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Chapter 4: First Phrases: Glimpses of Grammar
What Ignites Grammar?
At one sweet and precious moment, a one-year-old child points to
sneakers and says "Daddy.” That child has very overtly entered the human
species.
Really? Look closely. Suddenly a word captures not an object itself
(sneakers) but a relation between a thing and its owner, specifically, a possessive
relation (Daddy's sneakers). A new, infinite, realm of communication opens.
Reference itself has changed from object and event names to relationships. (nn1)
For each child, of course, a different verbal gem ignites this new realm of
reference. One child points at an empty crib and says "doll." Another child
points at a chair and says "sweater." Why? The astute parent realizes that it is
because the child had left the sweater on that chair earlier, so “sweater-location”
is intended. Location (“on chair”) and possession (“Daddy's sneakers”) are the
usual relations of a child's first expressions, but others come quickly. A child
points to the door and says "coat." (nn2) Hmm, it takes some more parental
puzzling, but then it is clear: you put on a coat to go out the door. The coat
reflects the "manner" of going outdoors---a relation to be captured ultimately by
with or without (“Don't go out without a coat!”) All at once single words have
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"relational reference" (like manner-of-action) on top of direct reference (like
naming) and now the instrument of communication has begun to grow.
But why do we claim that membership in the "human species" rests in this
moment? Because animals (as far as we know) do not refer to objects in any
creative way at all. As we have noted, a monkey can have a gesture that says
"this is my lover" or "stay away from my child," but cannot say "my stomach
hurts.” Fixed social relations are just that, fixed in biologically innate gestures,
not creative relations which can be freely invented and applied between objects
and people. This infinite, expressive quality of human grammar is special, not
found naturally and without instruction elsewhere in the animal kingdom.
Are we just guessing about these "relations"? The answer is, yes, a little
bit. How can we "prove" that the child meant possessive? What if our child, who
just said "Daddy" (for sneakers), had had an Agent relation in mind: "put on your
shoes Dad, let's go out and play.” Proof of the possessive intepretation is hard to
guarantee, but support can be found with a little imagination. We can informally
test the possessive claim with toys or pictures of them, by using ellipsis:
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EXPLORATION 4.1: EARLY RELATIONS
Point to a toy that belongs to a cat (also a toy). And say:
“this is the cat's toy”
[put in some simple pictures here]
Now with a toy dog and another toy next to it, say:
“now point to the dog's”
and see whether the child points to the dog or the toy.
You might vary it with similar examples and sometimes say:
“now point to the dog”
and see if they have the difference and understand the possessive. (See also
experiments on possessives and ellipsis in chapters 7 and 8.)
Caption: Understanding possessives
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EXPLORATION 4.2: BASIC RELATIONS FOR OLDER CHILDREN
With an older child a more complex variant would be revealing.
Put two dogs and two toys next to each other, and say:
“Here's the cats' toys.
Now show me the dogs'.”
The second form could of course be understood as a plural:
“Now show me the dogs.”
Caption: Understanding complex possessives
Which will a child take and why? If the child prefers the plural they will show
that they prefer a reading where one does not have to borrow parts from a
previous sentence. The possessive requires one to fill in:
“Now show me the dogs’ (toys)”
If the child prefers the possessive, it suggests that they prefer to use the whole
discourse, and obey the thrust of the previous sentence. Current literature
suggests that children do not (or even cannot) use discourse, so they should
resolutely prefer the plural. I suspect that the opposite is true and this exploration
would show it. We will return to this question.
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EXPLORATION 4.3: ANOTHER GAME
Wander around the house and point to things. Point to something that
belongs to Dad and say "Dad's," then to something which is Mom's and
say "Mom's." Then, crucially, point to something the child knows is
Mom's and say "Dad's."
Now see how the child responds. If the child gives it to Dad, then "Dad's" was
understood as “(give) to Dad.” If the child somehow frowns or says "no," then
we have evidence that the possessive guess was right. If he says “no that a hat,”
then he understood “Dad” and not “Dad’s.”
