A study on the structural model and semantic patterns of wh questions in english (nghiên cứu về mô hình cấu trúc và ngữ nghĩa của câu hỏi có từ hỏi trong tiếng anh)

It is no understatement to say that the central issue in the theory of language acquisitioniswhetherchildrenactuallylearnlanguageandconstructagrammarbasedonthedatatowhichtheyare exposed,

It is no understatement to say that the central issue in the theory of language acquisitioniswhetherchildrenactuallylearnlanguageandconstructagrammarbasedonthedatatowhichtheyare exposed, orwhether they set the parameters of an autonomous language acquisition device[LAD], which is itself a theory of universalgrammar [UG].Some of the arguments which havebeen taken to be the most compelling for the

(1)theexistenceofauniversalgrammaticalprincipleforwhichthereseemstobenoevidenceavailable tochildren in the input, and (2) the production of forms during language developmentwhichhave nodirect model in the adult speech to which children are exposed but which are apossibilitysanctioned by UG and which occur in other languages.WH-questions andtheiracquisitionprovideimportantexamplesofbothtypesandhavebeencitedintheliteratureasstrongevidenceinfavoroftheparameter-settingmodel(e.g.Chomsky,1986;Crain,1991;deVilliers&Roeper,1991)

The first type of argument involves the principle of subjacency, which is proposed asauniversalconstraintontheformationofWH-questionsandrelatedconstructions;itisillustratedin(1)

(1) a Mulder believes that Scully hid the files.a

Subjacency precludes the possibility of moving a WH-word out of an embedded clause which

ispart of a complex noun phrase [NP] (the rumor+ clause), as in (1b´), or a restrictive relativeclause (the witness[head noun] + clause), as in (1c´).It has long been argued that

subjacencyis

aprimeexampleoftheargumentfromthepovertyofthestimulus,because,itisclaimed,thereisnoevidence available tothe child regarding it in the input (Chomsky, 1986).The second type ofargument involves the production by childrenlearning English of long-distance WH-questionscontainingamedialWH-expression,asreportedinThornton(1990,1995),illustratedin(2)

1 Iwoul d l i k e t o t h a n k J e r i J a e g e r , J e a n

-P i e r r e K o e n i g a n d L y n n S a n t e l m a n n f o r c o m m e n t s o n a n e a r l i e r d r a f t , James McCloskey for providing insights and data regarding Irish, and Holger Dießel for sharing his intuitions aboutthe German data.Abbreviations: ACC

‘accusative’,ARG‘argument’,CMPL,COMP‘complementizer’,CP‘complementizer phrase’, DAT ‘dative’, IP

‘inflection phrase’ (= clause), NOM ‘nominative’, NP ‘noun phrase’,NUC ‘nucleus’, PrCS ‘precore slot’, PRED

‘predicate’, PRES ‘present tense’, PSTP ‘past participle’.

parameter-setting model, since it seems to provide a ready account of why a child wouldproduceformsfoundnotinthelanguagebeingacquiredbutinotherlanguages.

In this paper these arguments will be reexamined in light of a conception of syntaxandacquisitionratherdifferentfromtheChomskyanPrinciples&Parameters[P&P]modelassumedinthem.I t willbearguedthattheusualconclusionsinfavoroftheparameter-

settingapproachdonotnecessarilyfollowandthattherearealternativeexplanatoryaccountswhichdonotmakethesameassumptions about cognitive organization and the mechanisms oflanguageacquisition.Thetheoretical frameworkassumed is Role and Reference Grammar [RRG] (Van Valin, 1993; VanValin & LaPolla, 1997),

a theory which posits a direct mapping between syntax and semantics inwhich pragmatics plays an important role, but which does not postulate any covertsyntacticrepresentations or transformational-type rules It will be shown that a unified, motivated account ofthe phenomena in (1) and (2) can be given which does not involve an autonomousLAD/UG.This paper will not argue against the

anautonomous,parameterizedLAD/UG;noevidenceorargumentswillbegiventothiseffect.Rather,thepointisthatthesephenomenacanbeaccountedforwithoutrecoursetosuchmodels

