LINGUIST List 25.340
Mon
Jan 20 2014
Review: Lang. Acq.;
Psycholing.; Semantics; Syntax: Van der Ziel
(2012)
Editor for this issue:
Joseph Salmons <jsalmonslinguistlist.org>
Date: 29-Aug-2013
From: Lyn Tieu
<lyn.tieu
gmail.com>
Subject: The Acquisition of
Scope Interpretation in Dative
Constructions
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Book announced at
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AUTHOR: Marie-Elise Van der Ziel
TITLE: The Acquisition of Scope Interpretation
in Dative Constructions
SUBTITLE: Explaining Children's Non-Targetlike
Performance
SERIES TITLE: LOT dissertation Series
PUBLISHER: Netherlands Graduate School of
Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT)
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Lyn Tieu, Ecole Normale
Supérieure
SUMMARY
This volume investigates a curious
non-adult-like performance pattern
displayed by children in their interpretation
of quantifier-scope interaction
in double-object constructions. Focusing on
children acquiring Dutch, the
author presents a series of experiments that
establish the non-target-like
pattern, dubbed the ‘Reverse-pattern’, and
tests a number of lexically-based
hypotheses about the source of the
non-target-like behaviour. With evidence
that the non-target-like performance is
restricted to sentences containing
distributive universal quantifiers, the author
provides an account of the
Reverse-pattern that attributes children’s
non-target-like scope
interpretations to a non-adult-like ability to
revise an initial
interpretation strategy.
Chapter 1 lays the groundwork for the
discussion. The object of study is the
Frozen Scope Constraint (FSC), exemplified in
double-object (DO) constructions
such as (1). Unlike the 'to'-dative
construction in (2), (1) is scopally
unambiguous: only the surface scope
interpretation, on which the indirect
object scopes over the direct object, is
available.
(1) The car salesman showed a man every car.
(a>>every; *every>>a)
(2) The car salesman showed every car to a man.
(a>>every; every>>a)
Van der Ziel reviews two alternative accounts
of the FSC: Bruening’s (2001)
syntactic account, and Goldberg’s (2006)
information-structural account. Van
der Ziel ultimately adopts Goldberg’s account,
according to which the indirect
object in the DO construction tends to take
wide scope due its (secondary)
topic status. On the assumption that DPs higher
on the topicality scale
typically scope above DPs lower on the
topicality scale, van der Ziel suggests
that when a speaker chooses to produce a DO
construction over the ‘to’-dative,
this signals that the new information to be
conveyed concerns the theme of the
action (the direct object) and not the
recipient (the indirect object).
Goldberg’s account predicts that scope freezing
should be acquired as soon as
children have acquired the secondary topic
status of the indirect object.
Chapter 2 carefully establishes the
non-target-like ‘Reverse-pattern’ in
children’s interpretation of DO constructions
such as (3).
(3) The bear gave a hedgehog every piece of
cake.
In (3), the FSC blocks the inverse,
distributive reading whereby the universal
scopes over the indefinite. Van der Ziel
presents a series of experiments
using the truth value judgment task, the
results of which suggest that
English- and Dutch-speaking preschool children
lack knowledge of the FSC. More
puzzling, they not only allow the reading
blocked by the FSC, they reject the
one interpretation that adults allow. The
critical test sentences contain an
indefinite and a universally quantified NP (as
in (3)), and are presented in
two kinds of contexts: a distributive
‘ALL>ONE’ context, in which each piece
of cake is given to a different hedgehog, and
a
non-(prototypically-)distributive ‘ONE>ALL’
context, in which a single
hedgehog receives all the pieces of cake. Given
the FSC, the sentence in (3)
should only be true in a ONE>ALL context.
Testing a variety of structures,
including DO constructions, ‘to’-datives,
scrambled ‘to’-datives, and simple
transitive sentences, van der Ziel finds the
Reverse-pattern surfacing at a
rate of 38-52%. She then argues that the
Reverse-pattern cannot be attributed
to non-target-like scope assignment, incomplete
acquisition of DO datives, or
a lack of exhaustive pairing.
