16.1651, Review: Lang Acquisition/Syntax/Semantics: Gualmini (2004)

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Subject: 16.1651, Review: Lang Acquisition/Syntax/Semantics: Gualmini (2004)

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1)
Date: 23-May-2005
From: Susanna Bartsch < susanna.bartsch at email.de >
Subject: The Ups and Downs of Child Language 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 15:48:48
From: Susanna Bartsch < susanna.bartsch at email.de >
Subject: The Ups and Downs of Child Language 
 

AUTHOR: Gualmini, Andrea
TITLE: The Ups and Downs of Child Language
SUBTITLE: Experimental Studies on Children's Knowledge of Entailment 
Relationships and Polarity Phenomena
SERIES: Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Routledge
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2788.html


Susanna Bartsch, unaffiliated

SUMMARY

Gualmini's book (x + 198 pages) is one of the volumes of the 
series "Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics" published by Routledge 
since 1992 and comprehending at the moment more than 90 titles. The volume 
under review is structured in 6 chapters preceded by a table of contents, 
acknowledgements, and a 2-page long introduction; an appendix, the 
reference section, an index of names, as well as an index of topics 
complete the volume. Every chapter ends with a conclusion in which the 
results not only are summed up, but also in some cases completed with new 
information. 

SYNOPSIS

Introduction
Gualmini starts her dissertation with the assertion: "Entailment relations 
among sentences are relevant for several distributional and interpretive 
phenomena across _natural languages_" (p. 3; my emphasis, SB). And 
further: "[...] linguistic research has [...] uncovered several 
interesting quirks that arise because of the particular way _natural 
languages_ make reference to entailment relations" (p. 3; my emphasis, 
SB). And: "From the perspective of the acquisitionist, entailment 
relations provide an interesting case study in that a fairly complex 
theoretical apparatus is needed to account for seemingly simple facts" (p. 
3). In the introduction, Gualmini presents short summaries of each of the 
six chapters of the dissertation (p. 4).

Chapter 1 - Language and Acquisition (pp. 5-37)
In this chapter, Gualmini introduces the discussion which runs through the 
whole volume under review, i.e., "entailment relations, polarity items and 
inferences across natural languages" (pp. 6f.) and how these linguistic 
phenomena can be approached when using one of three models of language 
acquisition: the "Conservative Learning Model", the "Rich Input Model", 
and the "Continuity Assumption" (pp. 24f.).

Gualmini is mainly concerned with "downward entailments" (henceforth: DE): 
DE "describes the environments in which a noun phrase can be substituted 
with one that picks out a subset of the denotation of the original noun 
phrase without affecting the truth of the original sentence" (p. 9): 

(7a)
John graduated BEFORE HE WROTE HIS FIRST PAPER
licenses the inference:
John graduated BEFORE HE WROTE HIS FIRST GOOD PAPER.
(p. 8)

(Note: Gualmini's examples are reproduced in the present review with their 
original numbers. I use capital letters for terms, which appear underlined 
in the original text.)

Gualmini discusses and, in part, challenges some of the features of DE as 
maintained in previous literature. According to her:

(i) a "downward entailing operator OP-DE" (p. 12; the original notation is 
with capitals OP plus low-placed capitals DE), as _without_ and _before_, 
is not automatically operative (pp. 16f., 20);

(ii) the view that "negative polarity items (NPIs)", as _any_ and _ever_, 
are used grammatically in downward entailing environments, whereas the 
occurrence of "positive polarity items" (PPIs), as _every_, and _already_, 
in such environments often leads to ungrammaticalities (pp. 9f., 22f.) is 
challenged, since there are cases of grammatical sentences containing PPIs 
in downward entailing contexts (p. 22), a claim further developed in 
Chapter 6;

(iii) but DE does not occur in negative environments only (pp.20f.);

(iv) sentences containing an OP-DE and the disjunction operator _or_ 
license conjunctive inferences, according to the scheme OP-DE(A or B) 
entails OP-DE(A) and OP-DE(B) that corresponds to "one of De Morgan's laws 
of propositional logic" (pp. 12f.);

(v) the decisive force for the occurrence of DE is the structure dependent 
notion of c-command (p. 16), a claim further developed in Chapter 3.

