LATER SPEECH STAGES : Rule Formation for Negatives, Questions, Relative Clauses, Passives, and Other Complex Structures

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A.    Background

. First Language acquisition surely occurs in childhood. Another language after first language that we mastery called the second language, third language and next after. The second language acquisition and more than it occur in several ranks of ages and generally undergone when we had mastered the first language fluently. Therefore, some scientist state that the second language acquisition process is different from the first language acquisition, thus there is second language acquisition focus knowledge. But in the bilingual society or multilingual there is an acquisition of two languages or more than it in the same time, so mother language or first language can be more than one languages.

With the production of longer utterances, simple structures are elaborated to yield more complex ones. Negative sentences, question forms. passives, and relative clauses are just a few of the many complex rules which children acquire in their first five years.

B.     Problem Formulation

a.       What are the early speech stage?

b.      Explain about later speech stages?

C.     Destination

In the manufacture of this paper aims to find out a little more about the from the development of later speech.

CHAPTER II

LATER SPEECH STAGES

Rule Formation for Negatives, Questions, Relative Clauses, Passives, and Other Complex Structures

With the production of longer utterances, simple structures are elaborated to yield more complex ones. Negative sentences, question forms. passives, and relative clauses are just a few of the many complex rules which children acquire in their first five years. (Rules arc used here in a general sense and may be interpreted as principles, parameters, limits, etc. Chomskyan theory is by no means necessarily implied by the use of these terms.) Although many other rules are also being acquired. we will select for consideration the complex rules used in forming negations, questions, relative clauses, and passives. Since this is the general order of acquisition of structures, we will use this order in presenting these constructions. It should be borne in mind., however, that the learning of some of these constructions sometimes overlaps, such as in the case of negation and question, which share a number of grammatical features.

A.    NEGATION FORMATION

1.      Negation development

Before presenting some of the acquisition data concerning negation, it may be useful to review some of the features of the negation process. Let us consider some scntenccs and their negations.

1.Affirmative: Kim is hungry.

1.Negative:      Kim is not hungry. Kim isn’t hungry.

2.Affirmative: Kim wanted some candy. 2 Negative: Kim did not want any candy.

2.Negative:      Kim didn’t want any candy.

2.  Features of negatives

In learning to produce these negations, the child must learn a number of different things. In considering these features, let us make negative the affirmative sentence of:

Kim wanted some candy.

1.      Where to insert the negative marker

(a) If the verb is ‘be’, then NEG is placed after  the copula ‘be’ form. Thus, ‘Kim is NEG happy’ becomcs ‘Kim is not happy’.

(b) If the verb is not ‘be’, then ‘not’ is placed before the verb. Thus, Kim not want + PAST some candy.

2. When and where to insert auxiliary do

Insert ‘do’ when the verb is one other than ‘be’ (‘have’ is a special verb, e.g. ‘Kim did not have any money’ and ‘Kim had no money’, which will not be considered here). Thus, we get Kim do not want+PAST some candy. ‘do’ is not inserted if there is a modal (will, can) or auxiliary (be, have) present. as in ‘Kim will no want to go’.

3. When auxiliary ‘do’ is used, then the tense from  the verb is shifted auxilary’ ‘do Thus, from ‘Kim do not want + PAST .. .‘, we get Kim do -4- PAST not want some candy. Then. lexicalization (the asterisk here and elsewhere indicates ungrammaticality): * Kim did not want some candy.

4. Lexical Concordances must bc made in the case of the negative, e.g. ‘some’ must change to ‘any’ so as to yield the grammatical

Kim did not want any candy.

5. Optionally, AUX + NEG (‘did’ + ‘not’) can be contract to ‘didn’t’. This would provide us with

Kim didn’t want any candy.

The above features of negation must be taken into account by any theory of grammar. While in the above example. for simplicity’s sake,  operations were applied to an affirniative sentence, a semantic or conceptual representation of such a sentence can (and should) be the point of origin. Negation features therefore may include meaning terms. The surface string of words must be the same whatever theory of grammar k being considered, as must be the features of negation.