Having laid out the experimental evidence for
the Reverse-pattern, van der
Ziel devotes the next two chapters to lexical
factors that may give rise to
the Reverse-pattern. Chapter 3 develops and
tests hypotheses that relate the
Reverse-pattern to incomplete acquisition of
the indefinite article. On the
one hand, a modified version of Su’s (2001)
Lexical Factor Hypothesis posits
that children exhibiting the Reverse-pattern
have not fully acquired the
meaning of the indefinite article ‘a’/‘an’;
this predicts that the
Reverse-pattern should be restricted to this
particular indefinite. On the
other hand, Krämer’s (2000) Non-Integration
Account and the Singleton
Restriction Hypothesis (SRH) (building on
Schwarzschild’s (2002) theory of
indefinites) posit that children have not fully
acquired the meaning of
singular indefinites more generally; the
latter, for example, posits that
children have difficulty restricting the domain
of indefinites to a singleton
set when the discourse context provides
multiple salient individuals that
could plausibly be members of the domain. Given
these predictions, van der
Ziel presents a series of experiments showing
first that the Reverse-pattern
is not restricted to a particular indefinite,
but rather is observed with a
variety of singular indefinites (e.g., ‘some’,
numeral ‘one’ or ‘één’ in
Dutch) and second, that children are able to
interpret indefinites in a
target-like way when the sentences in question
do not contain universal
quantification. In light of these findings, van
der Ziel proposes that the
source of the Reverse-pattern lies not with the
indefinite, but rather the
universal quantifier.
Given evidence that the Reverse-pattern is not
driven by a deficiency in the
interpretation of the indefinite, Chapter 4
explores an alternative lexical
explanation: that the problem lies instead in
children’s interpretation of
universal quantification. Van der Ziel
formulates the Distributivity
Hypothesis (building on aspects of Drozd and
van Loosbroek (2006)). According
to this hypothesis, 5-year-olds know that
universal quantifiers like ‘every’
are obligatorily distributive, but reject
sentences in contexts that do not
unambiguously support a distributive
interpretation. Consider (3) again. In an
unambiguously distributive ALL>ONE context,
where there is a one-to-one
correspondence between hedgehogs and pieces of
cake, children have no problem
verifying that the property of being given to a
hedgehog holds for each
individual piece of cake; if unconstrained by
the FSC, they will accept the
sentence in such contexts. In a ONE>ALL
context however, where there is no
one-to-one correspondence between hedgehogs and
pieces of cake, children have
difficulty verifying whether every piece of
cake is given to a hedgehog, and
so reject the sentence, giving rise to the
Reverse-pattern. Thus the problem
lies in a mismatch between the perceived (lack
of) distributivity in the
context and the obligatory distributivity of
the universal quantifier. The
experiments presented in Chapter 4 reveal that
the Reverse-pattern surfaces
with sentences containing obligatorily
distributive universal quantifiers such
as ‘ieder’ (every), but not cardinal
quantifiers or non-obligatorily
distributive universal quantifiers such as the
collective ‘alle’ (all),
providing preliminary evidence for the
Distributivity Hypothesis. Children
have acquired the distributivity feature as
part of the lexical feature
specification of distributive universal
quantifiers, but have difficulty
evaluating whether the context unambiguously
satisfies this distributivity
requirement.
Given the restriction of the Reverse-pattern to
test sentences containing
distributive universal quantifiers, Chapter 5
further explores the role of
distributivity, i.e. the requirement that
whatever applies to a larger set
also applies to each individual element of the
set. While Tunstall’s (1998)
Event-Distributivity Condition states that
sentences containing an ‘every’-NP
can only be true of event structures that are
at least partially distributive,
van der Ziel presents results from a picture
selection task showing that
adults tend to prefer fully distributive event
structures over partially
distributive ones. Thus she hypothesizes that
the lexical meaning of a
distributive universal quantifier encodes a
requirement for fully distributive
or prototypically distributive event
structures, and moreover that adults but
not children can accommodate deviations from
this basic interpretation:
(4) The Weak Prototypical Distributivity
Hypothesis: Distributive universal
quantifiers force a prototypically distributive
event structure, i.e. an event
structure in which every element in the
restrictor set of the universal
quantifier is associated with a distinct
subevent. However, adults can deviate
from this prototypical interpretation, whereas
children cannot. (p. 148)
(5) The Strong Prototypical Distributivity
Hypothesis: Distributive universal
quantifiers force a prototypically distributive
event structure, i.e. an event
structure in which every element in the
restrictor set of the universal
quantifier is associated with a distinct
subevent. In addition, these
subevents need to be unique. However, adults
can deviate from this
prototypical interpretation, whereas children
cannot. (p. 149)
Although the results of a truth value judgment
task do not fully support
either hypothesis as an explanation for
children’s performance, van der Ziel
observes crucially that all contexts in which
children accepted the test
sentences involved a full (though not
necessarily one-to-one) linking of the
set of possible recipients and a set of
objects, a property dubbed ‘Full Set
Linking.’ This property was not attested in any
of the contexts which lead
children to reject the test sentences.