Next, Gualmini discusses which model of language acquisition is the most 
adequate for explaining "how children achieve th[is] intricate pattern of 
linguistic behavior" (p. 18). Tomasello's (2000) "Conservative Learning 
Model" and Pullum's & Scholz' (2002) "Rich Input Model" are out of 
question because of their notion of qualitative distinction between 
children's and adults' linguistic competence (pp. 30f.), their refusal of 
the Poverty-of-Stimulus hypothesis (p. 34), as well as their relying on 
what Gualmini calls "syntax-blind mechanisms" (Chapter 2, p. 50). Gualmini 
endorses the "Continuity Hypothesis" (MacNamara 1982, Pinker 1984, Crain & 
Thornton 1998, Crain & Pietroski 2001) according to which "observed 
mismatches between children and adults are compatible with U[niversal] G
[rammar]" (p. 34). Since "[t]he property of downward entailment is closely 
related to the meaning of certain linguistic expressions across natural 
languages" (p. 35), and the acquisition of such meanings "is largely 
determined in advance by Universal Grammar", "we expect children's 
knowledge of downward entailment to be essentially adult-like from the 
earliest stages of language development, [...] we expect children to be 
like adults in the classification of a linguistic context as DE or non-DE, 
since natural languages do not differ in this respect" (p. 36).

Chapter 2 - Entailment and Polarity Phenomena in Child Language (pp. 39-61)
In this chapter, Gualmini reviews the experimental research on child 
acquisition of DE (pp. 40f.), before she presents her own Experiment I, a 
study of children's conjunctive interpretation of "the disjunction 
operator _or_ in the scope of the quantified expression _None of the Ns_" 
(pp. 48f.).

Gualmini points out to substantial and methodological shortcomings in the 
previous research and proposes solutions for them (pp. 44f.): 

(i) the focus on items limited to DE environments, as _any_, should be 
expanded to accommodate different structural configurations, as sentences 
with a non-downward entailing environment; and

(ii) the methodology (Elicited Production tasks) is concerned mainly with 
performance (production) and should be substituted/completed with Truth 
Value Judgment tasks (developed by Crain & McKee 1985, as Gualmini in 
Chapter 3, p. 73 informs us), focusing, therefore, on  
comprehension/interpretation (competence).

An example for such an experimental improvement is Boster's & Crain's 
(1993) study on children's interpretation of disjunction in the scope of 
_every_ employing the Prediction Mode of the Truth Value Judgment task, in 
which the children are presented with a short story and, at the end, with 
a target sentence commenting on the final outcome of the story (pp. 46f.). 
(Note: All experiments employing the Truth Value Judgment task discussed 
in the volume under review have this basic design.)

Nevertheless, Gualmini points out that Boster's & Crain's results might 
conduct to a misleading conclusion, namely, that children never assign a 
conjunctive interpretation to the disjunction operator, therefore never 
assuming that _or_ could appear in downward entailing contexts (pp. 46f.). 
In her Experiment I, using the Truth Value Judgment task, Gualmini found 
out that children do assign an adult-like conjunctive interpretation to 
the disjunction operator when it appears in a downward entailing 
environment, e.g., when it falls within the nuclear scope of an OP-DE, as 
the negative quantified expression _None of the Ns_ (pp. 47f.). Gualmini's 
subjects (30 children from age 3;10 to 5;10) interpreted (25) in 87,5% of 
the time as equivalent to (26a) (pp. 52f.):

(25) [...] none of the pirates found the jewel or the necklace.

(26a) None of the pirates found the jewel AND none of the pirates found 
the necklace.

Such findings suggest that "syntax-blind mechanisms" (p. 50) as noun 
substitution as proposed in Tomasello's (2000) Conservative Learning 
model "do[...] not achieve descriptive adequacy-not to mention explanatory 
adequacy-as it pertains to children's interpretation of sentences 
containing disjunction". Noun substitution, as "a very simple mechanism", 
might guide their _production_ of such sentences, but for their 
_interpretation_ "something more elaborated" is needed (pp. 50, 53, 60). A 
better explanation is provided by the Continuity Hypothesis, since 
children's interpretations "conform to the scheme [OP-DE(A or B) entails 
OP-DE(A) and OP-DE(B)] from the early stages of language acquisition, 
because that interpretation is UG-compatible" (p. 50).

