Cognition, Vol. 7, No. 1

Editorial board Franccsco Antinucci Institute di Psicologia, CNR, Via dei Monti Tiburtini 509, 00157 Rome, Italy Hiroshi Faculty Tokyo Hongo, Tokyo,

Azuma of Education, University, Bunkyo-ku Japan

Paul Bertelson Laboratoire de Psychologie Experimentale, Universite Libre de Bruxelles 117 Av. Adolphe Buyl, B-l 050 Brussels, Belgium Ned Block Dept. of Philosophy, M.I. T., Cambridge, Mass. 02139, U.S.A.

Anne Cutler Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Centre for Research on Percep tion and Cognition, University of Sussex, Brighton BNl, Gt. Britain Margaret Donaldson Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, 1-7 Roxburgh Street, Edinburgh EH8 9TA, Gt. Britain Peter D. Eimas Walter S. Hunter Laboratory of Psychology, Brown University, Providence, RI. 02912, U.S.A.

Francois Bresson Laboratoire de Psychologie 54 bvd. Raspail, F. 75006 Paris, France

Gunnar Fant Lab. of Speech Transmission, Royal Institute of Technology, S-l 0044 Stockholm 70, Sweden

Roger Brown Dept. of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 02138,

Gilles Fauconnier 1 Rue des Guillemites, 75004 Paris, France

U.S.A.

Jerome S. Bruner Dept. of Exp. Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, Gt. Britain

David Fay Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Chicago, Box 4348, Chicago, Ill. 60680, U.S.A.

Noam Chomsky Dept. Modern Languages and Linguistics, M.I.T., Cam bridge, Mass. 02139, U.S.A

Jerry Fodor Dept. of Psychology, M.I. T. El O-034 Cambridge, Mass. 02139,

Eve Clark Department of Linguistics, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305, U.S.A. Richard Cromer MRC Developmental Psychology Unit, Drayton House, Gordon Street, London, WCIH OAN, Gt. Britain

Kenneth Dept. of Monash Clayton,

U.S.A.

Forster Psychology, University, Vie. 3168, Australia

Merrill Garrett Department of Psychology, M.I. T. El O-034, Cambridge, Mass. 02139, U.S.A.

Lila Gleitman Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 3700 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104, U.S.A. David T. Hakes, Department of Psychology, University of Texas, Austin, Tex. 78712, U.S.A. Henry Hecaen Directeur d’Etudes, Ecole Pratique des Hau tes Etudes, Unite de Recherches Neuropsychologiques, I.N.S.E.R.M., 2, rue d’Alesia, F- 75014 Paris, France Michel Imbert Laboratoire de Neurophysiologie, College de France, 11 place Marcelin Berthelot, F- 75005 Paris, France Barbel Inhelder Faculte de Psychologie et des Sciences de IEducation, Universite de Genkve, CH-1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland Marc Jeannerod Laboratoire de Neuropsychologie Experimentale, 16 kv. Doyen L&pine, F-69500 Bron. France Philip Johnson-Laird Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Centre for Research on Perception and Cognition, Sussex University, Brighton BNl 9QG, Gt. Britain Peter W. Jusczyk Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N. S., Canada B3H 4JL

Jerrold J. Katz Dept. of Linguistics, CUNY Graduate Center, 23 W 42nd Street, New York, N. Y. 10036, U.S.A. Mary-Louise Kean Cognitive Science Program, School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Calif 92717, U.S.A. Edward Klima Dept. of Linguistics, La Jolla, University of California, San Diego, Cali’ 92037, U.S.A. Stephen M. Kosslyn Department of Psychology and Social Relations, Harvard University, William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02138, U.S.A. James R. Lackner Department of Psychology, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. 02154, U.S.A. Harlan Lane Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, Mass. 02115, U.S.A. Willem Levelt Psychological Laboratory, Nifmegen University, Erasmuslaan 16, Nijmegen, Netherlands John Lyons Dept. of Linguistics, Adam Ferguson Building, Edinburgh EH8 9LL, Gt. Britain David McNeil1 Department of Behavioral Sciences, Committee on Cognition and Communication, University of Chicago, 5848 South University Avenue, Chicago, Ill. 60637, U.S.A. John Marshall Psychological Laboratory, Niimegen University, Erasmuslaan 16, Nijmegen, Netherlands