Thediscussionwillproceedasfollows.Insection2, theargumentsfor settingmodelbasedon(1)and(2)willbesummarized.I n section3,therelevantfeaturesofRRGwillbepresented.Insection4,theRRGaccountofsubjacencypresentedinVanValin(1991,1993, 1995)will be summarized and itsimplications for acquisition discussed.In section 5, the acquisition ofWH-questions in both simple and complex sentences will be

attentionpaidtothestructuresin(2)inEnglishaswellasinotherlanguages.C o n c l u s i o n s willbepresentedinsection6

2.0Theparameter-settingapproach

WithintheP&Pframework,languageacquisitionisalogicalproblem,inthatthecontentoftheLADisdeducedbymeansofthefollowingformula

(3) Finalknowledgestate(=Adultgrammaticalcompetence)

–Inputfrom experience

=Initialknowledgestate(=LAD/UG)

Givenacharacterizationofthefinalstateoflinguisticknowledge,i.e.adultgrammaticalcompetence,itispossible,itisargued,todeterminethecontentoftheinitialknowledgestate,i.e.theLAD/UG,by factoring out what is available to

adultgrammaticalcompetencewhichisnotderivablefromexperience,thenitmustbeapropertyofoftheLAD/UG.This is the well-known ‘argument from the poverty of the stimulus’, and a paradigmcase of

it concerns the principle of subjacency, which was illustrated in (1).Subjacencyrestrictsmovementacrossso-

called‘boundingnodes’,i.e.thenodesdominatingcertainimportanttypesofphrasal units: sentence [SN], clause [CL] and

(4) a.[SN1Whatidoes[CL1M u l d e r believe[SN2tithat[CL2S c u l l y hidti]]]]

b.*[SN1Whatidoes [C1M u l d e rbelieve[NPtherumor [SN2tithat [CL2S c u l l yhidti]]]]]

In(4a)whatmovesfromitsD-structurepositionastheinternalargument(directobject)ofhidetothe special

position for WH-words which is outside the clause but inside the sentence,4leaving atrace (ti).This move crosses only onebounding node, CL2.The second move to the matrix-sentence WH-position also crosses onlyone bounding node, in this case CL1;SNisnotabounding nodein English.Hence (4a) does notviolate subjacency and is grammatical.The firststep in the derivation of (4b) is the same as for(4a); the problem arises with the second step.Themove from the embedded-sentence WH-position to the matrix-sentenceWH-position necessarilycrosses two bounding nodes, NP and CL1, and consequently the derivation violatessubjacency,yielding an ungrammatical sentence.This constraint, as formulated in P&P theory, ispurelystructural and arbitrary; it is not motivated by any larger cognitive, communicative, orotherconsiderations

The standard argument regarding the acquisition of subjacency is that there is noconceivableevidence available to children regarding it.Children never hear sentences like (1a´),

´)andthereforehavenoempiricalbasisforinducingtheconstraint.Moreover,itisargued,thereisnosemantic orother explanation for it Hence in terms of (3) it must be part of the initial knowledgestate of the language acquirer; in other words, it must be part of the

UG, based on the argument fromthe poverty of the stimulus.In terms of acquisition, the default settings of

‘noovertmovement’withrespecttowhetherWH-movementisovertorcovertand{NP,CL,SN}withrespect to the choice of bounding nodes; this precludes movement out ofembeddedclausescompletely.Encounteringasentencewithanon-subjectWH-

wordatthebeginningofthesentencelikeWhat do you want?tells the child that overt movement is a feature of the language, and uponhearing a sentence likeWhat did Mommy say that Daddy brought?leads

thateitherCLorSNisnotaboundingnode,sincethissentenceshowsthatmovementoutofembeddedclauses is possible.The choice of {CL, NP} (English) or {SN, NP} (Italian) depends on furthercontrastsforwhichthereispositiveevidenceintheinput.The secondargument for the parameter-setting approach comes from cases in which childrenproduce structures whichare not found in the language to which they are exposed but which aresanctioned by UG as adifferent setting of a parameter.InGerman, long-distance WH-movementof the kind exemplified in (1a´) is generally disfavored, whereas the followingconstructioninvolvinglocalWH-movementisgrammatical;( 5 a ) isfromMcDanieletal.(1995),