Chapter 3 - The Structure of Child Language (pp. 63-88)
In this chapter, Gualmini reviews previous studies on the role of (innate) 
language-specific structural constraints in first language acquisition in 
general (pp. 63-77). Then she discusses the general relationships between 
structure dependence and polarity phenomena in terms of the notion of c-
command (77-81), before presenting Experiment II and III in which she 
investigates the role of structure dependent principles in children's 
interpretation of downward entailments (pp. 81-87).

In her review on the role of structure dependence in child language 
acquisition, Gualmini again concludes that some of these studies, focusing 
on language production (using Elicited Production tasks), present the 
deficiencies discussed in Chapter 3 (pp. 63-72), that other studies, 
focusing on comprehension/interpretation (using True Value Judgment tasks) 
do not (pp. 73-77). On the other hand, these studies provide evidence for 
the claim that "structure dependence is a general constraint on all 
principles of grammar" (p. 70, 72) and a "structure-blind rule [allusion 
to the Conservative Learning Model] is unlikely to allow the child to 
converge on the adult grammar in absence of negative evidence" (p. 65); 
the same applies for "domain general cue[s]" (pp. 80f.).

Gualmini then further develops the claim outlined in Chapter 1 that the 
common features of DE are constrained by the structural notion of c-
command. In the case of the conjunctive interpretation of disjunction, the 
OP-DE must c-command disjunction (p. 78). In a study by Crain, Gardner, 
Gualmini & Rabbin (2002), employing the Truth Value Judgment task, the 
subjects assigned a conjunctive interpretation to (47)-with negation 
preceding and c-commanding disjunction-in 92% of the time (pp. 79f.):

(47) The girl who stayed up late will NOT get a dime OR a jewel.

To rule out the hypothesis that domain-general cues, as linear precedence 
or distance between negation and disjunction, could play a role in 
children's interpretations, and to verify the role of c-command, Gualmini 
designed Experiment II and III, employing the Prediction Mode of the Truth 
Value Judgment task. 

In Experiment II, 30 children (3;08-6;05) assigned in 85% of the time a 
conjunctive interpretation to sentences as (58), in which _or_ was 
preceded and c-commanded by negation and both operators were a distance 
apart from each other, without being troubled by the distance between both 
operators (pp. 82f.):

(58) I said that Winnie the Pooh would NOT let Eeyore eat the cookie OR 
the cake.

In Experiment III, 35 children (3;05-6;05) did not assign, in 80% of the 
time, the conjunctive interpretation to sentences as (68), in which 
negation preceded, but not c-commanded, disjunction, and with a short 
distance between both operators (pp. 84f.):

(68) The Karate Man will give the Pooh Bear he could NOT lift the honey OR 
the donut.

The over-all conclusion is that domain-general cues do not play any role 
in children's interpretations of DE, whereas c-command is a sufficient 
criterion for both children's and adult's interpretations (pp. 78f., 83, 
86). Gualmini's findings ultimately corroborate the Continuity Hypothesis 
and refute "the shallow linguistic representations" of the Conservative 
Learning Model and the Rich Input Model (p. 88).

Chapter 4 - Asymmetries of Child Language (pp. 89-116)
This chapter is dedicated to the investigation of the universal quantifier 
_every_ in child language. Gualmini reviews studies attempting to explain  
children's systematic non-adult interpretation of sentences containing 
_every_ in certain cases (pp. 89f.), before presenting Experiment IV on 
sentences containing disjunction and _every_ (pp. 105f.).

Inhelder & Piaget (1964) firstly observed a non-adult "symmetrical 
response" in children presented with sentences containing _every_, as:

(1) Every boy is riding an elephant,

in a context with the "extra-object condition"-in this case, three boys 
are riding an elephant and a fourth elephant is not being ridden (pp. 
89f.). The children rejected (1) as a description of the context.

Two kinds of explanations for this phenomenon were offered. The "Partial 
Competence View" explains it in terms of non-target "Event 
Quantification", "Weak Quantification", or "Weak Mapping" of _every_ (pp. 
90f.). Gualmini rejects this explanation since it presupposes qualitative 
differences between children and adults, in which "child language violates 
important linguistic universals uncovered by research in formal semantics" 
(pp. 95f.). Gualmini endorses the Full Competence View, according to which 
children's non-adult responses are attributed to the methodology used: 
Thus, Crain and associates (1996) found out an improvement in children's 
performance in the Truth Value Judgment task (pp. 93f.), when felicity 
conditions are better achieved. 

