Syntactic development in

Spanish: contributions from

Language Usage Models
Dra. María Luisa Silva
CIIPME
 Handout
• An overview of some particular characteristics of
syntactic development analysis in Spanish.
• Point some troubles that these characteristics
carry out when we study spontaneous syntactic
usages: Need to improve a different perspective
• An overview of some central theoretical
assumptions of Cognitive- Functional Perspective
• Comparative analysis of some syntactic
phenomena in Spanish speaking children.
• Introducing previous research results and future
research guidelines.
 Some particular characteristics of syntactic development
•
analysis
Analysis general procedure: comparing child syntactic usages with one possible adult
correlative form, so ever the researcher looks the child usage thinking that, in some way
the child must access and perform an static adult form because it’s the grammatical
horizon.
• So child uses are, by definition, deficit usages and adult uses are complete uses.

• To develop this kind analysis the researcher must to isolate and cut, whitin the child
discourse , some phenomena. In this way the researcher try to freeze child syntactic
competence and, finally, believe that child syntactic use is monolitic and static, so we
believe in this researcher’s ilussion and this ilussion reduce the whole child discoursive
competence .

• In this framework chomskyan model was predominant, due to the assumption of

autonomous syntax it’s absolutely necessary to control the interference of contextual
variables. Most appropriate methodological designs were tests in which could be explore
child's ability to discriminate meanings only by child’s usage of syntactic cues (syntactic
boostrapping). So, experimental methods are the preferred candidates to know peculiarities
of child syntactic competence (Lust, Flynn and Foley, 1996).
• However, several researchers have considered these methodological approaches as very
defective if we want to understand the dynamics of children's syntactic development (Crain,
1992; Bocaz, 1997, Kress, 1983, Mc Daniel, Mc Kee and Smith Cairns, 1996). Despite these
reflections and efforts these enterprise is still … (en ciernes). In these sense, in Spanish is
very remarkable the work of S.López Ornat’s team (L’opez Ornat, Sebastian …)
 Why is necessary a different approach
to understand syntactic development?
• Traditional syntactic development research has shown strong explanatory
power to understand syntactic parsing responses provided by children in
experimental circumstances.
• But his contributions do not explain common phenomena in child speech (i. e.
existence of alternative routines, relationships between forms and contexts /
tasks of uses, etc.). In this sense we can sustain that it’s a limitation because
experimental results can not wholly understand the variety of resources that
children have. So, they not take into account the complex instances of child
development, in a perspective away from telic / adult - subsidiary point of
view.
• As been noticed by other students these limitation is shared with other
disciplines studying the relationship between language, behavior and human
thought (citas) . We believe that the possible origin of this limitation is
conceiving the language symbol as a mere formal entity, an unit detached
from his social and psychological motivations, conditions that subjects
instantiate in each use.
 Cognitive- Functional Approaches
• Cognitive-functional perspective affirms that language development is a complex and dynamic process by which
the child internalizes the categories of their culture. So via some general cognitive principles characteristic of the
human beings , i. e. social and cognitive habilities, children could shared the symbolic categorization system.
(Lakoff, 1987; Hopper, 1998, Langacker, 1993, 2000).
• Researchers describing linguistic form must to investigate the conditions, constraints, possibilities that speakers
updated when use this form. Therefore it is necessary to have a corpus representative of language usage:
spontaneous speech samples or similar natural communication exchanges. In this sense grammar is conceived as
"emergent structure": the signs are dependent on other uses and contexts in which speaker and listener have
participated (Hopper, 1985).
• Human beings categorize the world from a network of symbolic resources. Categorizations respond to motivations
of different kinds (psychological, social or communicative). The symbolic uses evidence these character (Rosch,
1978; Rosch, Thompson and Varela, 1993, Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff 1987, Langacker, 1987, 1993, 2000,
Nuyts and Pederson 1997; et al .)
• Linguistic form process of learning (or development) is a process of neuro-cognitive expertise and
grammaticalization in which subjects can construct abstract routines of these uses (Idealized Cognitive Models)
based on their experience in linguistic exchanges (Langacker 1987, 1993; 2000, Tomasello 2001). These cognitive
models have a high degree of generality, but they are not "universal" , they are determined by specific social
interaction routines. These conditions vary according to the patterns of interaction of each community and / or
culture.
• The children's grammars are not grammars "incomplete", "deficit" or “ in developing" to a standard adult
grammatical system; are grammars that express the complexity of the processes of appropriation of language
(Karmiloff-Smith, 1986).
• Researching the complex process of syntactic development is to investigate the functional characteristics of the
forms, and if we find some differences inquiring into the psychological or social motivations that are updated.
 Complex syntactic development:
Relative Clauses
• Perhaps Relative clauses (Rcs.)are one of the most clause type that have been considered in
syntactic development studies.

