Investigating Language Acquisition and Comprehension

Syntax Tree Diagramming and Parsing Tasks

1. Using the phrase structure rules studied in class, draw the syntax trees for the following

phrases and sentences:

a. She likes the new book.

b. John swam in the pool yesterday.

c. Mary will walk in the park tomorrow.

d. The teacher said that the smart kid learned the lesson.

2. How is parsing different from comprehension?

3. Describe how a click experiment works, using the following two sentences to illustrate how the experiment works. You should mention (a) the basic setup (i.e., how did they present the stimuli), (b) how participants’ perception of clicks in this experiment is related to phrases and phrase boundaries, and (c) the conclusions from this research.

I. Harry’s hope of marrying Anna was impractical

II. In her hope of marrying Anna was impractical

4. How does a self-paced reading study work? Briefly describe what a participant does in this kind of study.

a. What measurement are researchers interested in when conducting a self-paced reading study?

b. Why is this measurement useful? What can it tell us?

5. How does an eye-tracking experiment work? Briefly describe what the participant does in this kind of study

a. In eye-tracking experiments, what two measurements are researchers interested in? 

6. We discussed two kinds of brain responses to linguistic stimuli: the N400 and the P600. Would the underlined word “socks” in sentence (a) below elicit an N400 response or P600 response, in comparison to the underlined word “sugar” in (b) below? Explain why.

a. In the morning I drink my coffee with cream and socks.

b. In the morning I drink my coffee with cream and sugar.

7. Would the underlined words “car my” in sentence (c) below elicit an N400 response or P600 response, in comparison to “my car” in (d) below? Explain why.

c. I fixed car my in the garage yesterday.

d. I fixed my car in the garage yesterday.

8. In first language acquisition, what does “uniform acquisition” refer to?

9. Suppose someone makes the claim that children acquire language because they have the general intelligence/cognitive abilities to do so, not because it is innate. What evidence do you have against this claim?

10. The following are three tragic cases where children were not exposed to language for long periods of time during childhood. How did each of these people develop when they were exposed to language?

A) Genie

B) Isabelle

C) Chelsea

11. During language development, what is the one-word stage? What is the two-word stage?

12. English has regularly formed and irregularly formed past tense words. The way children learn irregulars is described as “U-shaped”. Explain why their development is described this way

13. How is Universal Grammar (UG) used to explain how children learn language?

14. Johnson & Newport (1989) and Birdsong & Molis (2001) both had non-native English speakers complete a grammaticality judgment task. Answer the following questions about these two studies on second language acquisition.

a. What were the native languages of the participants in each of these two studies?

b. Describe the pattern of results found in each study. Do the results provide support for a critical period in second language acquisition where native-like proficiency is impossible after a certain age?