Introduction: a functional approach to ellipsis(1).
BAVIN, EDITH L.
The papers in this issue discuss children's ellipsis of
arguments, focusing on the interaction of discourse (or usage) with
grammar and typology. Over the past years, many of the discussions on
argument ellipsis in children's language were motivated by
theoretical claims about universal grammar, and much of the discussion
focused on subject ellipsis in an examination of the so-called pro-drop
parameter. Research on the pro-drop parameter considered the
implications of language differences on the acquisition process.
Languages considered included Italian, Portugese, French, Chinese,
English, and German (e.g. Hyams 1986; Pierce 1992; Valian 1991; Valian
and Eisenberg 1996; Huang 1989). The research focused on empirical
support for the initial setting of the parameter, or the factors that
influenced the setting of the parameter appropriately.
However, while such cross-linguistic research has been informative,
drawing out typological features and pointing out variations across
languages that must be accounted for in any theory of acquisition, there
are other issues. To explain ellipsis in children's productions we
need to consider a range of factors that may influence it, as well as
changes in patterns of ellipsis over the course of acquisition. The
adult GRAMMAR of a language has generally been the target in discussions
of argument ellipsis, not adult USAGE patterns. The discourse contexts
in which adults include subjects or the contexts in which they are null
have not been considered in grammatically motivated accounts of null
arguments. Yet it is important to examine whether ellipsis is totally
variable in different contexts, or if predictions can be made about when
ellipsis is likely to occur in those contexts in which it is not
obligatory. A focus on adult grammar or on when a child has acquired the
adult grammar does not reveal the extent to which the use of arguments
in children's utterances matches adult usage patterns.
There are differences across languages in which arguments may be
null. In some languages subjects will be (or may be) null only if they
are pronominal; in other languages there may be ellipsis of lexical
subjects as well as lexical objects (e.g. Wang et al. 1992). In
languages that licence pro-drop, speakers have the choice of adding
pronominal subjects for certain discourse functions, including contrast
or change of topic. In non-pro-drop languages the subject may be null in
specific grammatical contexts, such as in English subordinate nontensed
clauses with the same subject as the main clause (e.g. `He wants to
run'). In addition, the subject may also be null across adjacency
pairs in conversation; that is, if the linguistic context has already
provided an argument, it is omitted in the following utterance.
There are different views about what counts as ellipsis. In
Tomasello's (1992) verb-island hypothesis, the assumption is that a
child acquires a verb in the structure in which it is heard. Some verbs
may be heard without their full complement of arguments in discourse.
Thus if the child hears a transitive verb with a null object and then
produces the verb in an utterance without an object, this is not an
example of object ellipsis, since the child does not assign the same
argument structure to the verb as does the adult. It is necessary,
therefore, to consider both the language input and the child's
developing grammar. As illustrated by Theakston et al. (2000), it is the
statistical properties of the input that determine children's usage
of arguments with different verbs.
A number of explanations have been proposed as to why young
children miss out arguments in their speech; some of these are discussed
in more detail in the papers in this issue. In addition to explanations
based on universal grammar and grammatical constructions (e.g. Hyams
1986; Huang 1984; Radford 1990), several processing accounts have been
proposed. An assumption made in the processing account proposed by Bloom
(1990) is that a child cannot handle a sentence with a full set of
arguments because of limited processing resources. He argues that the
subject is more likely to be dropped if there is a long verb phrase included in a child's utterance, so that if an object is overt with
a transitive verb, the subject is less likely to be. Gerken's
(1991) processing explanation is compatible with a large amount of
research on children's sensitivity to the prosodic features of the
language being acquired. Arguing within a metric theory framework, she
proposes that children omit weakly stressed syllables in certain
positions. Because pronominal subjects are likely to be weakly stressed,
they are susceptible to omission. A third type of explanation is
discourse-based, influenced by the notion of preferred argument
structure (Du Bois 1985, 1987). In this view, ellipsis is related to
informativeness. It is proposed that new information is introduced in an
intransitive subject position (S) or object position (O), but not in
transitive subject position (A). Because "old" information is
less likely to be included in discourse than "new," it is
predicted that more As will be null than Ss or Os. Support for this view
is provided by Clancy (1993), who discusses null arguments in young
Korean children's utterances. Several of the papers in this issue
make reference to preferred argument structure in explaining the
patterns of ellipsis reported.