• Previous Assumptions: Rcs. earliest forms in which it is possible to study how children articulate
syntactic dependency.
• Structural perspective analyzed children Rcs. to understand how people develop hipotaxis from
parataxis , so hypothesize in language development successive and different chronological stages
(Gili Gaya, 1975; Alarcos Lloras, 1976).
• Chomskyan perspective (Aspects, and G&B): Rcs. are one of the first transformations, children
uses of Rcs. (errors in comprehension or production) allow us to know how different parameter
values are situated. (Echeverría, 1978; Solana, 1996, 1997, Crain and Thornton , 1998).
• Neopiagetian RCs. different functions Rcs. play in discursive narratives and their different
morphological and syntactic features in different languages allow us to know different syntactic /
discursive stages how language models thought (Dasinger and Toupin, 1997; Bocaz, 1997; Jisa and
Kern, 1998).
• Functional cognitive perspective Rcs. have different syntagmatic structures due to the different
motivations expressed. Also Rcs. Children frequency uses are different to the Rcs. frequency of
use to which children are exposed. So frequency is a good resource to inquire how a motivation
could be grammaticalized.

• All of these studies present dissimilar results or with few points of agreement (i.e. type of earliest
Rc., or the order of appearance of each type of Rc.) .
• Probably we can assume that the differences could be assigned to the different methodological
perspectives.
 Rc. cognitive and discursive function
1. Locate syntax development in communicative competence developmental perspective: RCs.
are a structure that manifest how speakers manage referential function.
• Referential function: Cognitive capacity by which speakers can provide adequate information to
his partner , so by this both can share the same perspective codified in the message.
• The development of this capacity involves the child can move off of their own point of view and
the ability for the child to form expectations about the information that could require the caller
(Glucksberg, Krauss, and Weisberg, 1966, Deutsch and Pechman, 1982, Dickson, 1982; Matthews,
Lieven and Tomasello, 2007, 2009).
• The researches find what are the cognitive mechanisms that allow children to discern the
informativiness degree by which solve communication problems or avoid that listeners do not
understand or misunderstand the message (Ariel 1988, Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski, 1993;
Tomasello, Carpenter and Liszkowski, 2007, Matthews, Lieven and Tomasello, 2007, 2009).
• Study area very broad includes researches about how young children can draw others'
attention to objects found in the immediate environment, researches about the strategies by
which children can advance knowledge and states of their partners modifying messages to suit
these conditions, etc.
 Rc. and Referential Function
• Children’s using Rc
A girl (3,4)is walking with her mother.
Child: (pointing to a poster where there is a marinated pork) A pig!
Mother Yes, as the pig that we saw in Carrefour.
Child: Aha! The pig we saw

• Mother using Rc. mother tells the girl that construction headed by "that" allows to recall another situation in
which were they and the object mentioned. Both objects (the poster pig and the pig that was found in the
supermarket ) are similar according to mom’s point of view, so the child learn that it could be the same
although they are in different spaces and times and they can do different things: the pig of the poster only
you can see, with the pig of supermarket they probably took about it and the possibility to eat, etc.. From
these inferences the child could conclude that this form (construction headed by the relative "that" - a word
that has no reference in herself ) allows to categorize two objects in the same class despite the dissimilar
events in which the objects are involved.
• These knowledges conform shared knowledge and, by this, children could organize netwok Memory
contens.

• To produce the girl adult constructions, among other activities must acquire the knowledge about the
relevance of shared knowledge to be used, semantic role assignment, the syntactic ordering of lexical items,
issuing appropriate phonemes, a cognitively complex task.