Caption: Elliptical possessives
New Relations: Agent, Instrument, Object
Within days new relations tumble out of the child's mind. One child who
wants a parent to play a record, first points at the record and says "Mom,” a day
later he says "acord,” and a day later he says "round." The same activity is seen
three ways: by agent (“Mom”), object (“record”) and manner (“round and
round”). It is as if, through these new relations, angles on existence are being
elevated to consciousness.
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How much can we accomplish with these new "relational nouns"? A lot,
but grammar has more tricks up its sleeve to express thoughts efficiently. First
the implied relations grow into familiar prepositions: by, with, of, at, for, that
capture exactly the core relations that grammar uses: agent (by), instrument
(with), possessive (of), locative (at), goal (for). This is just one step in the
expression of mental operations through grammar.
These grammatical relations do not cover everything. For instance they do
not cover actual human relationships. The word détente may reflect the
relationship of the Soviet Union to the U.S. ---or even the feeling of two-year-old
Johnny toward his three-year-old sister Jennie, but "détente" is not captured
directly in any of grammar's prepositions. Prepositions only go so far. In fact one
of the important thrusts of modern grammar is that the explicit (and efficient)
relations are really just a handful: agent, object, possessor, experiencer, goal,
instrument, manner. Both other words and other mental operations are needed to
convey complex relations.
Have we missed something of the human essence here? A child's
personality is also richly on display. The child whose first word is "kiss" has
something different on her mind than the child who first word says "no.”
Personality, of course, gets into everything. Language carries personality right
along with meaning.
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Now the child is ready to move on. What new power is held in the simple
act of combining two words? The primary set of relations (those prepositional
relations) flower into endless new branches which we will carefully explore.
Each branch of language articulates a form of mental computation, used in
language and elsewhere. Each step is a further display of what it means to be
human. Of course, a child (or you) are still human even if nothing is said.
Humanity is just not as vividly on display.
Two Words to Many Words
The child's grammar is now on the verge of explosion. Two-word
sentences follow that make those relations explicit:
"baby highchair" = baby is in the highchair
"Mommy eggnog" = M had her eggnog
"sat wall" = he sat on the wall
"throw Daddy" = throw it to Daddy
"pick glove" = pick the glove up
AGENT-ACTION "baby eat"
VERB-OBJECT
AGENT-LOC
"pick glove"
"baby highchair"
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POSSESSIVE-OBJ "mommy sock"
AGENT-OBJECT
VERB-GOAL
"mommy eggnog"
"throw daddy"
Is this an "anything goes" situation? One surely cannot be confident of these
judgements. Does the child really distinguish between goal (as in a dative:
“throw daddy a ball” => Daddy = goal) and the object (ball). It is difficult to
be certain. It is possible that a more abstract notion of general Object (or
complement) defines what the child chooses, and no distinction between
direct and indirect object is part of the grammar (even though the
interpretations are different--the child does not heave Daddy when he says
“throw Daddy.”)
What we can assert with some confidence is that a range of common
relations are excluded and almost never occur:
Excluded:
identity *"mommy lady” (= mommy is a lady)
conjunction: *”fork knife” (fork and knife)
two clause: *"said ate” (=I said I ate)
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Why are these forms absent? There may be multiple reasons. First it is
possible that some part of the child's grammar must mature before they are
available. In particular "I said I ate" requires us to put one sentence inside
another. We also fail to find identity as in: "Mommy girl.” That comes
when the child grasps the meaning of is (“mommy is a girl”) as a kind of
equivalence which in turn may follow is as introducing a property (“Mommy
(is) tall”).
The omission of conjunction, however, points at exactly how the
structure is built. Now we must start to reason very carefully. It looks as if
the child just "combines" two words. The more we contemplate things, the
more surprising they become. We have seen that not all meanings are used.
Why wouldn't the simplest connection be "and"? Why doesn't a child start
out with lots of expressions that capture things conjoined in everyday life?