Negation is one of the earliest sentcnce structure rules acquired by children. According to the classic research of Klima and Bellugi (1966) and others who later replicated thcir work, there is a consistent paftern in this, with negation being acquired in three main periods. Sample sentences and their analysis follow below for each period. Incidentally, these data are those taken from the sane three children whose morpheme acquisition was described abwc in the Brown study.

Period I. ‘No money’. ‘Not a teddy bear’, ‘No play that’, ‘No fall’, ‘No the sun shining’, ‘No singing song’.

In this, the earliest period, a negat:on marker (NEG), in the form of no or ‘not’, is placed at the front of an affirmative utterance (U). Thus we see utterances typically of the form, Neg +U (‘No fall’). Children everywhere seem to use much the same pattern in early acquisition of  negation. French children place non or pas before U (Grégoirc. 1937),while Japanese children place the Japanese negative marker ,miafter the U (U + Neg) in accordance with the structure of their language (McNeill & McNeill, 1968).

Period 2 ‘1 don’t want it’, ‘I don’t know his name’, ‘We can’t talk’, ‘You can’t dance’, ‘Book say no’, ‘Touch the snow no’, ‘That no Mommy’, ‘There no squirrels’. ‘He no bite you’, ‘1 no want envelope’. In this second period, the negative marker tends to appear internally within the utterance rather than outside it as in the previous period, and the auxiliaries ‘do’ and ‘can’ appear with the negation marker. Klima and Bellugi believe that children treat ‘don’t’ and ‘can’t’ as single words and do not analyse them as Aux + Neg. That the uncontracted forms of ‘do’ and ‘can’ do not appear in the data is one argument which they present in support of their view. Utterances are still of a rather crude nature, though, and negative imperatives, ‘Touch the snow no’ (‘Don’t touch the snow’), are as poorly formed as they were in the previous period (‘No play that’ (‘Don’t play with that’), ‘No fall’ (‘Don’t fall’: in one interpretation)).

Period 3. ‘Paul can’t have onc’, ‘This can’t stick’, ‘1 didn’t did it’, ‘You didn’t caught me’, ‘Cause he won’t talk’, ‘Donna won’t let go’, ‘I am not a doctor’, ‘This not ice cream’, ‘Paul not tired’, ‘I not hurt him’, ‘1 not see you anymore’, ‘Don’t touch the fish’. ‘Don’t kick my box’. In this third period, the period before perfect negatives arc formed, the copula ‘be’ and the modal ‘will’ appear with negation and imperative negatives are formed with ‘do’ rather than the simple negative (‘Don’t touch the fish’ as opposed to ‘Touch the snow no’ in earlier periods). The child now has a good idea of when ‘do’ must be inserted (‘You didn’t caught me’. ‘1 didn’t did it’, ‘Don’t kick my box’).

In this third period, the period before perfect negatives are formed, the cpula ‘be’ and the modal ‘will’ appear with negation and imperative negatives are formed with ‘do’  rather tahen the simple negative  ( Don’t touch the fish’ as opposed to ‘Touch the snow no’ in earlier periods). The child now has agood idea when ‘do’ must be unserted  (‘You didn’t caught me’, ‘I didn’t did it’, ‘ Don’t kick my box’) and when ‘do’ is not inserted (‘I am not a doctor’, ‘Donna won’t let go’). The child still makes errors but seems to grasp the basic notion that ‘do’ is not added when there is a modal (‘can’, ‘will’: ‘This can’t stick [adhere?]’, ‘Donna won’t let go’) or when ‘be’ is the verb (‘I am not a doctor’). The children’s mastery of negation at this period is nearly complete. Only a number of relativcly minor problems, such as assignment of tense to AUX (‘You didn’t caught mc’, ‘I didn’t did it’), remain to be resolved. In the former case thc child sccms to bc confuscd about the morpheme structure of ‘caught’ as ‘catch + PAST’ probably because it is an exception whose present form is ‘catch’. In the latter case. thc child may have confused the ‘do’ of the main vcrb with the ‘do’ of AUX.