(5b)isf r o m

4 ThetechnicaltermforthisinP&Pis‘specifierofcomplementizerphrase’(SPEC,CP).

5 That is, the WH-words occur in the same place in the clause as the

correspondingnon-WH-wordsi n s t a t e m e n t s and do not appear in the special initial WH-position, as in English you want what?.T h i s

i s t h e m o s t c o m m o n w a y questionisnotthenormuniversally.

offormingWH-questionsinhumanlanguage;theEnglish-style‘movement’WH-Weissenborn, Roeper and de Villiers (1991), and (5c) is from de Villiers, Roeper andVainikka(1990).

(5) a.Wasg l a u b s t D u , m i t w e m

Danielspricht?

whatb e l i e v e y o u withwho.DAT

speaks‘WithwhomdoyoubelieveDanielistalking?’

b Was hat er gesagt,wie er den Kuchen backen will?

what has he saidhow he the cakebake

will‘Howdidhesayhewillbakethecake?’

c.Wie denkst Du, wieer das getan hat?

how thinkyouhow he that donehas‘How

do you think he did that?’

In the construction in (5a) and (5b), the first WH-word,was‘what’ is analyzed as

indicatingsimply that the sentence is a WH-question, and the second WH-word,wem‘whom’ in

(5a) andwie‘how’ in (5b), actually expresses the content of the question; it will be referred to as

the‘definingWH-expression’intheconstruction.I n the(c)construction,acopyofthedefiningWH-word from thesecond clause occurs in sentence-initial position as well.These patterns are alsofound in Romani (McDaniel et al.,1995).6What is of interest here is that despite the fact thatEnglish-speaking adults do not produce structures

WH-(5a,b)with the defining WH-expression medially andwhatoccurring in the matrix clause to mark thesentence as a

question.The constructions in (6a,b) are not found in German or Romani, but theydo have apossible analog in languages such as Irish (McCloskey, 1979) in which all ofthecomplementizers in a sentence with WH-movement show ‘agreement’ with the WH-element,asexemplifiedin(7).7

(7) a.[CLMheasmé[SNgurL[CLd h ú i r t sé[SNgurL[CLthuig séant-úrscéal.thought I

COMP[-WH] saidh e understoodhethenovel

‘Ithoughtthathesaidthatheunderstoodthenovel.’

b.[SNCént-úrscéaliaL [CLmheas mé [SNtiaL [CLdúirt sé [SNtiaL

[CLthuigséti]]]]]]novelwhichC O M P [ + W H ] thoughtI saidhe

7 The ‘L’segment

inthec o m p l e m e n t i z e r s indicates thesethesemorphemesinducelenition intheinitialconsonant of the following word; it is not part of the phonemic or phonetic representation of the word.

Englishthat,whereas in (7b)the complementizer isaL,which is argued to be agreement with

theWH-expression or its trace.Note that even the matrix clause has a complementizer in(7b).Thornton(1995)arguesthatthemedialWH-

wordsin(6a,b)arecomplementizersthatagreeovertlywiththeWH-

traceintheirspecifierposition.HencethesesentencesareexamplesofcomplementizerWH-agreementanalogoustothatfoundinIrish