MommyDaddy
hatcoat
shoessocks
meatrice (=meat + rice)
Where should we locate this bias against conjunction? It is unlikely
that the restriction is cognitive. The child certainly can put two things
together elsewhere in life. Another possibility is that words are not just
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added: their combination invokes a syntactic structure which in turn invites
certain meanings but not others. We are moving toward seeing a
fundamental asymmetry at the core of how grammatical structure is built by
the human mind.
If we just put two words together, then we would be making a list like:
house, doll
coffee, cup
The mode of combining that produces:
dollhouse
coffeecup
is fundamentally different. It is a modifier relation where one element is the
"main" element: a dollhouse is a house and a coffeecup is a cup. The choice is
clear in a contrast like: boathouse/houseboat. This is the most basic syntactic act
which distinguishes human language. It combines two things and decides who
controls or dominates the combination. If we take an adjective and a noun, the
relation seems obvious:
“red, house” = red-adjective + house-noun
The combination is still a noun. We can represent it by saying the whole thing is
like one pure noun so we put noun brackets around it and label it:
NOUN[red
house]. Another way to illustrate the parts it is to combine them in one phrase
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with a label on top. We could make the label the thing itself to illustrate what
controls:
house
/
red
\
house
or the syntactic category which has become customary.
Noun
/
Adjective
|
red
\
Noun
|
house
This "symbolic tree" just shows how we "combine and decide which controls,”
Link and Label. In theoretical terms, the operation of link-and-label is called
Merge. (nn3) Linking is not just "linking,” though. This is a distinctive human
operation that says something more precise than "combine.” The label captures
the nature of the link.
Each phrase above involves some decision:
"sit wall" = verb => about sitting, not a kind of wall
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"pick glove" = an action, not a glove category
"mommy eggnog" = possession or hidden action, not a kind of eggnog
Again, among the excluded structures is what one might think of as the easiest
thing, a list, a conjunction. But we do not usually find:
knife fork
Mommy Daddy
drink food
That is, children do not choose conjunction as the first kind of two-word
utterances. (We exclude one word sequences with pauses which may occur).
Cognitively it looks like the simplest form, but structurally it is not. Here is why:
If I say:
“Mommy Daddy”
is it basically Mommy or basically Daddy? We could not assign a higher
structure and decide what controls:
Mommy
/
\
Mommy Daddy
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Deciding that it is basically Mommy or basically Daddy is a choice most families
would choose not to make. Now we can see that our structural claim about
choosing what is on top actually predicts that conjunction will not occur.
Conjunction allows neither form to be the primary one. Instead it is a hidden
democratic "and." Thus we do not have:
*"Mommy Daddy"
because it would really mean "Mommy and Daddy" where and-ness is the
dominating feature.
(and)
/
\
Mommy
(and)
/
\
(and) Daddy
But again if I say houseboat we know it is basically a boat, and if I say boathouse
we know it is basically a house.
boat
/
house
\
boat
Since neither "Mommy" or "Daddy" is and-ness, the core concept is unexpressed,
so now it should not seem so surprising that a child does not start with
"Mommydaddy.”
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In technical terms, a two-word utterance involves a form of dominance or
subordination. One word subordinates another. This seems so natural to us that it
is easy to miss how profound an act of deployment of mental information is
involved in just building what we call a Merge structure.
EXPLORATION 4.4: DOMINATION OR COORDINATION
We can go right after this claim. Which word does the child take as dominant?
Here are some pairs that can pull it out:
[Insert sketch of boathouse and houseboat]
Picture of: boathouse
Picture of: houseboat
Two pictures in one: boat, house
which of those three will the child pick when we say:
"boathouse.”
One could create others (dollhouse, housedoll, or doll, house). Or let us create a
new one from slippers, a shoe-tree, and a picture of shoes
and a house:
home-shoe
shoe-home,
home, shoe.
Caption: Compounds
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These simple examples enable us to see right into the basic structure of the
language. Everything we know of children’s language suggests that universal
grammar will carry the child to always build phrases, to “merge” by choosing one
dominant element. This is building a syntax which honors meaning, (or
semantics).