• We believe that exploring the communicative uses of linguistic forms that meet the cognitive function of
discriminating a reference from a previous reference group, we know the characteristics of children syntax
development
 Complex syntactic development in
Rioplatense Spanish: Relative clauses
• Silva, 2008 : The purpose of this study was describe and compare the different forms from
Relative Clauses (RCs.) that two groups of children of 5 and 7 years produce in interviews
with an adult. Population has subdivided according to the differences of Sex (boys and girls)
and Socioeconomic Level (Middle and Lower).
• The children instantiate 7 different syntagmatic forms of Rcs.
• Rcs. Headed with relative pronoun (dar ejemplos)
• Rcs. Headed without relative pronoun (dar ejemplos)

• With these different structures children integrate conceptual information and establish a
Reference point. Reference Point allows easily mentions and identifies an actant with
reference an event.
• We found some common characteristics to all forms; the most relevant: when children
structuring Reference Point, they discriminate one salient characteristic of previous
Conceptual Frame. It is possible that children assign saliency to an element (or part of it)
pertaining to Conceptual Frame previously activated due to exchange needs and mental
state that they can anticipate / attribute to their interlocutor.
• By this, children, as each competent speaker, recognize the need to increase accessibility
degree of a figure, activating information.
• It’s possible that this process could be an expensive and mentally complex conceptual
procedure, and by this several different Rcs. forms could instantiate this cognitive and
sociocultural variation. 
Relative clauses in Rioplatense Spanish
• Analysis showed correlation among Rcs. amount and Age but none correlation
among developmental stages (periods of three months) and amount of Rcs. It’s
possible that in the case of the amount of Rcs. population factors interact with
other factors, for example the psycholinguistic or discursive development (MLU,
MLClause and total Amount of words produced by children during the
interview) (Kidd & Bavin, 2002).
• Also was observed a prevalence of the Rcs type 1 (Rcs. “that/ where/ who/ which/
etc.”). RCs. type 3 (Headless or Free relatives) and the Rcs. type 2 (Crs. “without
that/ where/ who/ which/ etc.”) second and third place are in, respectively,
whereas the Rcs. type 4 (Crs. “shared that/ where/ who/ which/ etc.”) represent a
low percentage.

• Contexts of appearance of Rcs type 1 and Rcs. type 2 were compared to verify if
each of them could be assigned to a different syntactic developmental stages ( Gili
Gaya, 1972; Solana, 1996; 1997. The data allows us to affirm that both forms
coexist although they distribute their contexts of appearance and their discursive
functions. When comparing frequencies it’s observed that Rcs type 1 can appear
with greater variety of syntactic and semantic combinations than Rcs. type 2. It’s
possible to think that Rcs. type 1, at thse ages, are more stable forms and, by this,
speakers use them in a greater variety of uses and to codify a lot of messages.
 Some interesting phenomena
A young child ( M. , 5, 2) in a piece of an semistructured interview with an adult gives instructions

Travel to locate the homes of two of his friends. M. lives in a villa on the Federal Capital, his parents are
Bolivian immigrants with several years of residence in the country. M. attending a municipal garden. The
interview took place in a field of that institution.
As the child was drawing instructions in a notebook a "blueprint" for these indications.
Ent. ¿ De qué lado?

M. De mi casa vos vas así // hay un pasío te vas así acá parás en un trencito parás y ahí vive mi novia //
Celeste
Ent. O sea, tu novia vive cerca de tu casa
M. Y tengo un amigo
Ent. Un amigo, ¿ dónde?
M. De acá// hay otro pasío que vas de frente y ahí vive mi amigo

Ent. What next? M. From my house you'll like that / / there is a corridor here you go and stand on a little train
you stop and my girlfriend lives there / / Celeste
Ent. So, your girlfriend lives near your home
M. And I have a friend Ent. A friend, where? M. From here / / no other corridor that you go in/to front and my
friend lives there
 

•
 Planos
Recorrido 1 Recorrido 2
 Análisis de los datos Fenómeno en análisis:
Situación 1 alternancia de dos formas de cláusulas relativas
(Cr.) Cr. Con que y Cr. Sin que