WhywouldchildrenlearningEnglishproducesuch structures,inthecompleteabsenceofanymodels for them

in the speech to which they are exposed?Put another way, why would childrenlearning English produceGerman-, Romani- or Irish-style WH-questions?The answer given byThornton (1995),McDaniel, et al (1995), and others is that they are realizing one of theoptionsmadeavailablebytheLAD/UG,albeitanincorrectoneforEnglish.I t isassumedthattheonlywaythat childrenwould hit upon structures found in other languages in the absence of anyempiricalinputisforthepossibilitiestobegiveninadvanceintheLAD/UG.Hencesentenceslikethosein

(2)and(6),togetherwiththoseconcerningsubjacency,areinterpretedasstronglyfavoringtheP&Pconcept of

an autonomous parameterized LAD/UG and as showing that children do not simplygeneralize from the data to which they are

“theevidencereceivedbythechildissmall,sometimescontradictory,andclearlyinsufficienttoaccountforthegrammarunlessaparametricsystemisassumed”(1)

ItisincumbentuponanyoneproposingamodeloflanguagedevelopmentwhichdoesnotpositanautonomousLAD/UGtoprovideanexplanation forthesephenomena.IntheRRGconceptionof language acquisition presented in VanValin (1991), children construct the grammar of theirlanguage based on (i) their initial cognitive endowment, which

autonomousLAD/UGbutwhichisneverthelessrichlystructuredassuggestedbyBruner(1983),Slobin(1973,1985)orBraine(1992,1994),and(ii)theevidencetowhichtheyareexposed.Intheremainderofthis paper an RRG account of

briefpresentationoftheessentialfeaturesofthetheorythatarerelevanttothisdiscussion

3.0EssentialfeaturesofRoleandReferenceGrammar

TheorganizationofRRGisgiveninFigure 1.Inthispaperwewillconcentrateonaspectsofthe syntacticrepresentations and the role of discourse-pragmatics in the mapping betweensyntaxandsemantics,ignoringotherfacetsofthetheorynotdirectlyrelevanttothis

discussion.ThemostcomprehensivepresentationofthetheoryisinVanValin&LaPolla(1997)

SYNTACTICREPRESENTATION

LinkingAlgorit hm

SEMANTICREPRESENTATION

Figure 1

Clauses t r u c t u r e i s n o t r e p r e s e n t e d i n R R G i n t e r m s o f X

-b a r s y n t a x o r e v e n t r a d i t i o n a l immediateconstituencystructure;rather,itiscapturedinasemantically-basedtheoryknownasthe

Lexicon

Syntactic Inventor y

Discourse-Pragm

‘layered structure of the clause’.The essential components of this model of the clause are (i)

thenucleus,whichcontainsthepredicate,

(ii)thecore,whichcontainsthenucleusplustheargumentsofthepredicateinthenucleus,and(iii)theperipher

y,whichcontainstheadjunctmodifiersofthecore.The structure of a simple English clause is given in

Figure 2, and in Table 1 the semanticunitsunderlyingthelayeredstructureoftheclausearesummarized.8

SENTENCECLAUSECORE<—————————–PERIPHERY

InWH-questionsin languageslikeEng

lish,theWH-expressionoccursinaposition cal ledthe

precoreslot,illustratedinFigure3.N o t e thelackofanyemptysyntacticpositionsortracesintherepresentation;inthelinkingfromsemanticstosyntax,theWH-expressionismappeddirectlyfromits position in thesemantic representation into the precore slot, and in the linking from syntaxtosemantics,itismappeddirectlyfromtheprecoreslottoitspositioninthesemanticrepresentation

PrCS

SENTENCECLAUSECORE<———————–PERIPHERY

PRED

ARG

WhodidRobinp r e s e n t w i t h anawarda t theceremony?

8 Itshouldbenotedthattheterms‘sentence’and‘clause’ donotmeanexact lythesam e thinginRR Gt hatt heydo in P&P, i.e RRG ‘sentence’P&P ‘CP’ and RRG ‘clause’P&P ‘IP’.These differences do not, however,substantially affect the discussion in this paper.

