Structure   

1.  Introduction  1

2.  Theoretical Approaches to the Acquisition of Language and Syntax  1

2.1.  General Aspects  1

2.2.  Three Processes in the Acquisition of Syntax  3

2.2.1.  Imitation and Reduction  3

2.2.2.  Imitation with Expansion  4

2.2.3.  Induction of the Latent Structure  5

3.  Three topical investigations of children’s syntactic capacities  5

3.1.  Pivot-open Grammar  5

3.2.  Passive Sentences  6

3.3.  Questions  8

3.4.  Negation  9

4.  Conclusion  10

5.  Selected Bibliography  11

1. Introduction

Since human beings are able to communicate with each other using not only signs, but especially with their linguistic competence, it is interesting for linguists to find out general rules being automatically applied. These rules allow the speaker to utter messages in a precise and elaborated way adapted to all kinds of situations. The present study is aimed at delivering an approach to syntactic regularities within the children’s acquisition of language. First some theoretical and generally witnessed information about language and language acquisition will be outlined assuring a global understanding. Then, the second part of the theoretical analysis will deal with three main processes in the acquisition of syntax as an important influence within the child’s linguistic development and its ability to communicate with its environment. It will be described how the language learner becomes more and more competent by differentiating among syntactic categories, such as word classes. Some regularities within children’s syntactic capacities will be considered more in detail in the last chapter where representative examples from pivot-open grammar, questions, passive voice and not to forget negation do support the already mentioned theoretical elements. Children’s utterances are investigated in order to find out how they react in a particular situation in a grammatical way, as correctly as they have understood the rules of syntax.

2. Theoretical approaches to the acquisition of language and syntax

2.1. General aspects

To write in the words of Wilhelm von Humboldt, language - as Noam Chomsky (1968: 426) has pointed out - can be regarded “as a structure of forms and concepts based on a system of rules that determine their interrelations, arrangement, and organization. [...] Language is thus a kind of latent structure in the human mind, developed and fixed by exposure to specific linguistic experience.”

Consequently, the child’s acquisition of language could be characterised as a kind of theory construction where the children approach to theoretical aspects of his language. But it has to be remarked that the language learner is acquiring this language knowledge “at a time when he is not capable of complex intellectual achievements in many other

Consequently, the child’s acquisition of language could be characterised as a kind of theory construction where the children approach to theoretical aspects of his language. But it has to be remarked that the language learner is acquiring this language knowledge “at a time when he is not capable of complex intellectual achievements in many other domains, and that this achievement is relatively independent of intelligence or the particular course of experience.” 1

As Harris (1990:19) explains the term of language as “a developmental phenomenon, and all normal children eventually come to possess skills which reflect an enormously sophisticated knowledge of the grammatical system.” Just from the very beginning of language development, children prove their instinctive knowledge of syntactical rules ² in uttering two-word sentences on which will later be reported in detail. There, so Miller (1963: 325), “it appears that the children select the stressed utterance segments, which usually carry the most information” when they are trying to imitate adult speech. Bever (1965: 264) suggests that the language learner is using the process of “contextual generalization” which simply enables the children to apply certain rules for word order to create new constructions in a quite correct way. Children are looking at the word’s position ³ within the sentences uttered by their parents and are then unconsciously trying to learn syntactic structures. “Thus, the child learns such facts as: The first position in a simple English sentence is characteristically the noun position; the second position is characteristically occupied by a verb.” 4

Generally seen, it is necessary for children to be made clear that grammatical structure is characterised by categories ⁵ , and then they are theoretically delivered the opportunity to produce new instances. This finding out of categories is a large part of the child’s activity at the beginning of his language acquisition; he is trying to determine the morphemes (words and grammatical markers) and their properties ⁶ as well. In the first period, so Menyuk (1963: 291), children are producing simple-activedeclarative sentences like I play or He go which can be described as basic terminal strings being important for the further development of more complex utterances. The

¹ Chomsky (1968 : 429)

² Harris (1990: 25)

³ Holzman (1997: 124) argues that children follow the word order of noun-verb-noun from the very

beginning on.

⁴ Bever (1965: 265)

⁵ Menyuk (1963: 290)

⁶ Holzman (1997: 124) means that children do acquire the core grammar with it’s abstract syntactic rules.

second period is marked by the influence of transformational rules being o ptional or obligatory. Logically, if the child is producing a sentence including the obligatory rules, the listener, already being competent enough, will have to accept it as grammatical. Additionally, the third period provides the children the opportunity to apply not only terminal strings and transformational rules, but also inflectional rules making the utterances more and more similar to the adult ones, at least in a grammatical way. So Menyuk (1963: 297) concludes right in saying that “all the basic structures used by adults to generate their sentences can be found in the grammar of the nursery school children.”

On the whole, one has to consider that all human beings do have two grammatical systems, the encoding and the decoding one; unfortunately the child is not able to use both systems. Therefore Miller (1963: 324) goes right in assuming that it is necessary for the child to comprehend a certain grammatical structure in order to produce new ones.

2.2. Three Processes in the acquisition of syntax

2.2.1. Imitation and reduction

It has to be remarked that imitation does not only include the repetition of some words but also its preservation of their order of the original, meaning “that the model sentence is processed by the child as a total construction rather than as a list of words.” ⁷ Consequently, it can be distinguished among subjects and objects, indirect as well as direct. Brown (1964: 310) mentions further the normal behaviour of the child’s omission of some words or morphemes in case of too long parent sentences. The omission is not decided randomly, likely a system can be observed retaining nouns and verbs rather than adjectives. These three open word classes contain words with semantic importance and are that’s why sometimes called contentives. Opposite to open word classes, closed word classes containing forms “like inflections, auxiliary verbs, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions” ⁸ are often to be omitted and due to their dominating grammatical functions, rather than their semantic content, sometimes called functors. It might be possible that transform the parent English in a special telegraphic

⁷ Brown (1964 : 309p) considers the sentence order to be a grammatical signal.

⁸ Brown (1964 : 310) describes closed word classes as syntactically small.