JosC Morais Laboratoire de Psvchologie Experimentale, Universitt Libre de Bruxelles, I I 7 Avenue Adolphe Buyl, B-I 050 Brussels, Belgium

Tim Shallicc Psychology Department, The National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, QueenS Square, London WCI, Gt. Britain

John Morton Applied Psychology Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 ZEF, Ct. Britain

Dan 1. Slobin Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Calif 94720. U.S.A

George Noizet Laboratoire de Psychologie Experimen tale, 29 Av. R. Schuman, F-13 Aix en Provence, France

Sidney Strauss Department of Educational Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel

Daniel Osherson ZOC-I 24 (DSRE), M.I. T., Cambridge, Mass. 02139,

Michael Studdert-Kennedy Department of Communication Arts and Sciences, Queens College, City University of New York, Flushing, N. Y. 11367, U.S.A.

U.S.A.

Michael Posner Dept. of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore. 97403, U.S.A. David Premack Psychology Department, University of Pennsylvania, 3813-15 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. I91 74, U.S.A Zenon Pylyshyn Dept. of Linguistics and Psychology, M.I. T., Cambridge, Mass. 02139,

U.S.A.

Andrk Roth Lecours Hotel-Dieu de Montreal 3840 rue St. Urban, Montreal, Quebec H2W I T8, Canada Steven Rose BioIogy Department, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK 7 6AA, Gt. Britain Klaus R. Scherer Fachbereich 06, Psychologie der Justus Liebi. Universitat, Otto Behegel Strasse, 6300 Giessen, F.R.G. Scania de SchGnen Laboratoire de Psychologie, 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75270 Paris Cedex 06, France

David Swinney Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, Mass. 02155, U.S.A. Alina Szeminska Olesiska 513. Warsaw. Poland Virginia Valian Ph.D. Program in Psvchologv. C. U.N. Y. Graduate Center,. _ 33 West 42nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036, U.S.A. Edward Walker Department of Psychology, ML T., Cambridge, Mass. 02139, U.S.A. Peter Wason Psycholinguistics, University College London, Research Unit, 4 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HE, Gt. Britain Dr. Edgar Zurif Aphasia Research Center, Boston University Medical Center, 150 South Huntington Avenue, Room Cl S-5, Boston, Mass. 02130, U.S.A. Hermina Sinclair de Zwart Centre d’Epistemologie Gknetique. Universite de Geneve, CH-I ZII Geneva, Switzerland

Cognition, 7 (1979) l-2

Editorial

Cognition is entering into its seventh year of existence. We were not ripe enough at seven minus two and we do not want to wait until seven plus two so we have decided to get a number of changes under way right now in order, hopefully, to improve the form and substance of our journal. First, I am very happy to inform you that both John Morton and Michael Posner have agreed to join Thomas Bever, co-founder of Cognition, as Associate Editors of the journal. We expect that these additions will help us to secure a broader coverage of the various aspects of cognition in general and give us better geographical representation. It is the vocation of Cognition to serve as a vehicle for discussion and it is for this purpose that our Discussion section will be preserved in spite of the creation of a new Brief Reports and Letters section. This new section will contain notes, short experiments and Letters to the Editor. We have taken this initiative because a number of short, intelligent experimental contributions have not been accepted due to our bias towards studies with a broad theoretical base. However, both kinds of contributions are desirable and necessary in a field such as ours. Good data presented within an intelligent theoretical framework can be as important as the theoretical developments that they may in turn trigger. This being said, the occasional short papers that we hope to publish are not the sole reason for inaugurating this new section. It is our feeling that quite apart from being a means of conveying research results, the journal should be an instrument which favors the development of easy communication between members of the scientific community. Hence, interesting reflections concerning the field, methods, ways of working, the wider scientific context, can all be of potential interest to others. Short notes on theoretical, historical or scientific matters are all candidates for inclusion in this short section. We therefore encourage you strongly to send us any contributions which you think might fit this description. However, at least at first, we reserve the right to decide on them without appealing to the usual review process. Finally, I would like to draw your attention to a problem which is of some concern to this journal and which might be the object of fruitful discussion. It is often said that the pressures of the academic world make people write papers that serve no real purpose other than that of advancing their author’s careers. If this is so it is certainly a sad turn of events for authors who find themselves, like many other workers, having to produce something which they do not respect and whose purpose they do not fully grasp. However,