Acquisition takes place in a discourse context and is
discourse-driven. In many cultures, an adult prompts a child to produce
utterances and the child responds with information that complements the
adult's, leaving out information that may be assumed from the
context. From older speakers, null arguments in narratives may relate to
topic continuity. By examining narrative data across different age
groups, we can draw a distinction between subject and topic ellipsis and
identify developmental patterns. By adopting an integrated approach to
the study of null arguments, that is, an approach that considers the
grammar, typology, and use of language, we are in a better position to
identify developmental trends in the ellipsis of core arguments, and to
understand when a child shows knowledge of language-specific patterns.
The papers in this issue draw together data from a range of
typologically different languages (Hebrew, Inuktitut, Swedish,
Icelandic, Sesotho, Warlpiri, and French), and each paper draws out
particular features of the language under investigation. The patterns of
ellipsis reported are not restricted to early word combinations from
young children but are extended to include productions from children at
later stages in their language development. The papers on Warlpiri and
French focus on data from children's narratives.
Overall, it is evident from the studies reported that different
factors may influence whether arguments are overt or null at different
stages of language development. For example, in their paper on Hebrew,
Uziel-Karl and Berman argue for three stages: ellipsis is first guided
by pragmatic factors and then by morphosyntactic factors, and at a third
stage the two are integrated. This finding is compatible with other
discussions in the acquisition literature showing that language forms
are not necessarily used by young children with the same function or
range of function as by older speakers (e.g. Karmiloff-Smith 1981, 1985;
Slobin 1985). There is often reorganization of knowledge as the child
moves from child speaker to mature language user, and such
reorganization is frequently represented as U-shaped learning. It is
also compatible with reports that infants' early combinations may
show lexical specificity; for example, only certain verbs may appear in
specific constructions, leading to the view that infants may not be
operating with categories of the mature system but may be in the process
of building up categories, as argued, for example, by Pine et al.
(1998). Because of limitations in the use of a linguistic form by a
child, Maratsos (1998) is hesitant to attribute an adult-like category;
he adopts the term prospective category to describe a category that
might or might not be adult-like for the child. We need to keep this
clearly in mind when we refer to null "subjects" or null
"objects" in early child language.
The first paper in this issue, by Uziel-Karl and Berman, draws on a
model that views acquisition as a stepwise process (Uziel-Karl 1997).
The authors propose two distinct developmental criteria: one to
determine when a child has knowledge of a linguistic item or
construction, and the other to determine when a child has adult-like
knowledge. They argue that grammatical and discourse factors play a role
in accounting for null arguments in Hebrew children's language.
Three factors that influence argument ellipsis are discussed:
permissibility, recoverability, and syntactic function. Basing their
arguments on longitudinal data collected from four children between the
ages of 17 and 28 months, supplemented by other data, Uziel-Karl and
Berman argue for different explanations of argument ellipsis at
different ages. Pragmatic factors can account for the subject ellipsis
in the data from the younger children, but subject ellipsis at later
periods is conditioned by morphosyntactic rules of the language. In
contrast, object ellipsis is conditioned by pragmatic or semantic
factors. Hebrew is of particular typological interest in discussions of
ellipsis since its pro-drop property is conditioned: first and second
person pronominal subjects can be omitted, not third, and only in the
past and future tense.
Allen's paper illustrates that even young children are
sensitive to the dynamics of information flow. Her paper shows that
grammar-based accounts of ellipsis are not adequate to account for null
versus overt arguments in child language, because some contributing
factors will be overlooked. Allen argues for an integrated approach,
which draws upon theories of grammar and of discourse-pragmatics. She
examines the factors that contribute to the inclusion or omission of
arguments in the speech of four Inuktitut children aged 2-3;6 years. The
data are longitudinal and from spontaneous productions. For the
analysis, Allen adopts a detailed coding scheme; eight features are
used, relating to informativeness, (joint) knowledge, (potential)
confusion, and search space. A logistic regression analysis is used to
determine if certain factors are better than others as predictors of
argument ellipsis. The finding that third person arguments are more
likely to be overt than first or second can be explained on the basis of
the grammatical features of the language. However, other identified
factors indicate that even young Inuktitut children are sensitive to
discourse-pragmatic features.
