Reference no: EM132287227

We will be investigating the transcripts of Nina (Suppes corpus) in the English-NA corpora. Download Suppes. Some of the questions involve using the data in the Excel spreadsheet that I have put up on ilearn, while for others you need to do your own searches.

1. Nina's Mean Length of Utterance (MLU)
Mean Length of Utterance is a measure of how complex a child's language is. It is usually a calculation of the number of morphemes per utterance.

Calculate Nina's MLU at the following 3 ages. What is her MLU at each time? Note MLU only.

File 011116:                            MLU:

File 020528:                            MLU:

File 021028:                            MLU:

2. Nina's Productions in the Optional Infinitive Stage
For each utterance below, say what has been omitted, and name the part of speech (e.g. ‘is' is missing; main verb ‘be')

(a) I want see it (011124)
(b) Mommy going shopping (020003)
(c) Where my spoon? (020106)
(d) Dogs fighting (020129)
(e) Justin have a doll? (020206)

3. Nina's Negative Markers over Time
Nina's use of sentential negation for 3rd person subjects is recorded in the Excel spreadsheet which is in the Assessment section on ilearn. Only 3rd person subjects, or intended 3rd person subjects are included as these data are most informative about the use of tense/agreement in auxiliary verbs in English. In addition, examples of sentential

negation with the verb BE are excluded, as BE shows a different pattern from other main verbs (i.e., it is fine to use ‘not' with BE as in ‘He's not a student').

(a)

Using the data in the Excel spreadsheet provided, sum Nina's productions of no, not, don't and doesn't at each of the time periods in the different tabs. Unfortunately, there is a gap in the data set from 2;6 to 2;9 as Nina went away for the summer so we don't have data for that period. For each time period in the spreadsheet, calculate what percentage of negative sentences used no, not, don't and doesn't.

Fill in the chart with the raw numbers and percentage Nina uses each negative marker at each time period. Use whole numbers for your percentages.

(b)

Take the percentages of each negative marker at each time period and represent the data as a column graph (clustered column or stacked column), with percentage on the y axis and Nina's age along the x axis. You can do this in Excel. Make your graph reflect that there is missing data for 2;7-2;8. Name axes and provide a legend.

(c)

According to Bellugi's classification of developmental stages, is Nina at Stage 1, 2 or 3 at each of the time periods?

(d)
According to Thornton's generative proposal about the development of negation, is Nina's form of negation an adverb form of negation or a head form of negation at each of the time periods?

(e)

Compare the development of negative markers in Nina's transcripts (i.e., the words she uses for negation) with the development of negative markers in Brian, the child studied by Cameron-Faulkner et al. in their paper.

Despite the differences in Brian's development and Nina's development, is there reason to think that they are both moving from a period of using an adverb as their form of negation to a head form of negation?

4. Nina's Use of Past Tense

For each of the time periods used for the study of negation, gather Nina's use of past tense forms by doing a kwal search, and in the ‘Search' command, go to ‘Choose Preset examples' and choose ‘All past tense verbs merged'. This should give you a list of all Nina's uses of past tense verbs at each time period. Save these files so that you can look at them.

(a) How many tokens and types of past tense verbs are in the files from 1;11-2;0?
(b) Would you conclude that Nina has acquired the past tense rule in the time period 1;11-2;0? Why or why not?
(c) What about when she is 2;3-2;4? Why or why not?
(d) What kind of data confirm can be used to confirm that she has formed a productive past tense rule? What time period makes clear that she has formed a productive rule?

5. Nina's use of Pronouns
Nina's use of pronouns is different from Anne's; Nina uses what look like genitive/possessive pronouns in subject position, though there are only my pronouns, not his or your etc. pronouns in subject position. Nina's my subjects are recorded in the spreadsheet. She uses these quite frequently between the ages of 1;11 and 2;4. Like Nina, my daughter also used my pronouns in subject position, and I published a paper based on her data (Language Acquisition, 2002). In that paper, I claimed that the my subjects are not really genitive subjects, but reflect metathesis (the two sounds are reversed) and really I'm is intended, not my. In my daughter's data, utterances like ‘My do it!' were replaced over time by ones like ‘I'm do it' (which are still not adult-like). I claimed that many of these examples are focus structures meaning something like ‘I want to do it, not you'. Some of Nina's productions also have this character. Nina's my subjects are recorded in one of the tabs of the Excel spreadsheet.

(a) Can you find any evidence in Nina's data that my is used instead of I'm and later replaced by I'm?

You will need to conduct a search of Nina's data to find out. Say (i) how you went about this search, (ii) give your command, and (iii) summarise your findings.

(b) Find an example in Nina's transcripts where Nina is using my when she intends that she should do something and not someone else. This is called contrastive focus. Give 3 lines of context before and after your example. Give the file number and line numbers of your example.

(c) Assuming Schütze & Wexler's ATOM theory, fill in the tense and/or agreement features into the phrase structure trees below that would give rise to Nina's utterances.

(i) In file 020528, Nina says ‘Her dancing. Fill in the features in the tree. Explain the logic behind your choice of features.

(ii) In file 020206, Nina says ‘Her have a big mouth'. Think carefully about the verb ‘have' which is an irregular verb. Fill in the features and explain your choice of features.

(iii) In file 0203228 Nina says ‘He don't like my mouse'. In (ii) I am assuming that ‘don't' is some kind of transitional adverb, so it is joined as an adverb in the structure. Explain why you inserted the features that you did.

Attachment:- Child Language Acquisition.rar