this situation is also difficult for those of us who act as reviewers and have to rate a great deal of this production with a vast loss of personal time. As active scientists it is obvious that we can increase both our colleagues’ and students’ awareness of this problem for which I see no simple solution beyond that of true discussion of all the workings of academia to which we contribute and from which we suffer. In closing, may I remind you that we would like readers to let us know in what way Cognition can carry more services to the profession. Some of your ideas may not have occurred to us and others may be germinating. For those that are still in the bud your suggestions will help us to make up our minds and bring projects of mutual interest to fruition. Please let us know what you think. Jacques Mehler

cognirion. 7 (1979) 3-17 @lsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne-Printed

1 in the Netherlands

A cross-linguistic study of the processing of causative sentences* MARY SUE AMMON and DAN I. SLOBIN University

of California,

Berkeley

Abstract The comprehension of sentences expressing instigative causation (e.g., The horse makes the camel run) was investigated in children between the ages of 2;0 and 4;4, speaking English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. Crosslinguistic differences in development reveal the roles of morphological (causative particle, case inflection) and syntactic devices (periphrasis, word order) in guiding children’s processing of such constructions. It is suggested that local cues (inflectional suffixes, particles, specialized causative verb forms) contribute to the more rapid development of sentence processing strategies in Serbo-Croatian and Turkish. The word order systems of English and Italian, which require that the listener hold the entire sentence pattern in mind in order to determine underlying semantic relations, contribute to slower development on this task,

Children’s comprehension of causative constructions was studied as one part of a large cross-linguistic investigation conducted in Berkeley, Rome, Dubrovnik and Istanbul (Aksu, 1978; Clancy, Jacobsen and Silva, 1976; Johnston and Slobin, 1977; Radulovic, 1975; Slobin, 1978; Slobin and Bever, 1978). Our overall concern is the effect of grammatical form on the developing ability to express basic concepts in language. The data consists of crosslinguistic differences in the rate and pattern of acquisition of the means for encoding notions of space, time, agency and causation. *This study is part of the Berkeley Cross-Linguistic Acquisition Project (Dan I. Slobin, Principal Investigator), carried out with generous and appreciated support from the William T. Grant Foundation to the Institute of Human Learning and from NIMH to the Language-Behavior Research Laboratory of the University of California. The investigation was designed in collaboration with Ayhan Aksu, Francesco Antinucci, Thomas G. Bever, Susan Ervin-Tripp, Judith R. Johnston and Ljubica Radulovid. We gratefully acknowledge the labors of our testers: Penny Boyes-Braem, Judith R. Johnston and Gail Loewenstein Holland in the United States; Rosanna Bosi and Wanda Gianelli in Italy; Ljubica Radulovid and Emma Zalovic in Yugoslavia; and Ayla Algar and Alev Orhon in Turkey. Reprint requests should be sent to: Dan I. Slobin, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, Calif. 94720, U.S.A.

4

Mary Sue Ammon and Dan I. Slobin

In the present study we are concerned with forms for the expression of causation-that is, situations in which one agent impels another agent to act. English has a variety of means-lexical, morphological and syntactic-for such expressions. Here we consider the productive expression most accessible to children: the periphrastic construction using make as a causative verb, as in, “You made me do it.” The four languages studied-English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish-have different means for the production of such expressions. The first three, all Indo-European SVO (subject-verb-object) languages, have similar periphrastic constructions, differing in regard to the roles of word order and case inflection. By contrast, Turkish, an agglutinative SOV language, encodes causation by the insertion of one or more causative particles in the verb. Table 1 compares the productive causative expressions in the four languages, using one of the sentences from the investigation. instigative

TABLE 1, Comparison of causative constructions in English, Italian, Serbo-Croatian and Turkish

English The horse makes NOUN VERB

causatiue

the camel run NOUN VERB

inftnittue

third person Italian I1 cavallo [the horse] NOUN

fa [makes] VERB causative

correre [to run] VERB

infinitive

il cammello. [the camel] NOUN

third person Serbo-Croatian idrijebe [horse] NOUN nominative

Turkish At [horse] NOUN

tjera

devu

[drives]

[camel]

VERB

NOUN occusatiue*

causative third person

deveyi [camel]

nominattve NOUNaccusative

da

trEi. [runs]

PARTICLE

VERB third perSOn

kostursun.

