclusi,on from such studies,and related studies which look at the course of acquisition of individual languages in psycholinguistic terms, is that early phases of grammar can be accounted for in terms of particular factors of language processing, storage, and organizationinteracting with the three broad classes of extralinguistic factors listed above. Though we have much to learn, we are developing a set of expectations of

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what early child grammars should look like. It is significant, in addition, that such grammars have much in common with the grammars of creole languages, which also reveal underlying features of the language-creating capacities of the human mind. Furthermore, processes of change as revealed in ontogeny and in creolization are also reflected in the historical change of established languages. Common factors of these three diachronic pictures point to a characterization cjf the optimal core of human language-an idealization of the structures of semantics and code units and their interrelations. We know less about the processes by which elementary grammars are -evised. The study of reorganizations and restructu ngs in development promises to be significant in coming years. It is already evident that-to use Annette Karmiloff-Smith’s felicitous expression-“language is a forrplal problem-space per se for children” (in press). That is, beyond the goals of communication and expression, children work at mzkizig their speech conform in detail to the structural peculiarities of the language they hear about them. As a quick overview of progress and problems in understanding child language development, it may be useful to point out five major topics of research .:oncem: (1) development of the semantic svstem, (2) development of %.uface” units of linguistic expression, (3) mapy.ing between form and meaning, (4) going between form and meaning’ m real time (processing), and (5) revising linguistic systems to bring them into conformity with the norms of the speech community. (1) The semantic system is not isomorphic with the conceptual structure of thought, though the development of cognition and linguistic semantics are intimately related. Only a subset of conceivable concepts are candidates for grammaticization in human languages. For example, locative systems expressed by adpositions and affixes encode notions of topological location ( %I’, I ‘an’, ‘under’, ‘at’), source (‘frcm’), and goal (‘to’), but not contour of path, rate of movement, absolute size or distance. Nominal classifiers mark form but not color of referent objects. Many rn:>:*eexamples could be adduced; in short, the notions expressed by grammatical markers are a privileged subset of notions accessible to tile child. Within this subset, language-free developmental sequences are observed. For example, across a varrzty of distinct languages, topological notions of relative proximity (‘in’, ‘on’, ‘under’, ‘at’) are acquired earlier than notions of projective spatial location (‘in front’, ‘behind’) (Johnston. and Slobin, 197% The first past-tense markings always refer to processes resulting in immediately tangible end-states contemporaneous with the moment of speaking. The first encodings of transitive events- whether by word order, accusative markings on object nouns, OPergative markings on subject nouns-refer to

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direct physical manipulations of objects. In short, the development of grammatically relevant semantics lies outside of the development of language-specific means of expression (e.g. prepositions, postpositions, or nominal inflections for locative notions; affixes, stem alterations, or auxiliaries for ter- marking; and so forth). (2) At the same time, languages differ in the relative accessibility to the child of the means of expression of developing notions. For example, suffixes are more salient than prefixes, postpositions more salient than prepositions. Accordingly, the encoding of locative notions by suffixes (as in Hungarian) or by pos;positions(as in Turkish)emerges earlierthan the encoding of the same notions by prefixes (as in Bantu 1anguag:s) or by prepositions (as in English). However, the order of emergence of locative notions is the same across tlbese different types of languages. To some extent, form and function have separate developmental histories. As more semantic systems and more types of formal expression are studied ontogenetically, we will come to understand more about the child’s initial and growing sensitivities to particular features of linguistic form. (3) Languages also differ in terms of the ways in which semantic distinctions are grouped relative to linguistic form. Some conflations of semantic categories seem to be “primitive”, while others are not. For example, Turkish uses a single morpheme to encode accusative and definiteness on nouns, and this conflation poses no difficulty to children. However, conflations of accusative with animacy or with affirmative-negative distinction, as in Slavic languages, are not easily acquired. Or, to take another example of conflation, Slavic verb-stem alternations for tense are more difficult to master than verbstem alternations for aspect, indicating that aspect may be a more mherently verbal notion than tense. Numerous data of this sort will contribute to defining a developmental hierarchy of notions available for grammaticization. For example, case is likely to be grammaticized before animacy, aspect before tense, a.nd so forth. Eventually, comparisons of this sort will contribute to universal definitions of the semantic bases of grammatical distinctions. Such a hierarchy, however, also interacts with the specific grammatical form of encoding basic notions. For example, definiteness is acquired more easily if marked on the noun-phrase (as in Turkish noun suffixes and Indo-European and Semitic articles) than on the verb (as in Hungarian). Japanese children have difficulty in learning to adjust adjective stems for tense, indicating that tense may be an inherently verb-associated notion. Continued examination of crosslinguistic acquisition data on these lines will reveal “natural” tendencies to’ conflate or separate various semantic categories and to relate those categories to particular morphological and syntactic structures.