Recursion: Putting Something Inside Itself
The next step involves the engagement of the deepest and simplest
property of grammar which Chomsky (with Hauser and Fitch) (nn4) has recently
highlighted as the core of human language: recursion. We have already begun to
discuss it in terms of very, very and multiple adjectives (and we devote chapter 7
to the topic). Recursion means do the same operation again, and do it upon the
same structure. It is a quintessentially simple idea---and yet its mathematical
formulation is still evolving. The fact that we can carry out recursion—operative
in milliseconds--is one of the fundamental claims about inborn, unlearned
properties of grammar. Thus if we have:
city boathouse
we still have a kind of house though we just built another layer:
house
/
\
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city
house
/
\
boat house
And we can put the complex form on either the right or the left, producing two
meanings:
student film committee
[film committee made up of students]
is like:
committee
/
\
student committee
/
\
film
committee
or the other way:
committee
/
film
/
\
student film
\
committee
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[committee for student films]
And of course we can continue: New York student film committee is fine and
instantly understandable. We can even instantly decipher repeated identical
words: coffee-maker and coffee-maker-maker.
This ability underlies the construction of every new phrase in a sentence,
when we go beyond combining nouns:
big red house
the big red house
the big red house here
Is the big red house here.
The view that Merge is automatically, or innately, recursive leads to a prediction.
Once the child does Merge, it should be readily repeatable. The child who
understands dollhouse as two words, will quickly understand: school doll house or
nursery school dollhouse. The prediction of course could be tested. Once a child
has produced a novel compound---two nouns that are definitely seen as compound
(not say peanut which is treated as a single word), we can try the following
exploration. These expressions from CHILDES, for example, are novel
compounds (nn5):
animal cup
(cup with animals)
Allison (2.33)
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ribbon hat
(hat with ribbons on it)
Sarah (2.59)
We could instantly try to expand a child's novel compounds: add a noun on either
end and see if they get the meaning difference:
EXPLORATION 4.5: COMPOUND COMPOUNDS
Set-up: show pictures of a house full of animal cups, a cup for animals made of
plastic, animal house cup (a cup with an animal house on it).
Say: “Show me ‘animal cup house.’”
The prediction is that no problem will arise with understanding recursive versions,
and children should produce them, where the last noun is the real object.
Caption: Recursive compounds
It is then predictable that recursive compounds like these come along, as Snyder
and Roeper (nn6) showed with two-year-olds:
Big+Bird book (book about Big Bird)
Nathaniel (2.47)
bunny+rabbit record (record with song about rabbits)
Syntax has now been launched.
Shem (2.25)
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Children generally have no problem with the houseboat/boathouse
distinction. Will children understand recursive compounds created from verbs? It
is a new frontier. Much more complex operations are involved, beyond easy
explanation, but the results are easily exploreable.
EXPLORATION 4.6: [FOR OLDER CHILDREN]
A thing that makes pancakes is a “pancake-maker” and the person who makes the
pancake-maker could be called a “pancake-maker maker.” This exploration is
appropriate for older children.
Story: this boy, Michael, is making a block to make prints of a dog. The
block will be a print-maker.
[ picture of a boy carving a dog into a block]
“Can you point to the print-maker maker?”
If the child controls recursion, she should point to the boy. If correct, this is a real
achievement. If she does not have all the ingredients of recursion with verbal
nouns, she will probably point to the block.
Caption: More recursive compounds
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Summary: Fundamental Knowledge in Two Words
Three kinds of ability have been assembled by the child who rapidly
climbs out of the two word stage:
1) Knowledge of thematic roles
Agent, Posssessor, Location
2) Merge,(to get essential structure)
3) Recursion (for creative structure-building)
Understanding thematic roles and merging allow the child to enter the two-word
stage. These will again be useful tools to go beyond two-word phrases. But the
most powerful tool of all, recursion, is now available to take the structure in the
two-word phrase and expand it indefinitely to include whole sentences and
phrases.
These abilities do not roam completely freely. Not all ideas are among the
thematic roles, not all structures can be built, and not all operations are freely
reproducible. We have much yet to explore.