Stromqvist and Ragnarsdottir investigate the use of subject
arguments by a child acquiring Swedish in the age range 22-24 months,
and the distribution of spatial arguments by the same child (24-26
months) and a child acquiring Icelandic (also 24-26 months). The authors
argue that constraints govern the use or ellipsis of these arguments and
that the constraints are mastered gradually. They illustrate, from
longitudinal data, that both input and pragmatic factors influence the
distribution of the arguments in the early stages of acquisition. A
processing explanation for subject ellipsis cannot be supported; the
child utterances with overt subjects are found to be longer than those
with missing subjects. However, discourse factors influence the
inclusion of subjects since an overt subject tends to be a new referent.
An examination of the use of spatial arguments with spatial verbs in the
child data shows differences across Swedish and Icelandic. Explanations
are proposed, not only as to why differences are evident across the two
languages, but also as to why there are differences in usage between
adult and child.
The paper by Demuth, Machobane, and Moloi presents an analysis of
null objects in Sesotho ditransitive applicative constructions.
Spontaneous productions from two two- to three-year-olds are discussed
as well as adult speech directed to these children. In addition, results
from an experimental task are reported. The task was presented to
children aged from three to eight years, and also to a group of adults.
A main purpose of the study was to determine at what age Sesotho
children show awareness of animacy restrictions on the ordering of
double objects. In the child-directed speech only about one-quarter of
the ditransitive applicative constructions were found to include both
objects; none of these had both arguments overt as postverbal noun
phrases. This raises a theoretical issue that is taken up in the paper,
the problem of learnability. The authors consider the impact of
statistical properties of the input on language acquisition and its
implication for theories of acquisition. They propose that a form of
discourse bootstrapping may be required for children to learn the
argument structure of Sesotho verbs.
The other two papers in the issue focus on ellipsis in narrative
contexts. My paper reports on ellipsis in Warlpiri children's
narratives. The language allows ellipsis of both lexical subjects and
objects. It also has flexible word order, and thus factors other than
word order must be used when interpreting sentences; these include
morphology, semantics, and discourse-pragmatic factors. Pronominal
clitics that register the person, number, and case of subject and object
arguments are obligatory with finite verbs; however, third person
singular forms are null. The narratives elicited from Warlpiri children
aged from four to ten years are compared with adult narratives. A major
factor found to influence lexical subject ellipsis is same- versus
switch-subject contexts; topic continuity seems to influence the use of
null lexical subjects. The use of overt pronominal clitics in relation
to lexical argument ellipsis is also analyzed. Overall developmental
trends are reported and discussed in terms of reorganization in
knowledge of language and language use, drawing upon
Karmiloff-Smith's (1985) three-phase model.
Jisa's paper focuses on referential cohesion in French
narratives from five- to ten-year-olds, and a group of young adults. As
Jisa elaborates in her paper, previous research has concentrated on the
use of pronouns to maintain discourse referents with less attention paid
to other grammatical options. The author examines a number of the
grammatical options available in French and discusses developmental
changes in the use of the available structures for the discourse
functions of maintaining and reintroducing referents. Her analysis shows
a developmental increase in ellipsis. Jisa argues that both ellipsis and
nonfinite subordination contribute to tighter syntactic cohesion of
information. On the basis of her findings, she proposes two kinds of
developmental explanation: one relating to children's developing
control over the means for packaging information, and the other to their
developing flexibility in adapting to a register appropriate for the
task.
The conclusion that can be drawn from the papers in this issue is
that different perspectives can be complementary; we need an integration
of different approaches to account for ellipsis (see also Hamman and
Plunkett 1998). An approach focusing on grammatical explanations for
ellipsis in young children's speech overlooks other factors that
influence when arguments are overt or null, including statistical
properties of use in the input language. Discourse-pragmatic knowledge
develops alongside grammatical knowledge; this needs to be remembered
when we examine young children's productions in an attempt to
determine knowledge of grammar.
La Trobe University
Note
(1.) Correspondence address: School of Psychological Science, La
Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia. E-mail:
e.bavin@latrobe.edu.au.
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