According to Gualmini, _every_ has two arguments: The first argument 
("restrictor") is the NP occurring with _every_; the second argument 
("nuclear scope") is the VP (pp. 96f.). Moreover, _every_ is asymmetrical, 
in that it is downward entailing in its first argument, but upward 
entailing on its second argument (p. 101f.). Previous studies, as 
Gualmini, Meroni, & Crain (2003) and Boster & Crain (1993), dealing 
respectively with sentences containing disjunction in the restrictor and 
in the nuclear scope of _every_, show that children are aware of this 
asymmetry.

In her Experiment IV, using the Truth Value Judgment task in its 
Description Mode and investigating children's interpretations of sentences 
containing disjunction in the second argument of _every_, Gualmini found 
out that her subjects, 23 children (3;10-5;09), have an adult-like 
knowledge of the asymmetry between the two arguments of _every_, as well 
as of the meaning of _or_ (p. 108), since they do not interpret the 
following sentences as being equivalent:

(22) [...] Every kid took a tiger or a dinosaur.
(23) Every kind took a tiger AND every kid took a dinosaur.
(p. 107)

According to Gualmini, "[t]his finding is not surprising if one adopts the 
Full Competence View [...], but it is unanticipated on the [Partial 
Competence] view" (p. 109). Such findings provide arguments against the 
view of domain-general learning mechanisms (p. 115) and for the view 
that "[I]n absence of guidance from Universal Grammar, it is difficult to 
see how children could successfully master this asymmetry" (p. 109). Thus, 
children do not assume that determiners "could be downward entailing on 
its second argument, but upward entailing on its first argument" (p. 113), 
since this is a possibility that is not exploited by "natural language 
determiners" (p. 114). The findings also provide arguments for the 
Continuity Hypothesis, since differences between children's and adults' 
interpretations never violate "core principles of Universal Grammar", when 
experiments achieve good felicity conditions (pp. 114f.)

Chapter 5 - Structure and Beyond (pp. 117-144)
The starting point of this chapter is, again, a non adult-like linguistic 
behavior observed in children, namely their non-target interpretation of 
_some_ (within the scope of negation), in opposition to their adult-like 
interpretation of _any_. Gualmini reviews previous research on this 
phenomenon (pp. 118f.), relating it with a discussion on the question of 
felicity conditions of experiments (pp. 126ff.), and presents her 
Experiment V on children's interpretation of sentences containing _some_ 
within the scope of negation (pp. 132ff.).

Some researchers observed that, to target sentences related to stories the 
children were presented with, as (1), children consistently did not assign 
the adult-like interpretation (2), but the non-adult like interpretation 
(3) (pp. 117f.): 

(1) The detective didn't find some guys.
(2) There are some guys that the detective didn't find.
(3) It is not the case that the detective found some guys.

To account for this phenomenon, Musolino (1998) and Musolino, Crain, & 
Thornton (2000) proposed the "Observation of Isomorphism" ("isomorphic" 
interpretation=non-adult like; "non-isomorphic" interpretation=adult-
like), according to which children's interpretations are determined by 
syntactic structure if there are mismatches between syntactic and semantic 
scope (p. 119), which suggests "that children's grammar might be 
constrained by linguistic structure to a greater extent than adult's 
grammar" (p. 121). Gualmini rejects this idea of distinct competences in 
child and adult, and argues that the observed differences between 
children's and adults' responses are rather the logical consequence of the 
use of infelicitous experimental material (p. 123). The question of 
felicity of experimental material is crucial in the case of negative 
contexts, since negation is usually employed to indicate divergences 
between expectations and facts (pp. 129ff.). Gualmini argues that, in some 
of the reviewed studies, the experiments were not designed in a way to 
evoke in the children explicit expectations that were not fulfilled in the 
end of the stories presented (pp. 130f.).