• Syntax development
traditional perspectives poses
grammatical deficit
• Unstable stage/ coexistence of
different stages / periods of
grammar acquisition.
• Adult Language: target
language development.
• Cognitivo-functional
perspectives(Diesel and
Tomasello, 2001; Silva, 2008)
• Coexistence of alternative
structures => The existence of
different perspectives
Coexistence of perspectives
same phenomenon in adult
usages
• Adult language: "illusion" of
unique grammaticalized
form(forms of literacy
language)
 Analysis
• Route 1: Rc without that "there is a corridor here you go and stand on a train stop
and my girlfriend lives there"
• Route 2: Rc with that "no other corridor that you live there front and my friend”
• Both allows the speaker describe a journey, description requested by the
interviewer.
• Both phrases situated an explicit way, sequences begin from identical starting
point (the child's home) to reach two different goals (the home of Celeste and the
house of a friend.) But, although both share the communicative function differ in
length - number of phrases, and the differential use of syntactic strategies.
• In the case of the first clause, the speaker selects parataxis resource, while the
subordinate clause 2. From a cognitive perspective can consider that, before the
demand for resources in working memory that requires linguistic symbolization of
a conceptual way more complex (sequence of events there and specification of
reference points), the speaker ignores the grammaticalization of the relations of
connection, which does not mean you can not make use of them to other
communication applications.
The relevance of methodological tools: semi structured
interview
• Overcoming tension raised, need very careful methodological resource for data. Interview
ideal candidate: a tool and format of interaction that allowed us to retain the benefits of
spontaneous speech and admitted making ad-hoc guidelines that would guide the decision as
required methodological specific research. Interview resource - compared to others - "less
information filtering" (Avila Baray, 2006; Asti Vera, 1975; Richaud of Ciuffardi Minzi and
Lemos, 2006)., indispensable in working with children (Stromswold, 1996 .), the situation of
elicitation that best reproduces the conditions that govern everyday conversational
interactions (Labov, 1991) - eg. overlaps can occur shifts, speech is not very planned and
participants are not restricted by the subject. -. Interview features peculiar linguistic analysis
of the respondent seeks to elicit a considerable amount of self talk, and this sample will
provide the corpus.
 Una secuencia
Entrevistador
¿Acá está es la escuela?(señala el dibujo de la
escuela)
Sí, esa es la escuela (dibuja y no mira a la entrevistadora) ((traza una línea desde la escuela hacia arriba,
se desplaza a la derecha)) / no, acá está la escuela ((señala la escuela))/ acá estamo la salida, (señala la
puerta)/ te va de flente, así ((traza por sobre las dos primeras líneas)), así ((continúa el trazado hacia la
derecha)) / ¿ves? un paió,1 te vas así/ bien de frente/ cruzás así ((marca un punto del traado)) // cuando
llegaste de cruzar ((continúa y traza hacia la izquierda)) Así ((continúa el trazado))
Mira aquí está la escuela ((deja de trazar y señala con el lápiz)) seguis a panquecito ((retraza)) cruzás de
frente de frente y llegá a estar acá cruzá para acá ahí hay una antopinta ((segundo trazado a la
izquierda)) ¿no?
¿una?

Una antopinta y te va de fente […]

¡A:::!, una auto-pista

Cruzás para acá ((segunda detención))

La autopista, la autopista donde pasan los autos

((gesto afirmativo con la cabeza)) Para acá

Cuando llego de cruzar ¿de dónde?