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(4) Systems of mapping between f-r-m and function must be processed “online” as speakers produce and interpret utterances. We are only beginning to elaborate mod.els of the developmert of proc . *,singskills. For example, word order patterns are relatively more difficult ‘:r attend to as guides to meaning than are particular “local cues” such as suf ..y3s. Turkish children of age 2; 0 are able to understand all six orders of subject, verb, and object is simple transitive sentences, where the object is marked with a distinctive accusative inflection, while English-speaking children of the same age cannot yet inter pret noun-verb-noun sequences as expressing subject-verb-object (Slobin, in press a). The development of processing skills clearly plays a signicicant role in determini1i.g which aspects of the grammar will be accessible to children at particular points in development, along with the perceptual and conceptual factors hinted at above. (5) Finally, linguistic systems continually undergo revision and reorganization throughout the course of development. Some revisions reflect attempts to secure clarity of expression, as when childr:n pass through stages of preferring analytic to synthetic expressions (e.g., make dead to kill), or full to contracted forms (e.g., will not to won ‘t). Other reorganizations reflect emerging realizations of regularity (as in the replacement of rote exceptions by rule-formed “errors”, such as the replacement of early correct rote past tenses broke and hit by breaked and hitted). Overregularizations are eventually replaced by a return of earlier rote forms, resulting in an adult-like system in which rules and exceptions coexist. Many separate examples such as these await the el&oration of a theory of stages of linguistic change. This quick overview of five major developmental issues points to a need for a comprehensive and interactionist developmental model in which particular linguistic skills of analysis and model building will take their place along with factors of cognitive development. It is far too early to make definitive state ments of the relative roles of language-specific and general cognitive factors in such a model. What is needed is many detailed studies of the course of acquisition of particular linguistic domains, iq all of their structural richnessmorphosyntactic, semantic, and-pragmatic. My prediction is that a powerful and definable “Language A6;quisition Device” (LAD) or “Language Acquisition System” (LAS) will eventually emerge. LAD/LAS, however, will l:ave to bootstrap itself in interaction with particular types of input--linguistic, cognitive, and social--modifying itself in predictable ways in constructing, and finally arriving at adult linguistic competence. Analysis of these psycholinguistic processes cannot succeed without detailed crosslinguistic developmental study, and cannot be carried out in ignorance of the detailed form of linguistic structures.

Asnmon, hf. S., and Slobin, D. L(l979)A cross-linguistic study of the processingof causative sentences. 43g., S, l-17. Johnston, J. R., and Slobin, D. 1. (1979) The development of Locative expressions in English, Italian, SerboCroatian and Turkish.I. child JZUM~., 6.531-547. Karmiloff-Smith, A. (In press). Language as a formal problem-space for children. In W. Deutsch (ed.), The chiW3 constmction of iknguuge. London, Academic Press. Skbin, D. 1.0973) Cognitive prerequisites for the development of grammar. In C. A. Ferguson and D. 1. Slobin teds.), Stu@iesof chiM hnguage deuelapment. New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, pp. 175-208. Skbh,D.l.r1l977)Lauguage changein childhood and inhistory. In J.Macnamara(ed.),LangguJearning and thought. New York, Academic Press, pp. 185-214. Sl&n, D. I. (1980) The repeated path between transparency and opacity in language. 1n.U. Bellugi and hf. !&adder@Kennedy (eds.), S&cd and spoken bguage: Biological constraintson linguistic fm West Berlin, Verlag Chemie, pp. 229-243. Slobin, D. I. (In press (I) Theorighrsofgrammatical encoding of events. In W. Deutsch (ed.), The child’s constmction ofkknguage. London, Academic Press. Sk&?, D. I. (In press b) Universaland particular in the acquisition of language. In L. R. Gleitman and E. Wanner (eds.), Language acquisition: Stute of the art. Cambridge,C- -bridge University Press. Slobin, D. I. &I.) (In preparation) The cmsdinguistic study of child lkngr:ap:. : I&dale, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates..