Learning the passive in natural(istic) settings

Learning the passive in natural(istic) settings

• Katie Alcock, Ken Rimba, Manizha Tellaie, and Charles Newton
• Thanks to Kamil ud Deen

Learning language: passives

• Jack ate the ice-cream

• The ice-cream was eaten by Jack

• Learned very late in English & other languages e.g. Hebrew

Different explanations - passive

• Maturation:

• Borer & Wexler (1987), Hebrew & English passives
• At a certain point in childhood, particular parts of grammar come “online”
• Passive at age 6 years
• Differential maturation for adjectival and verbal passive
• it is broken vs. John was kissed

Clues from other languages

• Early passive acquisition

• Bantu languages e.g. Sesotho – Demuth (1989)
• Inuktitut - Crago & Allen (1996)

• Frequency?

• many more passives in these languages

• Function of passive

• e.g. for wh- questions – Sesotho – can’t say “who cooked the food?”, must say “the food was cooked by who?”

• Easier construction

• in Inuktitut passive agrees only with grammatical subject while actives agree with both subject and object

Study 1 – Bantu languages

• Two Eastern Bantu languages

• Kiswahili (2 dialects)
• Kigiriama

• Complex morphophonemics:

• Affixes to indicate passive among other things
• ni- li- pig- wa
• 1S past hit passive
• “I was hit”

• Passive not used for wh- questions obligatorily

• Some use but optional

• Passives, like in Inuktitut, agree with grammatical subject

• Actives also with grammatical object, especially if it is a person

• Passive very frequent in input

Study 1 - Data collection and sources

• Recording of spontaneous speech samples

• Children in own homes

• Caregivers recorded

• Three language groups

• coastal Kiswahili, Nairobi Kiswahili (distinct dialect), Kigiriama (coastal)

• 13 children in total

• Nairobi children 1-11 data points per child

• Coastal children 1 data point per child

• Ages 1:9 to 3:3

Data analysis

• Transcription of all child and adult speech

• Coastal data - 10% checked by 2nd transcriber

• Analysis of use of verbs and passives

• On all verbs – not just where obligatory
• Adults as well as children

• Deen data –

• All examples of passive in children
• including which dated sample they appear in
• Proportions for adults
• do not have dated sample
• Some examples of active verbs (in thesis text)

Analysis

• Children’s linguistic maturity

• Age
• MLU morphemes? Words?
• Verbal ratio
• Longest utterance

• Productive use

• Bates et al. (1988) definition

Results

• Proportion of verbs in passive = 0 to 19% by child

• No sig. difference between languages

• Youngest productive use 1;10

• ye lipigwa / -taipiga
• (he was beaten / [he] will beat)

• Correlation with age n.s.

• Ditto with all measures of linguistic maturity

• Significant correlation with input proportion of passives

Language differences

Child differences

Summary so far

• Passive use early in 2 languages (3 dialects)

• Structure similar to southern Bantu languages

• Frequency also similar

• Some differences in usage

• Frequency of input crucial

Naturalistic exposure in English

• English-speaking children learn passives in experimental situation (Brooks & Tomasello, 1999)
• Our study
• exposure to passives in home setting
• not just input by linguists or experimenters

Hypotheses

• Naturalistic exposure to passive will lead to production of passive

• Even in very young children
• Will be some transfer to material never heard in passive
• Will be no overall effect on productive language

• Focus of question will also affect production of passives

Methods – Exposure

• Two books of similar length

• Suitable stories written

• Passivised – as many verbs as possible
• Story A “Jack” (zoo story) – 19 pictures, 17 with reversible verbs
• Story B “Puss” (animal story) – 18 pictures, all with reversible verbs

• Parents asked to read book once a day for a week

• Four conditions

• Active-Active, Active-Passive, Passive-Active, Passive-Passive

Methods – Testing

• Both books tested in lab

• Children asked questions

• Agent-focussed: what’s Jack doing?
• Patient-focussed: what’s happening to the box?
• or Neutral: what’s happening here?

• 1/3 each, allocated to each book

• Books reviewed in same order

• though do not know order of reading at home

• Children then asked to tell story in own words

• Very little speech produced so not analysed

Participants

• 40 children aged 29-38 mo

• 21 boys, 19 girls

• All from N. and E. London, recruited through local nurseries

• All solely English-speaking families

Results

• Age – no correlation with verbs/passives

• Verbal ratio correlates with passives

• No effect on number of utterances or on verbal ratio, however

• More passives following exposure to passive

Group and book differences

Effect of book (A vs B)

• Book B always tested second

• so had heard patient-focussed questions even if no passive story.

• Interaction between condition and book

• Active A-Passive B children produce more passives on their trained book than Passive A-Active B
• Have heard more patient-focussed questions by the time they get to testing on book B
• But Passive A-Active B children produce more passives on non-trained book
• Have produced more passives themselves when reach book B

Types of questions and passives

• Patient-focused questions = more passives produced

• But no effect on number of utterances or verbs
• Interaction with condition
• But only because floor effect in A-A group
• Some children who never heard passives before produce a few in response to patient-focussed questions

• Types of passives: full vs. truncated vs. attempts

• No interaction either between condition and proportion of types of passives when include A-A
• Interaction for other 3 conditions
• P-P produce more full passives and fewer truncated

Conclusions

• Hearing passives at home makes children produce them in the lab

• Does not only apply to sentences they originally heard in passive

• Although effect is stronger for these verbs

• And effect increases through testing session

Discussion

• Input is important

• Structure in Bantu languages helps?

• Very difficult to quantify how relatively “difficult” particular constructions are for children hearing different languages