Cover not available
Part of
Three Streams of Generative Language Acquisition Research: Selected papers from the 7th Meeting of Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition – North America, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Edited by Tania Ionin and Matthew Rispoli
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 63] 2019
► pp. 7–33

The comprehension of 3rd person singular -s by NYC English-speaking preschoolers

| Long Island University
| City University of New York
| City University of New York
| Johns Hopkins University
| CNRS-Paul Descartes University

Monolingual English 4-year-olds were administered a Subject-Verb agreement comprehension task that included stimuli such as the boy s spin ø versus the boy ø spin s (…/freely/in the hall). They were categorized as users of Mainstream American English (MAE) (N = 8), Some Variation (N = 9) and Strong Variation (N = 9) based on the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation (Seymour et al., 2005). Only MAE users performed significantly above chance across conditions (final versus medial with adverb versus medial with prepositional phrase) while comprehension in learners of other varieties was sensitive to syntactic context. Corpus analyses revealed that input frequency cannot explain our comprehension results and confirmed the plausibility of the hypothesis that 3rd person -s competes with other structures to express generic tense in non-mainstream varieties of English.

Keywords: 3rd person singular, subject-verb agreement, variation, input, comprehension, constrained elicitation, African American English, Caribbean English, Mainstream American English
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Study 1: Experimental study
    • 2.1Participants
    • 2.2Methodological procedure
      • 2.2.1Identification of variety of individual participants
      • 2.2.2Comprehension video matching task
      • 2.2.3Procedure
      • 2.2.4Results and discussion
  • 3.Study 2: Corpus analyses
    • 3.1Corpus selection
    • 3.2Analyses, results and discussion
  • 4.General discussion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 15 April 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.63.02bar
References
Barrière, I., Goyet, L., Kresh, S., Legendre, G., & Nazzi, T.
(2016) Uncovering productive morphosyntax in French-learning toddlers: a multidimensional methodology perspective. Journal of Child Language, 43(5), 1131–1157. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M.
(2008) Mixed-effects with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59(4), 390–412. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blom, E., Paradis, J., & Sorenson Duncan, T.
(2012) Effects of input properties, vocabulary size and L1 on the development of third person singular -s in child L2 English. Language Learning, 62, 965–994. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blume, M., & Lust, B. C.
(2017) Research methods in language acquisition. Washington, DC: Mouton de Gruyter/APA.Google Scholar
Brandt-Kobele, O. C., & Höhle, B.
(2010) What asymmetries within comprehension reveal about asymmetries between comprehension and production: The case of verb inflection in language acquisition. Lingua, 120, 1910–1925. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brown, R.
(1973) A first language: The early stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cleveland, L. H., & Oetting, J. B.
(2013) Children’s marking of verbal -s by non-mainstream English dialect and clinical status. American Journal of Speech Language Pathology, 22, 604–614. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Craig, H., Zhang, L., Hensel, S. L., & Quinn, E. J.
(2009) African American English-speaking students: An examination of the relationship between dialect shifting and reading outcomes. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 52, 839–855. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Villiers, J. G., & de Villiers, P. A.
(1973) A cross-sectional study of the acquisition of grammatical morphemes in child speech. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 2, 267–278. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Villiers, J. G., & Johnson, V. E.
(2007) The information in third person /s/: Acquisition across dialects of American English. Journal of Child Language, 34, 133–158. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fenson, L., Marchman, V. A., Thal, D. J, Dale, P. S., Reznick, S. J., & Bates, E.
(2007) MacArthur-Bates communicative development inventory (2nd ed.). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Gonzalez-Gomez, N., Hsin, L., Culbertson, J., Barrière, I., Nazzi, T., & Legendre, G.
(2014) Revealing early comprehension of subject-verb agreement in Spanish. In W. Orman, & M. J. Valleau (Eds.), Proceedings of the 38th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp.158–170). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Gonzalez-Gomez, N., Hsin, L., Barrière, I., Nazzi, T., & Legendre, G.
(2017) Agarra, agarran: Evidence of early comprehension of subject-verb agreement in Spanish. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 160, 33–49. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gxilishe, S., de Villiers, P. A., & de Villiers, J. G.
(2007) The acquisition of subject agreement in Xhosa. In A. Belikova (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA) (pp.114–123). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Hall, W., Nagy, W. E., & Linn, R. L.
(1984) Spoken words: Effects of situation and social group on oral word usage and frequency. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Hoff, E.
(2003) Causes and consequences of SES-related differences in parent-to-child speech. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), Socioeconomic status, parenting and child development (pp.147–160). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Hsin, L.
(2014) Integrated grammatical architecture: Insights from syntactic development (Unpublished PhD dissertation). Johns Hopkins University.Google Scholar
Johnson, V. E.
(2005) Comprehension of third person singular /s/ in AAE-speaking children. Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, 36, 116–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Johnson, V. E., de Villiers, J. G., & Seymour, H. N.
(2005) Agreement without understanding? The case of third person singular /s/. First Language, 25, 317–330. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kortmann, B., & Lunkenheimer, K.
(2013) The electronic world atlas of varieties of English. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved from < [URL] > Google Scholar
Labov, W.
(1972) Language in the inner city: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Lahey, M., Lierbegott, J. J., Chesnick, M., Menyuk, P., & Adams, J.
(1992) Variability in children’s use of grammatical morphemes. Applied Psycholinguistics, 13, 372–398. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Larsen-Freeman, D. E.
(1976) An explanation for the morpheme acquisition order of second language learners. Language Learning, 26, 125–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Legendre, G., Vainikka, A., Hagstrom, P., & Todorova, M.
(2002) Partial constraint ordering in child French syntax. Language Acquisition, 10, 189–227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Legendre, G., Barrière, I., Goyet, L., & Nazzi, T.
(2010) Comprehension of infrequent subject-verb agreement forms: Evidence from French-learning children. Child Development, 81, 1859–1875. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Legendre, G., Culbertson, J., Zaroukian, E, Hsin, L. B., Barrière, I., & Nazzi, T.
(2014) Is children's comprehension of subject–verb agreement universally late? Comparative evidence from French, English, and Spanish. Lingua, 144, 21–39. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
MacWhinney, B.
(2000) The CHILDES project: Tools for analyzing talk. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Mayer, M.
1969 Frog, where are you?. New York, NY: Dial Books for Young Readers.Google Scholar
Michaelis, S. M., Maurer, P., Haspelmath, M., & Huber, M.
(2013) Atlas of pidgin and creole language structures online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Retrieved from < [URL] > Google Scholar
Miller, J. F., & Chapman, R.
(1981) The relation between age and MLU in morphemes. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 24, 1219–1231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, K.
(2012) Not all children agree: Acquisition of agreement when the input is variable. Language Learning and Development, 8, 255–277. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013) What Sarah reveals about non-agreeing don’t and theories of root infinitives. Language Acquisition, 20, 305–324. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Newkirk-Turner, B. L., & Green, L.
(2016) Third person singular -s and event marking in child African American English. Linguistic Variation, 16, 103–130. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez-Leroux, A.-T.
(2005) Number problems in children. In C. Gurski (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2005 Canadian Linguistic Association Annual Conference. Retrieved from < [URL] l> Google Scholar
Phillips, C., & Ehrenhofer, L.
(2015) The role of language processing in language acquisition. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism, 5, 409–453. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Radford, A.
(1997) Syntactic theory and the structure of English: A minimalist approach. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rastegar, Z., Shirazi, H., & Sadighi, F.
(2012) An amazing conundrum in children’s comprehension and production of verb inflection. World Applied Sciences Journal, 18, 1095–1101.Google Scholar
Rescorla, L., & Roberts, J.
(2002) Nominal vs. verbal morpheme use in late talkers at age 3 and 4. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 45, 1219–1231. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rowe, M. L.
(2008) Child-directed speech: relation to socioeconomic status, knowledge of child development and child vocabulary skills. Journal of Child Language, 35, 185–205. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schwab, J. F., & Lew-Williams, C.
(2016) Language learning, socioeconomic status, and child-directed speech. Wiley Periodicals, 7, 264–275.Google Scholar
Seymour, H. N., Roeper, T., de Villiers, J. G., & de Villiers, P. A.
(2005) Diagnostic evaluation of language variation. San Antonio, TX: Pearson.Google Scholar
Song, J. Y., Sundara, M., & Demuth, K.
(2009) Phonological constraints on children’s production of English third person singular -s. Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research, 52, 623–642. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Syrett, K., Arunachalam, S., & Waxman, S. R.
(2014) Slowly but surely: Adverbs support verb learning in 2-year-olds. Language Learning and Development, 10(3), 263–278. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tortora, C., & den Dikken, M.
(2010) Subject agreement variation: Support for the configurational approach. Lingua, 120, 1089–1108. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verhagen, J., & Blom, E.
(2014) Asymmetries in the acquisition of subject–verb agreement in Dutch: Evidence from comprehension and production. First Language, 34, 315–335. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yang, C., Ellman, A., & Legate, J.
(2015) Input and its structural description. In A. Gallego, & D. Ott (Eds.) Fifty years later: Reflections on Chomsky’s Aspects (pp. 285–292). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 6 other publications

