Cover not available
Article published In:
Transitivity and Valency: From theory to acquisition
Edited by Georgia Fotiadou and Hélène Vassiliadou
[Lingvisticæ Investigationes 40:1] 2017
► pp. 117–133

Clitics as input to the acquisition of verbal transitivity in French

 | University of Toronto
 | University of Toronto
 | University of Toronto
 | University of Toronto
We investigate the effect of French clitic construction on verb learning. In French, object pronouns precede the verb, and the canonical direct object position remains empty. We test whether children treat such contexts as input for transitivity (since a direct object is morphologically identified) or optional transitivity (due to the empty direct object position). Forty-eight monolingual French preschoolers heard verb input with clitics and noun phrases as direct objects, in two input conditions: obligatory transitivity, and mixed optional transitivity. Results show that children are sensitive to the input, but produce more sentences with null implicit objects in the clitic conditions. This provides evidence that specific properties of a language (e.g. clitic constructions), affect the acquisition of verbal classes.
Keywords: French, transitivity, verb classes, pronominal clitics, L1 acquisition, verbal classes, object omission, null objects, input, lexical conservatism, syntactic bootstrapping
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 1.Verb input and learning
    • 1.1Input to transitivity across languages
    • 1.2Clitics in French
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Materials, procedures and design
    • 2.3Coding
  • 3.Results
  • 4.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 8 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/li.40.1.06per
References (43)
References
Abbot-Smith, K., Lieven, E., & Tomasello, M. (2004). Training 2;6-year-olds to produce the transitive construction: The role of frequency, semantic similarity and shared syntactic distribution. Developmental Science, 7(1), 48–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bencini, G. M. L., & Valian, V. V. (2008). Abstract sentence representations in 3-year-olds: Evidence from language production and comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 59(1), 97–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bock, J. K., & Griffin, Z. M. (2000). The persistence of structural priming: Transient activation or implicit learning? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129(2), 177–192. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bourmayan, A. (2013). Les objets implicites en français : une approche pragmatique. Doctoral dissertation. École des hautes études en sciences sociales.Google Scholar
Cardinaletti, A., & Starke, M. (1999). The typology of structural deficiency: A case study of the three classes of pronouns. In H. Van Riemsdijk (Ed.), Clitics in the languages of Europe (pp. 145–233). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Childers, J., & Tomasello, M. (2001). The role of pronouns in young children’s acquisition of the English transitive construction. Developmental Psychology, 371, 739–748. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (second ed.). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Cummins, S., & Roberge, Y. (2005). A modular account of null objects in French. Syntax, 81, 44–64. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Déchaine, R., & Wiltschko, M. (2002). Decomposing pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry, 331, 409–442. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gleitman, L. R. (1990). The structural sources of verb meanings. Language Acquisition, 11, 3–55. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Göksun, T., Küntay, A. & Naigles, L. (2008). Turkish children use morphosyntax in extending verb meaning. Journal of Child Language, 351, 291–323. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hamann, C., Rizzi, L. & Frauenfelder, U. (1996). The acquisition of subject and object clitics in French. In H. Clahsen (Ed.), Generative perspectives on language acquisition (pp. 309–334). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ingham, R. (1993/1994). Input and learnability: direct object omissibility in English. Language Acquisition, 31, 95–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jakubowicz, C., Müller, N., Kang, O. -K., Riemer, B. & Rigaut, C. (1996). On the acquisition of the pronominal system in French and German. In A. Springfellow, D. Cahana-Amitay, E. Hughes & A. Zukowski (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th Boston University Conference in Language Development (pp. 374–385). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Kayne, R. S. (1975). French syntax: The transformational cycle. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kline, M. & Demuth, K. (2014). Syntactic generalizations with novel intransitive verbs. Journal of Child Language, 41(3), 543–74. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, K. & Lemoine, K. (1996). Vers une grammaire des compléments zéro en français parlé, in J. Chuquet & M. Frid (Eds.), Absence de marques et représentation de l’absence (pp. 279–309). Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes.Google Scholar