Chapter 6 presents van der Ziel’s overarching
account of the Reverse-pattern,
driven by the crucial observation of Full Set
Linking: all contexts which
yielded acceptances (but no contexts which
yielded rejections) were ones where
the set of recipients and the set of objects
were exhaustively linked (though
not necessarily in a one-to-one
correspondence). The question arises as to
why
Full Set Linking comes into play only when
children are evaluating sentences
containing distributive universal quantifiers.
Van der Ziel assumes that both
children and adults adhere to a weak version of
Prototypical Distributivity,
wherein each element in the restrictor set of
the distributive universal needs
to be associated with a distinct subevent. Both
groups also use a short-cut
strategy to verify prototypical distributivity:
they evaluate the end state.
When this shortcut fails, adults can revise
their strategy and subsequently
verify whether each element in the restrictor
set is associated with a
distinct event. Children on the other hand
continue to evaluate the end state,
and thus induce the requirement for Full Set
Linking. Moreover, unlike
children, adults can accommodate situations
that deviate from prototypical
distributivity; for example, when a reading is
blocked by the FSC, adults can
reject the sentences even if prototypical
distributivity holds. This takes us
full circle back to the question of whether
children have knowledge of the
FSC. Given the persistence of the
Reverse-pattern errors through the age of 5
years, van der Ziel endorses the information
structure account of the FSC,
suggesting that children have not yet acquired
the link between the indirect
object position and its topic status. Adults
strongly adhere to the FSC
because they strongly associate the indirect
object with topicality (and thus
wide scope). Children who have not acquired the
obligatory topic status of
indirect objects are unconstrained by the FSC,
and adhere to the Full Set
Linking requirement, thereby yielding the
Reverse-pattern.
EVALUATION
This volume presents a very detailed, well
thought-out investigation into what
appears to be a very challenging set of data.
It grapples with a performance
pattern that appears to involve layers of
complexity, touching on facets of
syntax (i.e. movement and scope), semantics
(i.e. interpretation strategies),
information structure (e.g., topicality), and
processing (i.e. the ability to
revise one’s interpretation strategy), and
ultimately motivates a similarly
multi-layered account.
The investigation is well situated within the
context of previous studies on
English, Chinese, and Dutch (Su & Crain,
2000; Su, 2001; Philip, 2005;
Hendriks, Koops van’t Jagt, and Hoeks, 2012;
Philip & Coopmans, 1995), and the
introductory chapters clearly set the stage for
an analysis of the unusual
pattern of results dubbed the Reverse-pattern.
Presenting her own experimental
evidence for the existence of the
Reverse-pattern, van der Ziel
systematically
works through a number of possible hypotheses
regarding the source of the
Reverse-pattern, deftly leading the reader
through the predictions of these
hypotheses, and the carefully designed
experiments that put these predictions
to the test. Building on the information
gathered in each subsequent
experiment, van der Ziel arrives at a
plausible, multi-layered explanation for
the Reverse-pattern, notably one which succeeds
in incorporating the multiple
different factors that seem to be at play.
One factor that makes the larger puzzle (but
also the task of working through
the sometimes dense and complex experimental
findings) all the more
challenging is the overall non-uniformity of
the data. The dissertation is
predicated on a single pattern of behaviour
that itself only surfaces at a
rate of about 38-52%. Given the variability in
the data, it is very useful to
see the individual results, and van der Ziel
very helpfully provides
classifications that group the children based
on their patterns of responses
(target-like, Reverse-pattern, ambiguity,
unclear, etc.). It is not entirely
clear what to make of the sometimes relatively
large number of children who
fall into the ‘mixed/unclear’ category (in
Experiment II, for example).
Children who fail to be classified according to
any of the expected response
patterns present a curiosity, as they must have
nevertheless passed all
control items sufficiently, in order to be
included in the data analysis.
The volume should also generate some lively
discussion, as it leaves open some
very interesting questions. I lay out a few of
them here. One question
concerns the sets of non-target-like adults who
were tested across the various
experiments. The 10 adult controls in
Experiment I (Chapter 2) for example,
performed at 70-80% accuracy. Two of the ten
adults displayed the
Reverse-pattern and one showed mixed behaviour.
