Syntactic Development
•1–1.5 yrs. •2–2.5 yrs.
•no structure •1.5–2 yrs. • emergence
of phrase
structure
•presence of
syntactic
categories is
unclear
The One Word Stage
• The most informative word that applies to the situation at hand.
Utterance Situation Semantic relation
dada as father enters the room agent of an action
down as child sits down action or state
door as father closes the door undergoer or theme
here as child points location
mama as child gives mother something recipient
again as child watches lighting of a match recurrence
The Two-Word Stage
Utterance Intended meaning Semantic relation
Baby chair ‘The baby is sitting on the chair.’ agent-location
Doggy bark ‘The dog is barking.’
agent-action
Ken water ‘Ken is drinking water.’ agent-theme
Hit doggy ‘I hit the doggy.’
action-theme
Daddy hat ‘Daddy’s hat’ possessor-possessed
Telegraphic Speech
Chair broken. the emergence of quite
Daddy like book. elaborate types of
phrase structure.
What her name?
children can form
Man ride bus today.
phrases consisting of
Car make noise. a head and a
Me wanna show complement
Mommy. phrases that include a
I good boy. modifier
full-fledged sentences.
Morphology still lacking
Later developments:Yes-No Questions
Child’s questions Yes-no questions are
See hole? signaled by means of
rising intonation
I ride train?
Ball go?
Sit chair?
Adult’s questions involve
Adult’s questions Inversion
Was the president lying? head to head
Can he sing? movement
X-bar syntax
To preserve the powerful generalization about
syntax that the X-bar schema offers, all the phrasal
categories have a 3-tiered structure with specifiers,
heads, and complements and/or adjuncts
XP
Specifier of X X’
X head Complements of head
CP
Head to Head Movement
C’
spec
C TP
DP T’
The president
T VP
was
was lying
Adults Yes-No Questions
Head to head movement: an inverted Aux moves
from the head T-position in TP into the head C
position in CP.
The vacated head T-position is filled by a silent
copy of the moved Aux: trace
Child’s Yes-no questions
No Errors
No Acquisition movement sometimes
auxiliaries of auxiliaries For some with
intonation time movement
Can he can look?
What shall we shall have?
Did you did came home?
The child leaves behind an
overt copy so the Aux
appears in the T and C head CP Head to Head Movement
positions.
C’
spec
C TP
DP T’
he
T VP
can look
can
CP No Error
C’
spec
C TP
DP T’
he
T VP
can
can look
Wh-questions
The first wh words to
What me think? be acquired are
Where that? typically what and
where, followed by
Why you smiling? who, how, and why;
Why not me drink it? when, which, and
whose are relatively
late acquisitions.
Wh-questions
What I did yesterday? With the acquisition of
Where I should sleep? auxiliary verbs,
Why that boy is Inversion becomes
looking at us? possible.
Why she doesn’t like Some children appear
bananas? to find inversion
easier in yes-no
Why unicorns are questions than in wh
pretend? questions
Adult’s WH-Questions
What will Max chase?
CP
C’
spec
C TP
DP T’
T VP
Max will
__
V’
V NP
chase
what
__
CP
C’
spec
C TP
DP T’
T VP
Max will
V’
V NP
chase
what
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