(2005). Definite null objects in (spoken) French. A construction-grammar account, in M. Fried & H. Boas (Eds.), Proceedings of the First International Construction-Grammar Conference (pp. 13–55). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Larjavaara, M., (2000). Présence ou absence de l’objet. Limites du possible en français contemporain. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica.Google Scholar
Lee, J. & Naigles, L. R. (2005). Input to verb learning in Mandarin Chinese: A role for syntactic bootstrapping. Developmental Psychology, 411, 529–540. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matsuo, A., Kita, S., Shinya, Y., Wood, G. C. & Naigles, L. (2012). Japanese two-year-olds use morphosyntax to learn novel verb meanings. Journal of Child Language, 39(3), 637–663. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Merlo, P. & Stevenson, S. (2001). Automatic verb classification based on statistical distributions of argument structure. Computational Linguistics, 271, 373–408. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Naigles, L., Gleitman, H., & Gleitman, L. (1993). Children acquire word meaning components from syntactic evidence. In E. Dromi (Ed.), Language and development (pp. 104–140). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Naigles, L., & Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1995). Input to verb learning: Evidence for the plausibility of syntactic bootstrapping. Developmental Psychology, 311, 827–837. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Naigles, L., & Lehrer, A. (2002). Language-general and language-specific influences on children’s acquisition of argument structure: A comparison of French and English. Journal of Child Language, 291, 545–566. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
O’Grady, W., Yamashita, Y., & Cho, S. (2008). Object drop in Japanese and Korean. Language Acquisition, 151, 58–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Olguin, R., & Tomasello, M. (1993). Twenty-five-month-old children do not have a grammatical category of verb. Cognitive Development, 81, 245–272. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oshima-Takane, Y., Ariyama, J., Kobayashi, T., Katerelos, M., & Poulin-Dubois, D. (2011). Early verb learning in 20-month-old Japanese-speaking children. Journal of Child Language, 381, 455–484. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A., Pirvulescu, M., & Roberge, Y. (2008). Null objects in child language: Syntax and the lexicon. Lingua, 1181, 370–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A. T., Pirvulescu, M., Roberge, Y., Tieu, L., & Thomas, D. (2006). Variable input and object drop in child language. In C. Gurski & M. Radisic. Proceedings of the 2006 Canadian Linguistics Association Annual Conference. Retrieved from [URL]
Pirvulescu, M. (2006). Theoretical implications of clitic omission in early French: Spontaneous vs. clicited production. Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 51, 221–236. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pye, C. (1994). A cross-linguistic approach to the causative alternation. In Y. Levy (Ed.), Other children, other languages (pp. 243–264). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Rissman, L., Legendre, G. & Landau, B. (2013). Abstract morphosyntax in two- and three-year-old children: Evidence from priming. Language Learning and Development, 91, 278–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Roberge, Y. (1990). The syntactic recoverability of null arguments. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, I. (2010). Agreement and head movement. Cambridge: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rowland, C., Chang, F., Ambridge, B., Pine, J., & Lieven, E. V. M. (2012). The development of abstract syntax: Evidence from structural priming and the lexical boost. Cognition, 1251, 49–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sigurðsson, H. A. (2011). Conditions on argument drop. Linguistic Inquiry, 42(2), 267–304. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, J. (2011). Everyday talk informs toddlers’ novel verb generalizations. First Language, 31(4), 404–424. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sportiche, D. (1995). Clitic constructions. In J. Rooryck & L. Zaring (Eds.), Phrase structure and the lexicon (pp. 213–276). Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Theakston, A., Lieven, E., Pine, J., & Rowland, C. (2001). The role of performance limitations in the acquisition of verb-argument structures: An alternative account. Journal of Child Language, 281, 127–152. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tomasello, M. (2000). Do young children have adult syntactic competence? Cognition, 741, 209–253. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zesiger, P., Chillier-Zesiger, L., Arabatzi, M., Baranzini, L., Cronel-Ohayon, S., Franck, J., Frauenfelder, U., Hamann, C., & Rizzi, L. (2010). The acquisition of pronouns by French children: A parallel study of production and comprehension. Applied Psycholinguistics, 311, 571–603. DOI logoGoogle Scholar