In her experiment V employing the Truth Value Judgment task, Gualmini 
designed a context that falsified the non-adult (isomorphic) 
interpretation and verified the adult (non-isomorphic) interpretation, and 
manipulated children's expectations about the end of a story (p. 132) 
about a firefighter looking for dwarves, evoking the expectation that the 
firefighter would find all the dwarves, but not the expectation that he 
would miss all of them (pp. 134). Group I, 15 children (4;01-5;06), were 
then presented with the target sentence:

(22) [...] The firefighter DIDN'T find SOME dwarves,

whereas Group II, 15 children (4;02-5;8) were presented with the target 
sentence:

(23) [...] The firefighter DIDN'T miss some dwarves.

(22) is felicitous since it indicates a discrepancy between expectations 
and facts, whereas (23) is infelicitous because it does not indicate a 
similar discrepancy. This pattern of felicity conditions corresponds to 
the findings: The children accepted (22) in 90% of the time, whereas they 
accepted (23) only in 50% of the time. Though the level of acceptance of 
(23) is not low (50%), the children who accepted (23) could not give 
explanation for their answers, whereas the children who accepted (22) 
consistently gave the right explanation for their answers (p. 134).

Gualmini conclusions, which are closely related to each other, are:

(i) children's non-adult interpretations of _some_ in negative sentences 
do not require a grammatical explanation, as proposed by Musolino and 
associates; the assumption about an imperfect competence with _some_ is 
not necessary (pp. 136f.), since there are no relevant differences between 
children's and adults' competence and performance (pp. 143f.).

(ii) experimental designs must consider felicity conditions (pp. 137f.), 
since, in the real life, "there really is no null context" (p. 144); the 
findings show, moreover, the relevant role children's pragmatic competence 
plays in their interpretations (pp. 143f.).

Chapter 6 - The Structure of Universal Asymmetries and Beyond (pp. 145-163)
In this chapter, Gualmini reviews previous research on the relations 
between DE and PPI (Positive Polarity Items) (pp. 145f.), before she 
presents her Experiments VI and VII, focusing on the first and the second 
argument of the universal quantifier and PPI _every_, respectively (pp. 
153ff.).

Szabolcsi 2002a has recently challenged the view that PPIs, as _some_, 
_someone_, _every_, in downward entailing environments always lead to 
ungrammatical sentences, pointing out "the rich typology of polarity items 
witnessed across natural languages" (p. 147) and arguing for the 
investigation of PPIs and NPIs as one single item class. Instead of 
speaking of resistance to and licensing by OP-DEs, Szabolcsi argues that 
the notion of licensing is sufficient and that polarity items are better 
classified as "simple polarity items", as _any_ or _some_, and "complex 
polarity items", as [_not...someone_] (p. 149). The complex item 
[_not...someone_] can occur in the scope of an antiadditive operator (e.g. 
_not_) or other OP-DE, whereas a simple item, as _someone_, cannot (pp. 
147, 149), unless both the additive operator and the simple item "occur 
within the scope of a downward entailing operator", as _at most_ (p. 150). 
Thus, a sentence like (2) is ungrammatical if _someone_ is interpreted in 
the scope of negation (p. 146), whereas (9) is grammatical on the same 
interpretation:

(2) John didn't call someone
is not equivalent to:
John didn't call anyone
(p. 146)

(9) At most five boys think that John didn't call someone
is equivalent to:
At most five boys think that John didn't call anyone.
(p. 149)

According to Gualmini, to acquire this intricate linguistic pattern, the 
child cannot rely on input evidence only, since this pattern is related 
to "a generalization at considerable distance from the input" (p. 150).

Next, Gualmini observes that the asymmetry of the quantifier _every_ is 
not changed in sentences containing a complex polarity item as 
[_not...somewhat_]. The first argument licenses the occurrence of the 
complex item (12), whereas the second does not (13) (pp. 150f.):

(12) Every boy who doesN'T like pizza SOMEWHAT ordered lasagna.

(13) *Every boy doesN'T like pizza SOMEWHAT.

Gualmini explains the difference between these two sentences in terms 
of "availability of a particular interpretation" (12) and "grammaticality 
of the entire sentence" (13).