Sí, mira aquí estás cruzando vos la escuela cruzás de frente y aquí hay un pasío,
Ajá
acá un pasío y, acá hay un pasío // tú te vas, a qué una cuenta blanca que hay un cantelito en
mi cuenta, que allí está
 La entrevista semiestructurada
• En virtud de los objetivos del análisis (uso de Cláusulas relativas en discurso infantil) se formularon adaptaciones.
1. Entrevista como una interacción semiestructurada: solicitar la producción de secuencias discursivas organizadas sobre
diferentes tópicos infantiles significativos. Técnica permite obtener volúmenes importantes de habla autónoma infantil y el
uso funcional de Crs.. estudio exploratorio previo permitió reconocer cuáles eran los núcleos que, en las comunidades en
estudio – 32 niños entre los 5 y 7 años de dos diferentes NSE hablantes del dialecto rioplatense-, generaban secuencias
discursivas autónomas con Crs. Núcleos elegidos debían narrar experiencias comunes para todos los niños del estudio .
Comparación de registros del estudio exploratorio permitió determinar la frecuencia de aparición de las Crs. según los
diferentes tópicos. Finalmente se observó cual era el orden de elicitación más conveniente.
2. Núcleos a elicitar serían, en este orden, los siguientes:
I. Narración del cumpleaños.
II. Narración de una anécdota familiar o de la comunidad escolar (el protagonista será otro individuo, no el niño) que
guarde algún tipo de relación temática con el episodio anterior.
III. Renarración de un episodio de un dibujo animado, de una película o de un cuento leído o escuchado.
IV. Otras anécdotas.
3. Incorporación de secuencia de descripción de recorrido, a partir de análisis de toma exploratoria.
4. Elaboración de pautas a partir del análisis de las interacciones de la toma exploratoria (por ej. Inicio a partir de pregunta
por el nombre, edad y el cumpleanos del nino) .
5. Participantes: adulto – nino (estudios previos evidencia de uso discursivos con indices de mayor complejidad sintactica)
6. Interrelación entre criterios de varias disciplinas y los que surgieron a partir del analisis de la toma exploratoria (ámbitos,
actitudes, calidad de las interrupciones, condiciones de las instituciones, conocimiento de temas infantiles – por ej.
Personajes, juegos, etc.-).
 Resultados
• Entrevista semiestructurada recurso eficaz para resolver algunas de las
dificultades que entraña el estudio del desarrollo de la sintaxis infantil. Los
registros permitieron obtener una gran cantidad de las formas sintácticas
en cuestión (860 cláusulas), además presentaban núcleos discursivos
semejantes y, por ende, comparables.
• Recaudos metodológicos condicionaron a los niños para evitar
contextualizar o erosionar en demasía el mensaje a transmitir, pues
estaba claro que, pese a la relación de cercanía, el entrevistador no
conocía las anécdotas a las que el niño refería. Además permitieron
superar las dificultades que otros investigadores han comentado sobre el
uso de los medios técnicos (uso de la técnica como una tarea compartida
fue el factor preeminente para evitar esos escollos: los niños no
presentaron síntomas de timidez o parquedad).
• Los niños no solo produjeron en las entrevistas volúmenes importantes de
habla autónoma, sino que, además, comentaron episodios
comprometidos, acercaron valoraciones, etc.
 Resultados
• Crs most flattering language contexts. are sequences of routes and
narrative description of family events. In these sequences
"emerging" Crs. to the need to specify an object or space to the
interviewer 4 different Crs. "Cr with that, "Cr without "" Cr the /
what / the / which "and" Cr X saw. "emergency occurred in many
cases a shared Cr. At the mention of a referent ambiguous or
indeterminate, the interviewer introduced a question that tended
to produce the Cr child if the child is not elicited the way, the
interviewer referred to the reference to a sequence of Cr
incomplete, interrupted the broadcast, to give the hint of
uncertainty and for children complete with Cr The corpus of 860
sentences with Crs. universe of significant size for description of
statistical methods. Correlation analysis and often provide sufficient
evidence to sustain the utility and importance of data collection
method proposed.
 Resultados

• Unlike the structured testing and / or standardized for we believe that the implementation of
a semistructured interview, carefully designed and a preliminary screening study, and the
records that provide spontaneous conversations, not only is an efficient method for
producing children texts similar to those produced in spontaneous, but also that these
records make it possible to consider the importance of factors in the experimental trials are
undermined. So factors such as the amount and type of text sequences elicited the child's
MLU and the MLU of utterances containing Crs. crucial for understanding the emergence and
performance characteristics of Crs.
• Spontaneous conversations allow us to consider the relationship between text type, context
sharing and pragmatic reasons, factors that give rise to a whole and functionalize the
syntactic form. The discursive constraints are conditions that could explain why none of the
experimental studies identified the coexistence of different forms of Crs. as a symbolic
response to the child articulates some demand communication. Silva, 2008 found that the
coexistence of forms, "Crs. with that "and" Crs. no "is not an abnormal or unusual in two age
groups, SES and sex considered. Differences in results can be attributed to the techniques of
elicitation of the texts of which are drawn the Crs. In fact contrary to experimental
techniques or situations re-narration, the semistructured interview with a previous
exploratory study, has space the emergence of factors that influence the updating of the
syntactic forms in child speech.
Future research guidelines
Conclusions

Importance of spontaneous speech

samples to monitor functionality of
the syntax. The interview was a
methodological resource not only
allowed us to use an elicitation format
that is consistent with the theoretical
postulates which analyze the corpus
but also exceeded the methodological
criticisms made of spontaneous
speech samples. Importance of
reflection as part of the research,
especially when considering the
development process. enclave infant
universe in which the researchers to
build knowledge resources should
generate respectful of the subtle
balances trace child development.

Thank you!!!