[should make run] VERB causative optatiue third person

*The noun in the example is feminine, and therefore has a distinct contrast between nominative (deva) and accusative (devu). Neuter nouns, like tdrijebe, however, appear in the identical form in both nominative and accusative. Sentences used in the study exhibited three types of noun combinations: neuter-feminine (object marking), feminineneuter (subject marking), and neuter-neuter (neither).

Processing of causative sentences

5

Note that there are word-order differences among the three SVO languages-roughly: English: The horse makes the camel run; Italian: The horse makes run the camel; Serbo-Croatian: The horse makes the camel that (it) runs. In both English and Serbo-Croatian, the action verb appears at the end of the sentence, with the causative verb in the normal verbal position between the two nouns; in Italian the entire verbal construction remains in normal position. In English and Italian the causative verb (makes, fa) agrees with the subject in person and number, while the action verb is in the infinitive (run, correre). In Serbo-Croatian, a particle separates the causative clause from the action clause, and both verbs are finite. In addition, the case inflectional system marks the instigator as subject and the instigated as object. Also, the causative verb in Serbo-Croatian (tjerati) is a specialized one, used to discuss driving animals and impelling action, whereas the English make and Italian fare are general verbs performing a large number of other functions. In terms of surface marking, therefore, Serbo-Croatian seems to provide the clearest cues of the three Indo-European languages. The Turkish causative retains standard SOV order, embedding a causative particle within the verb. The particle follows the verb root (agreeing with it in vowel harmony) and is followed by particles of person, number, tense, mood and aspect (e.g., kos ‘run’ + -uyor ‘third person’ = ko$uyor ‘he/she runs’; + -tur- ‘causative’ = kogturuyor ‘he/she makes (someone run’). ’ As in Serbo-Croatian, the case inflectional system marks the instigator as subject and the instigated as object. However, unlike Serbo-Croatian, Turkish has no grammatical gender and no exceptions to the regular inflectional paradigm. As a result, the object is always clearly marked in Turkish. In Serbo-Croatian, however, neuter nouns appear in unmarked form for both nominative and accusative, thus making it impossible to mark neuter direct objects inflectionally.2 Turkish, then, provides clear surface cues for the causative, but of a different sort than the Indo-European languages. These contrasts between the four languages allow us to compare the roles of morphological (causative particle, case inflections) and syntactic devices (periphrasis, word order) in facilitating children’s comprehension of causative constructions. Very little work has been done on the development of these forms in child speech (Aksu, 1975; Baron, 1977; Bowerman, 1974, 1977). Primarily what ’ There are actually several different forms of the causative particle in Turkish. In this study we used the most common form,--&(ko@~- ‘make run’, ytizdtir- ‘make swim’, yutzr- ‘make lie down’) and the reduced form -t-, used with polysyallabic verb stems ending in a vowel (at&- ‘make jump’, yiitit‘make walk’, uyuf- ‘make sleep’). There were no differences in results for the two forms of the morpheme, and the data for the two forms are presented together. *The same is true of masculine inanimate nouns in the singular, and neuter and feminine nouns in the plural. As shown in Table 3, only singular neuter and feminine nouns were used in this study.

6

Mary Sue Ammon

and Dan I. Slobin

has been observed is that both the inflectional structure in Turkish and the periphrastic structure in English start appearing in child speech between the ages of two-and-a-half and three. Although the evidence is limited, it is probably the case that children in all four languages hear instigative causatives frequently, and can use them productively sometime in the third year of life. In the present study we examine the ability of children between the ages of 2;0 and 4;4 to comprehend such constructions in an experimental task. Our major concern in this study lies in cross-linguistic comparison of the course of acquisition of these constructions. Control of forms in free speech, supported by communicative intent, generally occurs at an earlier age than is demonstrated in formal comprehension testing, but this fact should not alter the language-specific development patterns which we seek.