After this period. it is only a matter of months before most of the problems in negative marking are successfully dealt with, although children may make occasional mistakes for years after. (The first author observed such occasional errors in the speech of his 5-year-old niece along with errors in other niorphemes involving exceptions.)

B.     Question formations

The learning of question forms also demonstrates a complex abstract task which young children can solve. Two basic forms of the question that have been the tocus ot much research are. Yes-No questions are ones which solicit a yes or no answer, e.g. ‘Is Kim hungry?’, ‘Does Kim want some candy?’ The WH question is one that uses who, whose where, when, how, . etc. and is a request for information, ‘Who wants candy?’, ‘When will we go’?’ Tag question consist of sentences with question endings such as: ‘Peter will go,wont he, ‘The dog ate it, didnt he.” Some notes on Yes-No questions and WI I questions arc now presented.

1.      Yes-No questions

The formation of Yes-No questions involves the same basic syntactic considerations as in the formation of negatives. Declarative sentences which have a copula ‘be’, modal, AUX, etc. must have that item in the front of thc sentence in a question (Yes-No question Type 1). For example, ‘John is a very tall boy’ and ‘Is John a very tall boy’?’

Here, copula be’ is fronted.

‘Bobby can go to the store’ and ‘Can Bobby go to the store?’ modal is fronted.

‘Mary is singing now’ and ‘is Mary singing now?’ AUX is fronted.

In the case of a lone verb (not a copula. no modal or AUX), AUX ‘do’ must be added. And further, as in the negative, the tense shifts from the verb to the AUX (Yes-No question Type 2). For example,‘Kim wanted some candy’ and ‘Did  Kim want any candy?’ AUX added to front, tense shifts to AUX, lexical concord.

2.      WH questions

            The WH question is so-called because of thc similarity of thc initial sound of the various question words: who, what where, when how, why,,etc. In a sense Wh words are PRO (reduced substitute) forms since they are formed by substituting the phrase which is targeted for questioning with an appropriate WH word.. The WH word is always placed at the beginning of the sentence. As the following example sentences show, making WH questions involves a high degree of complexity which the child must recognize and internalize:

The girl jumpcd on the table’ and ‘who’ jumpcd on the table?’ WH for Subject NP.
‘The girl hit the boy” and Who(m) did the girl hit?’ WH for Object NP.
‘The baby is on table” and ‘where is the baby’?’ Wh for Prep Phrase of Location.
‘The monkey will be on the table.  becomes ‘When’ will the monkey be?’
Modal fronted to follow WH.
‘The monkey is sitting on the table’  becomes’ where  is the monkey sitting?’
AUX fronted to follow WH. 

The acquisition of question forms follows a basic pattern for children (Klima & Beliugi. 1966; McNciil, 1970: Cazdcn, 1970). Intcrcstingly , children take the easy way and begin the production of questions not through the use of sentence structure but by using intonation. This is natural since in hearing a sentence without knowing its meaning it is the intonation pattern that dominates one’s attention. The first period of question acquisition is thus marked by the use of rising intonation, which may be used with single words or with phrases, such as ‘Sit chair?’, ‘ball go?’, and some set phrases with ‘what’ and ‘where’, ‘What’s that?’, ‘Where cookie?’

            The next phase consists of’ the use of WH qucstions which arc simply tacked on to the beginning of an utterance in a similar pattern to negation: ‘where are my mittens?’, what he can you smiling’?, At the same time Yes-No Type 1 fronting is used, ‘will  you help mc?’. as well as Yes-No Type 2, ‘Did I caught it?’, ‘Does lion walk’?’ .

            Thc final stage consists of the gradual emergence of tag questions with, at first, no negation on the tag. e.g. *He’ll catch cold, will he?’ and then the final emergence of the correct form, e.g., ‘We had fun, didn’t  we?’. The full form is usually acquired by the time children are 4 years old (Brown & Hanlon, 1970).

