Navigating linguistic complexity in acquisition: From syntactic dependencies to referring expressions

Abstract

This dissertation explores how young learners navigate complex linguistic structures and form generalizations under two challenging conditions: sparse input and unclear input. I focus on two case studies, the comprehension of instrumental "with"-questions and the production of definite "the"-expressions.

The first case study examines how 15-month-olds comprehend instrumental wh-questions with a stranded preposition "with" ("What did she break the stick with?"). I ask whether infants’ resolution of these prepositional object gaps in wh-questions will fail due to usage factors—infrequent question types and verb-based expectations—or if they will succeed via detecting a missing argument, signaled by the complement-selecting preposition "with". Despite input sparsity and unfavorable verb expectations, infants responded correctly to these questions, suggesting that they are pragmatically prompt in responding to wh-questions before fully acquiring their full syntax.

The second case study concerns the acquisition of definite NPs. Naturalistic data suggests children’s referential choices aligned closely with their mothers’, with low miscommunication and high guessability. An interactive elicited production task shows that even 3- to 4-year-olds adapted their referring expressions appropriately, indicating adult-like knowledge of "the". Their reported overuse of "the" in prior production studies likely reflects task artifacts. Longitudinal video corpora reveal that anaphoric cues ("a ball...the ball") in input to 14-month-olds were available but inconsistent, whereas situational cues were widely available. Crucially, input with variable uses at 14 months did not mislead learners’ later use of "the" at 20 months, implying that they integrate both anaphoric and situational cues in recognizing the familiarity presupposition of "the".

Altogether, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of how language learning unfolds as a dynamic, inferentially rich process. Young learners are remarkably ingenious in generating structure and meaning from limited input at the very beginning. Furthermore, this work highlights the role of methodology in revealing linguistic competence in early development.