What is one to make of this
data? Van der Ziel notes (footnote 59) that her
use of the term ‘targetlike
performance’ is not to be equated with
‘adultlike performance’, as the adults
she tests do not always perform according to
the predictions of the linguistic
theory. The difficulty of this underscores the
challenging nature of the
problem to be solved. Given the subset of
adults who consistently do not
conform to the experimental predictions, a
compelling linguistic theory must
be able to account not only for the child data,
but also for these adults’
performance. The question then arises whether
van der Ziel’s overarching
account can capture the non-target-like adult
data. Presumably these adults
were on task if they passed the control trials
sufficiently to be included in
the data analysis, and presumably they were
consistent enough in their
responses in order to be classified into a
category of response pattern. The
natural explanation, if one adopts van der
Ziel’s final account, is that these
adults stuck to their initial verification
strategy (checking for prototypical
distributivity) -- and for any number of
reasons (fatigue, lack of attention),
did not end up revising their interpretation
strategy. In this context, an
interesting consideration is what would happen
if we were to increase the
processing load of the experimental condition;
if the reason that children
cannot revise the interpretation strategy is
due to the processing costs of
revision for example, we might expect to see
adults turn into children under
heavy load conditions.
Another question that might be investigated in
future research is whether we
can shift participants’ biases for different
verification strategies. Figure 1
on page 32 provides the illustration
accompanying the test sentence ‘Snow
White gave a lady every flower’. It’s worth
noting that none of the three
ladies that appear in the image is more salient
than the other two. If
children did have difficulty restricting the
domain of an indefinite to a
singleton individual unless that individual was
very salient, we might expect
the domain for the indefinite ‘a lady’ to
include all three ladies; in this
case, the child might then be biased towards a
(prototypically distributive)
verification strategy that checks for each lady
whether she was involved in a
giving event. So while it may be that children
appear to require a kind of
exhaustive pairing, perhaps other factors drive
this apparent need; for
example, non-saliency of the individuals in the
possible domain might bias
towards a distributive verification strategy.
Another possibility for future
research involves testing the Full Set Linking
requirement experimentally,
that is, monitoring participants’ verification
strategies by tracking their
eye movements as the stimuli are presented.
Given the two matching sets (of
recipients and objects), what are the
participants attending to? Given van der
Ziel's proposal, we might expect children to
attend to whether the two sets
are matched up; adults on the other hand might
initially check the two sets,
only to revise and specifically attend to the
individuals in the restrictor
set of the universal.
Yet another question pertains to the
developmental story. What has to mature
in order for the children to behave in a
target-like way? Interestingly, van
der Ziel notes that no effects of age were
found across the 4-, 5-, and
6-year-olds. The lack of an age effect is
especially interesting, if what has
to mature are the mechanisms for verification,
and the processes involved in
revising initial interpretations (cf. Conroy et
al. (2009) for a study that
finds a U-shaped developmental trajectory in
children’s scope interpretations;
these authors suggest that children go through
an intermediate stage where
they have acquired adult-like parsing
preferences but are not adept at
revising their interpretations).
Finally, consider the implications of
interactions among the relevant factors
that van der Ziel raises in her goal of
deriving the Reverse-pattern. Van der
Ziel’s discussion takes us through the many
layers of the problem at hand:
syntax/information structure,
distributivity/lexical requirements,
interpretation strategies, and revision
abilities. She ultimately concludes
that the Reverse-pattern finds its source in
the combination of two factors:
(i) the Reverse-pattern children have not
acquired the FSC; and (ii) these
children continue to use the short-cut strategy
for evaluating quantifier
interpretation. In light of the multiple
relevant factors however, it’s
interesting to consider whether possible
interactions among these different
factors can predict the other response
patterns, namely the Ambiguity pattern
(yes-responses in both ONE>ALL and
ALL>ONE contexts) and the target-like
pattern (yes-responses in the ONE>ALL
contexts and no-responses in the ALL>ONE
contexts). It seems to me that there are at
least three forces in tension with
each other, having to do with the different
ingredients (raised throughout the
book) that the child must acquire before she
can be fully target-like: the FSC
(information-structural in nature), the
distributivity requirement (lexical in
nature), and revision abilities (involving
processes that generate and select
among possible interpretations). In van der
Ziel’s story, the distributivity
requirement is lexically obligatory but
violable, while the FSC is generally
less violable (or in terms of constraint
ranking, appears to rank higher than
the distributivity requirement for adults).
Finally, it appears that
children’s revision abilities require time to
develop to an adult-like
capacity. Assuming these three factors, we seem
to be able to predict exactly
those three response patterns observed by van
der Ziel: (1) target-like
children include any children who have acquired
the FSC, whether they have
acquired the distributivity requirement or
adult-like revision abilities; the
FSC, being less violable than distributivity,
will always lead to a
yes-response in the ONE>ALL context and a
no-response in the ALL>ONE context.
(2) Reverse-pattern children include children
who have not acquired the FSC or
adult-like revision abilities, but have
acquired the distributivity
requirement; unconstrained by the FSC and
without the ability to revise
interpretation strategies, they will always
check for prototypical
distributivity and respond accordingly.