C.    passive formation

            Children begin to use more complex forms such as the passive much later in their language development, perhaps due to its relatively infrequent use by adults in speech to children (Wells. 1978). The passive occurs so rarely in children’s spontaneous speech that researchers usually resort to analysing the child’s comprehension of the passive form or eliciting production through imitation tasks. [he simple passive is related to the active in the following way:

‘The boy pushed the truck’

‘The truck  pushed the boy’ .Agent subject and object NPs are reversed.

The truck pushed by the boy’ . ‘by’ appears before agent NP.

‘The truck be pushed by the boy ‘.AUX ‘be’ appears before the verb.

‘The truck was pushed by the boy’ . AUX is assigned same tcnsc as on vcrh.

            The full passive can be produced, as in this example, or an abbreviated (‘truncated’) passive may be constructed where certain other subject NPs do not appear. Thus, ‘The door was opened’, where the agent NP is not realized. While certain complex passives may involve separate processes from the active, the above steps provide the essential features of what a child must know in comprehending the meaning of the passive and then producing it.
            Children’s comprehension of the passive form does not begin until they are around 4 years old. Production occurs much later. Before this, they rely on word order or the probability of an event occurring. For example. in a sentence like ‘T’hc candy was eaten b the ir1’ there is really only one likely way to interpret the meaning, that is, the girl ate the candy since candy doesn’t eat pcopIe

D.    Other problems

1.      Structures with two more verbs

            As may be expected. the acquisition of complex sentences, utterances containing two or more verbs, occurs much later than the forms discussed above, and may not be complete until the age of 11. Limber (1973) analysed the emergence of these forms as they began to appear around thc age of 2 or 3 years. Almost all of these complex forms consist of clauses that are attached to the end of utterances, e.g. ‘I want Bill to go’. Only much later do clauses appear within the utterances, e.g. ‘The man who live here is gone’.
Initially, object complements such as ‘1 wanna go home’ appear. (An object complement consists of the object plus another verb.) Although attested to by any parent, othcr vcrbs also take complements. For example, utterances such as ‘Watch me draw circles’ and ‘I see you sit down’ occur around the same tinic. However, the verb ‘want’ is used in a wider range of constructions and may serve as a guide for children as they add other verbs to their vocabulary that must follow similar rules.

2.      Verb problems

            Carol Chomsky (1969) found that some complex grammatical structures may not be acquired until quite late, even at the age of 10 or 11 years. She looked at the application of the Minimal Distance Principle (MDP) (Rosenbaum, 1967). When children use the MDP, they sometimes apply it incorrectly depending on the verb in the main clause. For example, in the sentence ‘john told bill to shovel the driveway’ it is clear to children  that Bill will do the shovelling. On the other hand, in a sentence such as ‘John promised Bill to shovel the driveway’, children apply the same strategy and assign the shovelling task to the closest noun ‘Bill’ when they ought to be interpreting the meaning so that it is John who will do the work.

            Another verb which causes the same problem is ‘ask’. Children often cannot distinguish between the sentences ‘1 asked Mary what to do’ (where ‘I’ is the subject of ‘do’) and ‘I told Mary what to do’ (where ‘Mary’ is the subject of ‘do’). In the beginning, ‘ask’ and ‘tell’ are not differentiated. The two verbs can become differentiated, however, when a WH-clause is used; to ‘Ask Peter the colour of the doll’s dress’ children
give the answer instead of asking for the answer, but to ‘Ask Peter what colour this tray is’ they do properly ask a question. There is confusion too between ‘ask’ and ‘tell’ with WH-clauses where the subject does not appear: the child responds to both as ‘tell’. Thus, for example, we have the following interchange (C. Chomsky, 1969, p. 57):

Research          : ask ellen what to feed the doll

Child               : feed her  hamburgers

Research          : all right now, tell what to feed her

Child               : again?

            It is clear that between the ages of 5 and 10 children are still in the process of learning the more complex aspects of their language.

REFERENCES

Dardjowidjojo, Soenjono. 2003. Psikolinguistik, Jakarta : Yayasan Obor Indonesia

Steinberg, Danny d dkk. 2000. Psycholinguistics : Language, Mind and World. Japan: Saitama

http://bbi3215psycholinguistics.wikifoundry.com/page/5.3+Early+Speech+Stages%3