Gualmini then presents her Experiments VI and VII dealing with children's 
interpretation of sentences containing the complex item [_not...some N_] 
in the first and second argument of _every_, respectively, and employing 
the Truth Value Judgment task. In Experiment VI, 15 children (3;10-5;08) 
were presented with stories and target sentences containing [_not...some 
N_] in the first argument of _every_, i.e., in a downward entailing 
environment, as (29) (pp. 153f.):

(29) This was a story about five farmers and one Indian. Every farmer had 
to clean three animals and I know what happened. EVERY FARMER WHO DIDN'T 
CLEAN SOME ANIMAL HAS A BROOM.

>From the two possible interpretations of such target sentences containing 
[_not...some N_] in downward entailing contexts, isomorphic (30) and non-
isomorphic (31), the children consistently (in 88% of the time) favored 
the former. Interestingly, this was also the preferred interpretation 
(92,5% of the time) of a group of adult controls.

(30) EVERY farmer who didN'T clean ANY animal has a broom.

(31) EVERY farmer for whom there is SOME animal that he didN'T clean has a 
broom. 

In Experiment VII, 15 children (4;01-5;05) were presented with stories and 
target sentences containing [_not...some N_] in the second argument of 
_every_, i.e., in an upward entailing environment, as (38) (pp. 157f.):

(38) This was a story about three farmers and one Indian. Every farmer had 
to clean three animals and I know what happened. EVERY FARMER DIDN'T CLEAN 
SOME ANIMAL.

>From the two possible interpretations of such target sentences containing 
[_not...some N_] in upward entailing contexts, isomorphic (33) and non-
isomorphic (35), the children consistently (in 78% of the time) favored 
the latter. Again, this was also the preferred interpretation (82,4% of 
the time) of a group of adult controls.

(33) EVERY farmer didN'T clean ANY animal.

(35) For EVERY farmer, there is an animal that he did NOT clean.

Gualmini's explanation for these findings is that children's 
interpretation of the scope ambiguity between _not_ and _some_ is 
constrained by abstract properties of the context, i.e., _some_ receives a 
narrow scope in downward entailing contexts, and a wide scope in upward 
entailing contexts (p. 161).

Gualmini's over-all conclusion to the whole dissertation is that "the 
Conservative Learning model and the Rich Input model could not even begin 
to account for children's behavior. By contrast, we have encountered no 
evidence against the Continuity Assumption as yet, even when occasional 
mismatches between children's and adults' behaviors have surfaced. The 
next step is to accept Continuity Assumption as the null assumption for 
child language research. Even in the domain of semantic competence, there 
is no reason to assume that child language differs from adult language in 
ways that would exceed the boundary conditions imposed by Universal 
Grammar" (p. 163).

Appendix (pp. 165-179)
The appendix contains the experimental materials of all trials of all 
experiments (I-VII) by Gualmini, i.e., here the reader can find all the 
stories and target sentences designed for the Truth Value Judgment tasks 
(except for the trials presented in the respective chapters). 
Additionally, Gualmini also presents here the individual subject results 
for every trial. 

EVALUATION

Firstly, I would like to make some editorial remarks on the dissertation's 
edition and on the two review copies I received from the publisher. The 
edition is very accurate in that, for instance, it seems to contain no 
misprints whatever. Another positive aspect is the use of footnotes 
instead of unpractical notes at the end of the volume. In the index of 
topics (pp. 197-198), however, there are several relevant terms missing, 
as "Conservative Learning Model" and "Rich Input Model" ("Continuity 
Hypothesis is, on the other hand, not missing...), "downward entailment 
operators", "noun substitution", "Full Competence View" and "Partial 
Competence View", "Prediction Mode" and "Description Mode" (of the Truth 
Value Judgment task), "determiners" and "quantifiers", "restrictor" 
and "nuclear scope", "domain-specific learning mechanisms" and "domain-
general learning mechanisms", amongst others. As for the review copies, in 
the first one I got, pages 189-198 were missing, i.e., a part of the 
references and both indexes. The second one was bound the wrong way round, 
so that one had to read it backwards. 

