In their experiment carried out in order to test children’s knowledge of the binding principles, Chien and Wexler (1990) observed that their subjects showed a considerable delay of the acquisition of Principle B compared with Principle A. While the children who participated in their study mastered the locality conditions of anaphors nearly perfectly by the age of six and even earlier, many of them still allowed pronouns to be coindexed with a local antecedent.
In a similar study especially designed to examine children’s knowledge of only Principles B and C, Grimshaw and Rosen (1990) also found that the non-locality constraint for pronouns was to a large extent violated. Like Chien and Wexler, Grimshaw and Rosen state that children yet have innate knowledge of Principle B. A distinction has to be made, they argue, between knowledge of Principle B, on the one hand, and obedience to it on the other. Although children know Principle B, other grammatical and pragmatic influences and circumstances prevent them from obeying it.
Both theses have in common that they are based on the assumption that the delay of Principle B is a universal phenomenon that can be found throughout all languages. However, in a study carried out by McKee (1992), it turned out that the delay of Principle B only affected the group of English children while the Italian children showed nearly perfect mastery of both Principle A and B. McKee accompanies these results by her proposal for an explanation of English children’s delay of Principle B. Since the experiment was carried out with Italian sentences containing clitic pronouns, her account is based on syntactical differences between this type of sentences and its English counterparts containing full pronouns.
This paper will start with a presentation of McKee’s thesis. The presentation will be followed by a discussion in which McKee’s account will be compared with alternative explanations for the delay of Principle B. Since McKee’s syntactically motivated model stand in contrast to other theses based on pragmatics, the final aim will be a judgment about the adequacy and plausibility of both types of approaches. This judgment will be supported by another thesis developed by Cardinaletti and Starke (1995) in which they seek to explain the delay of Principle B by an ambiguity of English pronouns comprising all parts of grammar.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. McKee’s account of English children’s delay of Principle B
3. Other approaches towards an explanation of the delay of Principle B
3.1. Pragmatic constraints
3.2. Knowledge and Obedience
3.3. Ambiguity of pronouns
4. Discussion
4.1. McKee and Chien and Wexler
4.2. McKee and Grimshaw and Rosen
4.3. McKee and Cardinaletti and Starke
4.4. Strong pronouns and emphatic pronouns
4.5. Different GCs for pronouns and anaphors
5. Conclusion
Objectives and Topics
The paper examines the phenomenon of the "delay of Principle B" in language acquisition, aiming to determine whether this delay is a universal developmental stage or a result of specific language-related factors. By comparing different theoretical frameworks—including pragmatic, syntactic, and ambiguity-based models—the author evaluates their adequacy in explaining why English-speaking children exhibit difficulties with pronoun interpretation while children learning other languages do not.
- Binding Theory and the acquisition of Principle B
- Cross-linguistic differences between English and Italian children
- Syntactic vs. pragmatic explanations for developmental delays
- The role of pronominal systems and clitic pronouns
- The definition and reconceptualization of Governing Categories (GCs)
Excerpt from the Book
McKee’s account of English children’s delay of Principle B
McKee conducted her experiment by employing the truth value judgment task. The children were presented an event staged with puppets and given a sentence describing the scene. Their task was then to judge whether the sentence describes either correctly or incorrectly what was staged. Since the object of every sentence was realized either by a pronoun or an anaphor, the results of the tests revealed the children’s ability to apply their knowledge of both Principle A and B.
The most strikingly different results between the English- and Italian-speaking children were yielded by the group of one-clause sentences containing pronouns like in (1).
(1a) Lo gnomo lo lava.
The gnome him washes
(1b) Smurfette washed her.
While 85 percent or 100 out of 117 Italian children correctly rejected a sentence like (1a) when given to describe a scene in which the subject performed the action on itself, the sentence (1b) was rejected only by 18 percent or 22 out of 120 English-speaking children when combined with such a scene to result in a violation of Principle B.
Summary of Chapters
1. Introduction: Presents the observation of the delay of Principle B in English-speaking children compared to the mastery of Principle A, introducing the primary research question regarding the universality of this phenomenon.
2. McKee’s account of English children’s delay of Principle B: Outlines McKee’s experimental findings, which show that English-speaking children, unlike Italian-speaking children, exhibit significant difficulties with Principle B, and introduces her syntactically motivated model.
3. Other approaches towards an explanation of the delay of Principle B: Discusses alternative accounts focusing on pragmatic constraints, the competence-performance dichotomy, and the ambiguity of pronouns within the pronominal system.
4. Discussion: Evaluates the various theories by confronting them with cross-linguistic data, specifically analyzing the structural differences between clitic and full pronouns and their impact on governing categories.
5. Conclusion: Summarizes the findings, suggesting that while syntactically motivated models like McKee’s offer the most coherent explanation, questions remain regarding the precise trigger for the reconceptualization of governing categories.
Keywords
Binding Theory, Principle B, Language Acquisition, Syntax, Pragmatics, Governing Category, Clitic Pronouns, Universal Grammar, Pronoun Interpretation, Developmental Delay, Anaphors, Competence and Performance, Cross-linguistic Analysis, Pronominal System, Semantics
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the core focus of this research paper?
The paper investigates the "delay of Principle B," a phenomenon where children acquiring English show significant difficulty correctly interpreting pronouns compared to reflexives, in contrast to children acquiring other languages like Italian.
What are the primary theoretical areas addressed?
The research evaluates three main perspectives: the syntactical model proposed by McKee, the pragmatic constraint models (Chien & Wexler, Grimshaw & Rosen), and the ambiguity-based hypothesis (Cardinaletti & Starke).
What is the primary research goal?
The goal is to determine if the delay of Principle B is a universal developmental stage or if it depends on language-specific properties, such as whether a language uses clitic pronouns versus full pronouns.
Which scientific methods are analyzed in the work?
The paper evaluates experimental data derived from "truth value judgment tasks" and compares various structural representations and definitions of Governing Categories (GC) used across different linguistic theories.
What topics are covered in the main section?
The main part covers the re-evaluation of experimental results, the role of emphatic versus unstressed pronouns, the distinction between clitic and full pronouns, and the theoretical debate over how children define binding domains.
What are the characterizing keywords of the study?
Key terms include Binding Theory, Principle B, Language Acquisition, Governing Category, Cross-linguistic Analysis, and Pronominal System.
How do Italian and English children differ in their performance regarding Principle B?
According to McKee’s study, Italian children show near-perfect mastery of both Principle A and B, whereas English children demonstrate a significant developmental delay in applying Principle B correctly.
What role does the "Governing Category" (GC) play in the author's argument?
The GC is central to the explanation: the author explores how children’s definition of the GC may change during development, potentially evolving to include potential antecedents, which helps explain the observed performance differences in pronoun interpretation.
- Quote paper
- Michael Treichler (Author), 2004, Syntax or Pragmatics: A Comparison of different Approaches towards English Children's Delay of Principle B, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/31595
