Hi Susannah, nice to see you here since I can't see you at UNC anymore!<div><br>What exactly do you mean by "learn"? That is not only what your acquisition measure is (à la Radford 1990), but also what does it mean to learn these structures? How well do adults know them anyway? And what is it exactly that adults know? With many of these "complex structures", it is far from clear adults have the clear-cut knowledge syntactic theory adscribes them (the example that comes to mind is basic binding theory, where adults who have not been trained in linguistics accept the craziest things--Randy Hendrick can talk to you about that). I think those are questions that sooner or later we'll have to answer too.</div>
<div>Another issue is, you talk about learning "structures", but these things are learned (in my opinion and that of several others who've already posted here) very piecemeal, lexically-based perhaps. This is a very pressing question when it comes to "rare" structures. How sure can we be that there is such a thing as "raising-to-object" as a psychologically realistic syntactic construct? (I know people on this list will be able to illuminate that point, on both sides).</div>
<div>Just more things to think about for the bigger picture...</div><div>Bruno</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; "><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">Bruno Estigarribia</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">Assistant Professor of Spanish, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">Research Assistant Professor of Psychology, Cognitive Science Program</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">Investigator, Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">Dey Hall, Room 332</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0in; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">
<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); "><a href="mailto:estigarr@email.unc.edu">estigarr@email.unc.edu</a></span></p></span><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 9:09 PM, Susannah Kirby <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:suki@ibiblio.org" target="_blank">suki@ibiblio.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Hi all,<br><br>Thank you to everyone who responded with such interesting and helpful insights to my mono/bilingual question! The general consensus seems to be that my proposed solution is too complicated to work without significant background work (e.g. parental questionnaires) to assess the children's input/knowledge in English - and that even if it eventually did work, and I could do the stats correctly, I might still never get my results published.<br>
<br>I think that ultimately I will start to incorporate bilingualism as a
crucial part of what I look at. The problem at the moment is that I am already about one-third of the way through data collection to answer a "burning" question that has been
haunting me for several years. I would hate to give up the data that I already have, and am hoping to (at some point) finally get the other monolinguals I need, to get an answer to this question.<br><br>In case anyone is interested, the specific topic I'm examining is English-speaking children's acquisition of raising-to-object and object control structures - so somewhat complex, biclausal constructions. I am assuming that these structures take some time to learn, and that kids need to have enough experience with them, over time, in the input. I proposed raising the age for inclusion to allow kids who are getting less input in English (per day, as the day is split among languages) enough time to "catch up".<br>
<br>Thanks again for all your suggestions and materials!<br><br>Best,<br>Susannah.<br><font color="#888888">
<p></p>
-- <br>
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.<br>
To post to this group, send email to <a href="mailto:info-childes@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">info-childes@googlegroups.com</a>.<br>
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to <a href="mailto:info-childes%2Bunsubscribe@googlegroups.com" target="_blank">info-childes+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com</a>.<br>
For more options, visit this group at <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en" target="_blank">http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en</a>.<br>
</font></blockquote></div><br></div>
<p></p>
-- <br />
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Info-CHILDES" group.<br />
To post to this group, send email to info-childes@googlegroups.com.<br />
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to info-childes+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.<br />
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/info-childes?hl=en.<br />