Secondly, I would like to make some observations on the structure and the 
style of Gualmini's dissertation. Both structure and style are to my view 
exceptionally good. Gualmini's language and concerns seem to me fairly 
clear, even though it took me some time to get into it. The dissertation 
is, all in all, less hermetic than other generative texts commonly are. 
That is due in part to Gualmini's frequent recapping 'pauses' that are 
very helpful. I have here only two criticisms. Some terms are introduced 
without explanations. Thus, as far as I can judge, Gualmini does not 
explain anywhere in her book what polarity items really are and why they 
are designated as such. More importantly, there is no true over-all 
conclusion to the dissertation as a whole, apart from the last paragraph 
of the conclusion to Chapter 6 quoted above.

Finally, I would like to make some comments on more substantial aspects of 
Gualmini's dissertation. 

First of all, one of Gualmini's greatest merits is her effort for 
methodological improvements in experimental settings. In my view, her 
preference for Truth Value Judgment tasks over Elicited Production tasks 
is not only understandable, but also essential for an experimental study 
on child language acquisition, since, as she points out, the latter 
focuses on performance (production), whereas the former focuses on 
competence (comprehension, interpretation, processing), and this is valid 
not only for generative studies. I am personally more concerned with 
naturalistic data in child language acquisition research, since the 
controlled situation of experiments may produce data that are not wholly 
reliable because of their more or less artificial nature. However, it is 
not difficult to recognize that, for some research questions, naturalistic 
data may turn out to be too elusive. This is the case of Gualmini's 
concerns on children's comprehension of entailment relationships. 
Moreover, Gualmini designed her experiments, at least partially, in such a 
way that aspects of every day's language use, i.e., _pragmatic_ aspects, 
could be taken into account. See, for instance, her discussion on felicity 
conditions in experiments investigating children's interpretations of 
negative sentences and her statement that "there really is no null 
context" (p. 144). A methodological desideratum would be, in my view, that 
experimental and naturalistic data could be used complementarily.

A second merit of Gualmini's dissertation is her tireless endeavor to 
interpret her findings in terms of both _explanations_, corresponding to 
Chomsky's demand for explanatory adequacy, and contributions to theory 
formation. Thus, all over the book, she indefatigably relates her findings 
to Continuity Assumption and Universal Grammar. She presents her findings 
as arguments for the notion that there are no differences between 
children's and adults' grammars that violate principles of UG, and also 
for the claim that children cannot acquire intricate patterns of 
linguistic behavior on the basis of input data only.

There are, however, some crucial inconveniences in the dissertation that 
are strongly intertwined with each other.

The first inconvenience is related to the way Gualmini explains the 
processing of entailment relations by the human brain. As exposed above, 
the structural notion of c-command is, in Gualmini's view, the decisive 
force that triggers DE. But she is concerned with the _semantics_ of DE 
what explains the absence of structure trees so common in generative 
texts. However, her 'explanations' focus on formal semantics, relying on 
laws of propositional logic. The question here is: Who says that the human 
brain processes entailment relations in natural languages the way Gualmini 
argues it does? This question turns out to be very crucial, since it 
challenges the very nature and raison d'être of Gualmini's whole 
enterprise. 

The second inconvenience, related to the first one, is the explanation of 
the acquisition of DE in terms of putative universal principles of logic 
and the rejection of cognitive-functional models of language acquisition. 
Where are the arguments against the perspective that children can acquire 
DE on the basis of the data they are exposed to in concert with domain-
general mechanisms, such as skills of "pattern-finding" and "intention-
reading" (Tomasello 2003)? The fact is that Gualmini rejects cognitive-
functional models of language acquisition without presenting arguments 
that are really consistent. It would be interesting to know if there are 
studies on the acquisition of entailment relations done in a more 
cognitive-functional spirit. Gualmini mentions none. She only provides 
speculations, and this not very convincingly. She speculates what, in her 
view, would be predicted by the Conservative Learning Model and the Rich 
Input Model, e.g., in terms of "syntax-blind" mechanisms, as noun 
substitution. And she speculates what, in her view, an explanation for DE 
in terms of domain-general cues would look like, namely in terms of 
linearity and relative proximity/distance between operators within 
sentences (Experiment II and III). This latter speculation is, in my view, 
particularly awkward, since it presupposes that there are only two 
possible explanations for children's interpretations of DE: structure 
dependence in terms of c-command or structure-blind cues in terms of 
linearity and relative proximity of operators. Such a presupposition casts 
doubt on her conclusion that her findings provide evidence for (i) the 
correctness of the assumption that c-command and structure dependence are 
crucial in children's interpretation of DE; (ii) the irrelevance of domain-
general cues in the comprehension of DE; and (iii) her claim that 
cognitive-functional approaches proposes "shallow linguistic 
representations" only. 