NUCPRED

SENTENCECLAUSECOREARG

NP

NUCPREDV

ARGNP

COREARG NUC

ARGPRED

Mulderbelievestherumor thatS c u l l y hid thefiles

Figure 5ThesecondaspectofRRGpertinenttothisdiscussionisthetheoryof information structure,

which is based on Lambrecht (1994).Two notions are especially relevant to the issue of question formation, namely, narrow focus and focus domain.WH-questions are typicallynarrowfocus,inthatthefocusofthequestionisasingleconstituentrepresentedbytheWH-expression,

WH-e.g.W HAT didM a r y b u y ? ,a n d t h e

answerstosuchWH-questionsarealsonarrowfocusconstructions, e.g.She bought ANEWCAR(the focus element is in small caps). Y e s - n o q u e s t i o n s mayal so be na rr ow fo cu s, e g D id M a r y b u y A N E W C A R ?

—N o , s h e b o u g h t A

NEWB O A T There is an important distinction between unmarked and marked narrow focus All languages havean unmarked

focus position in the clause; in English it is the last constituent of the core, whereas inverb-final languages it is the position immediatelybefore the verb Consider the following

theelement(s)actuallyinfocusinaparticularutterance.I n Englishsimplesentencessuchasin(8),theentireclauseisthepotentialfocusdomain,buttheactualfocusdomain(indicatedbysmallcaps)isdifferent in each example Thepotential focus domain in complex sentences is constrained by thefollowingprinciple,takenfromVanValin(1993)

(9) The potential focus domain in complex sentences: A subordinate clause may be withinthepotential focus domain if it is a direct daughter of (a direct daughter of ) the clausenodewhichismodifiedbytheillocutionaryforceoperator

Thematrixclausenodeistheonemodifiedbytheillocutionaryforceoperatorovertheclause,andthereforeaccordingto(9)onlyanembeddedclausewhichisadirectdaughter(ofaclausewhichisa direct daughter, etc.) of this clause node can be within thepotential focus domain in a complexsentence Comparing the diagrams in Figures 4 and 5, we see that the

directdaughterofthematrixclausenodeinFigure4butnotinFigure5,andconsequentlytheembeddedclause is in thepotential focus domain in Figure 4 but not in Figure 5.This distinctionhasimportantimplicationsforthephenomenadiscussedinsections 1 and2, as we will seein thenexttwosections

4.0TheRRGaccountofsubjacencyphenomena

SinceRRGdoesnotpositthesametypeofclausestructuresasP&Poranykindofmovementrules,movementacrossboundingnodescannotbethee x p l a n a t i o n forsubjacencyphenomenain

9 The default interpretation of the subject in English is as a topic, rather than as a focal element, hence the markedstatusoffocalsubjectsinEnglish.S e e Lambrecht(1984)andreferencescitedthereinformorediscussion.

this theory Rather, the explanation involves the interaction of information structure andsyntacticstructure.The detailed technical account is given in Van Valin (1993, 1995) and Van Valin

theyes-expressionmustbeinterpretedasbeingwithinthepotentialfocusdomain.Thisleadstothefollowingconstraintonquestionformation,adaptedfromVanValin(1994)

(10) General restriction on questionformation: the element questioned (the focus NP in a

simple,directyes-noquestion,ortheWH-question)mustbeinaclausewithinthepotentialfocusdomain

(13) a.DoesMulderbelievethatScullyhidthefiles?

b.No,thephotographs

AswesawinFigure4,thestructurein(13a)meetstheconditionin(9),andtherefore(10)predictsthatitshouldbepossiblefortheactualfocusdomaintobeintheembeddedclause.T h e felicityofthepossibleanswerin(13b)showsthatthisisthecase.O n e wayofthinkingaboutthemotivationfortheconstraintin(10)isasfollows.Q u e s t i o n

s arerequestsforinformation,andthefocusofthe

10 Other accounts which treat subjacency as involvingsyntactic and pragmatic factors include Erteschik-Shir (1973),Erteschik-Shir&Lappin(1979),Kluender(1992)andKunoandTakami(1993).