Finally, the children who fall into
the “Ambiguity” category include children who
have not acquired the FSC, but
have acquired the distributivity requirement
and adult-like revision
abilities; they are unconstrained by the FSC
and prefer prototypical
distributivity, but can deviate like adults.
The remaining two logically
possible groups are: (i) children who have not
acquired the FSC or the
distributivity requirement, but have adult-like
revision abilities, and (ii)
children who have not acquired the FSC, the
distributivity requirement, or
adult-like revision abilities. The predictions
for these last two groups are
unclear. In short however, it seems that some
interaction of the factors
raised by van der Ziel can successfully capture
the observed response
patterns.
Overall, I found van der Ziel’s argumentation
to be compelling and well
supported by her experimental findings. This
volume is clearly organized and
presents a strong narrative. The research
questions are well motivated, the
hypotheses are well thought out, and the
experiments are well-designed to test
the hypotheses. The book should primarily be of
interest to linguists and
psychologists interested in child language
acquisition, particularly of
syntax/semantics, scope, quantification, and
information structure. In
addition, the data (particularly the adult
data) presented should be
informative for theoretical linguists
interested in theories of
quantification, distributivity, and event
structure. Finally, the dissertation
contains an array of eight carefully designed
experiments; clear descriptions
of all the methodologies are provided, and
appendices include the full
experimental stimuli, allowing for easy
reconstruction of the designs. The
extensive experimental component makes it a
useful methodological guide to the
strategies and issues that are relevant for
researchers conducting
experimental investigations on scope ambiguity,
as well as researchers
conducting child language studies more
generally.
REFERENCES
Bruening, B. 2001. QR obeys superiority: Frozen
scope and ACD. Linguistic
Inquiry 32.2:233-273.
Conroy, A., J. Lidz, and J. Musolino. 2009. The
fleeting isomorphism effect.
Language Acquisition 16:106-117.
Drozd, K.F. and E. van Loosbroek. 2006. The
effect of context on children’s
interpretations of universally quantified
sentences. In V. van Geenhoven, ed.,
Semantics Meets Acquisition. Dordrecht: Kluwer,
115-140.
Goldberg, A.E. 2006. Constructions at Work: The
Nature of Generalization in
Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hendriks, P., R. Koops van ‘t Jagt and J.
Hoeks. 2012. Restricting quantifier
scope in Dutch: Evidence from child language
comprehension and production. In
B. Stolterfoht and S. Featherston, eds.,
Empirical Approaches to Linguistic
Theory: Studies of Meaning and Structure.
Studies in Generative Grammar.
Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 147-167.
Krämer, I. 2000. Interpreting indefinites: An
experimental study of children’s
language comprehension. Doctoral dissertation,
Utrecht University.
Philip, W.C.H. 2005. Pragmatic control of
specificity and scope: Evidence from
Dutch L1A. In E. Maier, C. Bary, and J.
Huitink, eds., Proceedings of SUB9.
Nijmegen: NCS, 271-285.
Philip, W.C.H. and P.H.A. Coopmans. 1995.
Symmetrical interpretation and scope
ambiguity in the acquisition of the universal
quantification in Dutch and
English. In J. Don, B. Schouten, and W.
Zonneveld, eds., OTS Yearbook 1994,
85-134.
Schwarzschild, R. 2002. Singleton indefinites.
Journal of Semantics
19.3:289-314.
Su, Y.-C. 2001. Scope and specificity in child
language: A cross-linguistic
study on English and Chinese. Doctoral
dissertation, University of Maryland.
Su, Y.-C. and S. Crain. 2000. Children’s scope
taking in double-object
constructions. CLS 36: the Panels, 485-498.
Tunstall, S. 1998. The interpretation of
quantifiers: Semantics and
processing. Doctoral dissertation, University
of Massachusetts, Amherst.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Lyn Tieu is currently a PhD candidate in the
Department of Linguistics at the
University of Connecticut. As of January 2014,
she will join the LINGUAE
(CNRS) group in Paris as a post-doctoral
researcher. Her research interests
involve child language acquisition and the
development of linguistic phenomena
that lie at the syntax-semantics-pragmatics
interface. Her dissertation
focuses in particular on the acquisition of the
negative polarity item ‘any’,
investigating children's sensitivity to NPI
licensing conditions, as well as
their knowledge of domain widening and
exhaustification of alternatives. She
is also more generally interested in formal
semantics, experimental
syntax/semantics/pragmatics, theoretical
syntax, and bilingual first language
acquisition.
Page Updated: 20-Jan-2014