Method Subjects The causative comprehension measure reported in this paper was one of 16 linguistic and nonlinguistic tests offered to matched samples of two-, three-, and four-year-olds in the four countries. Our plan was to study 48 children in each field site, in groups of three boys and three girls spaced at four-month intervals between the ages of 2;0 and 4;4. By and large, we completed this plan, though there are gaps in the data at various points, due to the tribulations of carrying out research in foreign countries within a limited time schedule. Table 2 presents a summary of the subject sample participating in this phase of the investigation. Since we were interested in cross-linguistic, and not cross-cultural factors, we tried, as much as possible, to equate our samples on sociocultural grounds. That is, we limited ourselves to children of urban, professional parents, at least one of whom had a college degree. By Table 2.

Number of subjects contributing

to causative comprehension

Group

of children

A B C D Total

Age

2;0-2;4 2;8-3;0 3;4-3;8 4;0-4;4

Number

data

English

Italian

Serbo-Croatian

Turkish

10 11 12 12

10 12 12 11

12 12 12 12

10 8 11 10

45

45

48

39

Processing of causative sentences

7

and large, we feel that we were working with a fairly homogeneous group of children across the four field sites, at least in terms of early material and intellectual experience. Each child was studied extensively, over a period of 1 S-20 hours, within a ten-day span. The causative task was administered midway in the series. The examiner was always female, and always a native speaker. Procedure

Examiner and child sat at the same side of a table. The child was presented with a pair of toy animals or dolls and was asked to demonstrate an action instigated by one and carried out by the other (e.g., The horse makes the camel run). The child was already familiar with these animals from two sessions of a word order comprehension task (Slobin and Bever, 1978), in which s/he was to demonstrate actions involving two animals and a reversible transitive verb (e.g., The horse kicks the camel). A pair of animals was introduced and named, and the relevant action was demonstrated for each animal separately (The camel can run; The horse can run). The child was then instructed to demonstrate the causative interaction. Each sentence was offered up to three times, in a medium flat intonation at normal speaking rate with equal stress on both nouns. If the child’s response, after three presentations, remained unclear, s/he was probed by questions as to what each of the animals had done. A correct response required that the first animal instigate the action (either by direct contact with the second animal, or by verbal instruction uttered by the child for the sake of the first animal) and that the second animal carry out the action. Responses were also counted as correct if, on questioning, the child attributed instigation to the first animal (e.g., The horse

told the camel to run; The camel ran because

the horse wanted him to;

etc.). There were five classes of errors: (1) no response or unclear response, (2) reversal (e.g,, the camel made the horse run), (3) both animals act separately, (4) only the first animal acts, (5) only the second animal acts. Design

There were six causative configurations, as shown in Table 3. The order of the six configurations was always the same. For half of the children, the first participant listed in Table 3 was the instigator; for the other half it was the second. To control for possible biases of physical placement of the animals, each instigator was placed an equal number of times to the right and to the left of the other participant. The syntactic constructions of the stimulus sentences are presented in Table 1. In Serbo-Croatian, feminine nouns have distinctive nominative and accusative forms, whereas neuter nouns appear in uninflected form for both of these cases. In order to test for the effects of

8

Mary Sue Ammon and Dan I. Slobin

Table 3.

Verb-noun

configurations

used in causative comprehension

task

l.:nglish

Italian

Scrbo-Croatian*

Turkish

makes run the horse the camel

FJ corrcrc il cavallo il cammollo

tjera da trti Zdrijcbe (N) dcva (I:)

kosturwn at devc

makes s\vim the dog the cat

fa nuotare il cant il g3 tto

tjcra da pliva ktenc (N) maEe (N)

yiiLdiirsiin kBpck kcdi

makes lie down the boy the girl

fil wdcrc il bambino la bambina

tjera da Ic2e djctc (N) curica (F)

yattlrsin

makes jump the chick the lamb

fa saltarc I3 pallina I’agnellino

tjera da \koEi pile (N) janje (N)

atlat