The third inconvenience is also related to the experiments' design. As 
stated above, Gualmini's efforts to take pragmatic aspects in account in 
the design of her experiments is by all means praiseworthy. Nevertheless, 
some of the target sentences children were presented to (as well as some 
of the example sentences included for expository reasons) did not 
sound 'natural' to me, which was confirmed by two adult English native 
speakers (no linguists!) to whom I showed the trials with the stories and 
the target sentences. For instance, we had in Chapter 5 sentence (1) in 
the adult-like interpretation (2) and the non-adult like interpretation 
(3):

(1) The detective didn't find SOME guys.
(2) There are some guys that the detective didn't find.
(3) It is not the case that the detective found some guys.

My informants told me that, in order to reach interpretation (2), they 
never would utter sentence (1), unless they would insert _of_:

(1a) The detective didn't find SOME OF the guys.

My informants would complement sentence (2) of Chapter 6 as in (2a)

(2) John didn't call SOMEONE.
(2a) John didn't call SOMEONE OF THE PEOPLE HE WANTED TO CALL.

They would also replace sentence (29) of Chapter 6 with (29a), and (38) 
with (38a):

(29) Every farmer who didn't clean SOME animal has a broom.
(29a) Every farmer who didn't clean ALL animals has a broom.

(38) EVERY farmer didn't clean SOME animal.
(38a) NOT EVERY farmer cleaned ALL animals.

And sentence (12) of Chapter 6 they classified as mere nonsense:

(12) Every boy who doesN'T like pizza SOMEWHAT ordered lasagna.

Of course, I had only 2 informants, whereas Gualmini had control groups of 
8-36 adults in her experiments. These were often "undergraduates" 
(linguistics students?) and Gualmini does not inform us as to what they 
knew about the purposes of the study (in the case they were linguistics 
students), nor on their possible estranged reactions (in the case they 
were not linguistic students).

CONCLUSION

Gualmini's dissertation contains some very important virtues, above all 
related to both methodological aspects (consideration of pragmatic factors 
in the experimental designs, the preference for Truth Value Judgment tasks 
over Elicited Production tasks), and theoretical aspects (relations 
between findings/conclusions and theory formation), as well. The value of 
these merits is, nevertheless, diminished by the inconveniences exposed 
above that cast doubt on the general pretensions and the conclusions of 
the dissertation. Specifically, Gualmini's aim of investigating linguistic 
phenomena present in "natural languages", as she repeatedly states (e.g., 
pp. 3, 6, 12, 16, 23, 77, 110, 121, 150, 162, etc.), in terms of universal 
principles turns out to remain unattained because the assumption that DE 
is processed by the human brain in terms of propositional logic remains 
mere speculation; and also because, apart from a few allusions to studies 
dealing with 4 or 5 other languages, Gualmini's findings are essentially 
based on data from children learning English as first language, employing 
sentences that even adult English native speakers partially 
find 'ungrammatical' or 'unnatural'. The over-all conclusion that first 
language acquisition researchers should "accept Continuity Assumption as 
the null assumption for child language research" (p. 163), whereas "the 
shallow linguistic representations" of the Conservative Learning Model and 
the Rich Input Model (p. 88) "could not even begin to account for 
children's behavior" (p. 163) must be questioned for the same reasons. 

All the crucial problems present in Gualmini's dissertation are not 
surprising, however, since they are some sort of unfailing characteristics 
of generative studies. At the end, the reader might even get the 
impression that, as common in generative studies, hypotheses were posited 
axiomatically and that the whole experimental enterprise were designed in 
such a way to provide evidences for them and not to check them up, to 
scrutinize them, as it should actually be indispensable in genuine 
scientific work.

REFERENCE

Tomasello, M. (2003): Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of 
Language Acquisition. Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

The reviewer is currently working on her M.A. thesis on the acquisition of 
argument constructions in a bilingual child within a cognitive-functional 
framework. Her research interests include first language acquisition, 
multilingualism, cognitive science, developmental psychology, as well as 
history of linguistics.





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