Judgment
Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem
Grammaticality Judgment & Truth-Value Judgment
Reading: Gordon, P. 1996. The Truth Value Judgment task. In D. McDaniel, C. McKee and H. Smith Cairns (eds.) Methods for Assessing Children’s Syntax. MIT Press, pp. 211-232.
Anaphors (reflexives)
Governing Category Parameter (GC = Local domain):
γ is a governing category for α iff γ is the minimal category which contains α and
A. has a subject, or
B. has an INFL, or
C. has a TNS, or
D. has a indicative TNS, or
E. has a root TNS;
(Wexler and Manzini 1987; 53)
English - A (local antecedent).
Japanese (zibun), Korean (casin), Chinese (ziji) - E (both local and non-local antecedents), but when used as phrasal reflexives (-zisin, -casin and -ziji) - A
Russian (sebja), Serbo-Croatian - C (both local and non-local antecedents)
Simple reflexivesmay take long-distance antecedents and phrasal reflexives may not.
Finer and Broselow (1986)
1. The dogj said that the horsej r e hit himselfj r e
2. The dogj r told the horsej r e to hit himselfj r e
Subjects: Japanese, Chinese, and Korean learners ofEnglish.
Method: Yes/no judgment with pictures
Findings: 91.7% answered correctly to (1), and 58.3% to (2)
MacLaughlin (1998)
3. a. Barbara thinks that [Lisa is proud of herself].
b.herselfcan beBarbara. AGREE DISAGREE
c.herselfcan beLisa. AGREE DISAGREE
4. a. Michael forces [Peter to help himself].
b.himselfcan beMichael. AGREE DISAGREE
c.himselfcan bePeter. AGREE DISAGREE
Grammaticality Judgment (McDaniel & Cairns 1996)
· Establishing language as a topic.
· Say wrong when the puppet says something which sounds funny.
· A non native speaker experimenter
· Long an rigorous training
Testing word order, e.g., where go you yesterday?
Testing agreement, e.g., the girl am jumping
Testing reference (binding conditions), e.g., himself went to the store, the boy hurt herself
With a picture (from Bishop et al. 2000. Grammatical SLI: A distinct subtype of developmental language impairment? Applied Psycholinguistics 21)
• Baloo Bear says Mowgli is tickling him”
• “Baloo Bear says Mowgli is tickling himself” (X)
• “Mowgli says Baloo Bear is tickling him” (S)
· Truth-Value Judgment – Universal quantifiers
Q: Is every square black?
Inhelder and Piaget, 1964
A: No.
Q: Why?
A: Because there are some black circles
Even eight years old children do not understand the meaning of the universal quantifier.
Some children who are shown a picture containing an ‘extra object’ provide systematic non-adult responses.
Why do children answer this way?
Could it be that children interpret the question in a symmetrical manner?
This is not compatible with what is known about quantification in adults.
Truth value judgment with pictures, some with extra object and some with extra subject (Philip 1995)
(Picture from Guasti 2002)
Is a farmer riding every donkey?
Children: No, this farmer doesn't.
The Condition of Plausible Dissent (Crain et al., 1996)
Children’s symmetrical interpretations are errors due to flaws in experimental design. They have no difficulty with the interpretation of quantifiers if "felicitous" contexts are provided.
Basic assumptions:
· Children try to understand what people mean
· Questions, like other utterances, should be pragmatically adequate (Felicity Conditions)
· Yes/No questions are asked only when there are two possible answers (Plausible Dissent)
· If a question is inadequate for the context (there is only one answer), children will try to "fix" it.
> The task should present situations in which both options are possible
Task: Truth value judgment with props
Characters and Crucial Props:
· Three skiers (a mom and her two girls)
· Five bottles of soda and five cups of apple cider
Protocol:
Situation: After skying
Mother: Let’s go in now and get a drink <mom and girls go over to drinks set out on a table>. I’ll have a cup of this nice hot apple cider. This will help calm me down <mom takes a cup of cider>.
Girl 1: Oh, look at these sodas. I want this bottle of orange soda.
Girl 2: I want this bottle of cola.
Mom: Girls, don’t take a bottle of soda. You should have a cup of hot apple cider so you get nice and warm. You can have soda another time.
Girl 1: OK. I’ll take this cup; it’s full to the top.
Girl 2: I want a full cup too. Are any of these other cups of cider full? Oh, this one looks very full. I’ll have this one. Mmm, it’s good.
Kermit: That was a hard story, but I think I know something that happened. Every skier drank a cup of hot apple cider.
Child: Yes.
Subject: 14 children ages 3;5 - 5;10 who gave symmetrical responses on Philip's task.
Findings: 88% yes responses. They even produced sentences with the universal quantifier in similar situations.
Conclusions:
1. Children’s non-adult responses fail to emerge in tasks which satisfy the felicity conditions of asking yes/no questions, or making positive and negative judgments
2. Children distinguish the nominal quantifier from the sentential quantifier and know its meaning.
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