Barrière, Isabelle, Blandine Joseph, Katsiaryna Aharodnik, Sarah Kresh, Guetjens Prince Fleurio, Géraldine Legendre & Thierry Nazzi
2023. A multidimensional perspective on the acquisition of subject-verb dependencies by Haitian-Creole speaking children. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages DOI logo
Girolamo, Teresa M., Nichol Castro, Danai Kasambira Fannin, Samantha Ghali & Kerry Mandulak
2022. Inequity in Peer Review in Communication Sciences and Disorders. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 31:4 ► pp. 1898 ff. DOI logo
KENANIDIS, Panagiotis, Vicky CHONDROGIANNI, Géraldine LEGENDRE & Jennifer CULBERTSON
2021. Cue reliability, salience and early comprehension of agreement: Evidence from Greek. Journal of Child Language 48:4 ► pp. 815 ff. DOI logo
Lieberman, Rochel, Nancy A. Creaghead, Lesley Raisor-Becker, Isabelle Barrière, Noah Silbert & Gary L. Dick
2021. Emotion Valence for Social Communication During Story Retells. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups 6:6 ► pp. 1424 ff. DOI logo
Maher, Zachary K., Michelle E. Erskine, Arynn S. Byrd, Jeffrey R. Harring & Jan R. Edwards
2021. African American English and Early Literacy: A Comparison of Approaches to Quantifying Nonmainstream Dialect Use. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools 52:1 ► pp. 118 ff. DOI logo
Oetting, Janna B., Jessica R. Berry, Kyomi D. Gregory, Andrew M. Rivière & Janet McDonald
2019. Specific Language Impairment in African American English and Southern White English: Measures of Tense and Agreement With Dialect-Informed Probes and Strategic Scoring. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62:9 ► pp. 3443 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.