On putting the horse before the cart: Exploring conceptual bases of word order via acquisition of a...

JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE 24, 317-389 (1985)

On Putting the Horse before the Cart: Exploring Conceptual Bases of Word Order via Acquisition of a Miniature Artificial Language

BRIAN BYRNE AND ELIZABETH DAVIDSON

The University of New England

In four experiments using preschool children, congruence between reference fields and name order in a miniature artificial language (MAL) was studied. In Experiment 1 the subjects learned names for two horses and two carts, and subsequently tried to learn an MAL using the names presented either in the horse-cart order or in reverse order (cart before horse). The former was more easily learned. In Experiment 2 the possible influence of spatial position and animacy in producing the effect was examined by using toy graders and toy boulders, with the former pushing the latter. Name order which represented grader plus boulder was more easily learned than the reverse (boulder name followed by grader name), suggesting that a property such as agency determines ease of acquisition. Experi- ments 3 and 4 repeated the first two, but using Fijian children. Fijian languages are considered to be subject-final. The patterns of results were the same as for English-speaking children, indicating that the effects are not dependent upon knowing English, a subject- initial language. The results are discussed in terms of possible semantic bases of word ordering, and are seen as giving support to a “naturalness” position, which asserts that it is appropriate to refer first to agents, then patients. They are also seen as contributing to the debate on whether semantically based word combinations in early language acquisition might serve as a device assisting entry to fully syntactic forms. D 1985 Academic Press. Inc.

In the research reported in this paper we used the acquisition by young children of a miniature artificial language (MAL) to explore the relationship between word order and semantic form. We also inquired into whether any facts found in English- speaking children depend upon the char- acteristic arrangement of syntactic categories in their native language, or, in contrast, exhibit some language independence. We did this by also using Fijian children, whose

We acknowledge the cooperation of the Fiji Ministry of Education and each of the Turanga and Turanga ni Koro of all the villages and communities in which we worked. We also thank our research assistants for the help with translation and data collection, and the people of the villages for the kindness and hospitality they showed us. The research was supported by a grant from the University of New England. We are also very grateful to two reviewers of earlier versions of this paper for pointing out several conceptual con- fusions and suggesting improvements in data analysis and presentation. Requests for reprints should be sent to: Brian Byrne, Department of Psychology, Univer- sity of New England, Armidale, N.S.W. 2351, Aus- tralia.

language is ordered differently from En- glish in certain crucial aspects. The explo- ration was limited in scope, as will quickly become clear, but part of our aim was methodological-a demonstration of the usefulness of MAL learning in investigating such issues.

We focused upon links between noun order and the semantic concept of agency. There are two independent grounds upon which one can argue that, for the child learning English, noun order will in some measure represent the semantic distinction of agent and patient. One is the nature of canonical English sentences (subject first, object second), combined with the covariation of subjecthood and agency. The second ground is the naturalness position, which holds that agents are best represented by the first noun where two occur, irrespective of the ordering imposed by a language’s syntax. A brief expansion of these arguments follows.

In English, grammatical subjects gener-

377 0022-5371185 $3.00 Copyright 0 1985 by Academic Press. Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

378 BYRNE AND DAVIDSON

ally occur as the first noun in a sentence, exceptions being forms that deliberately contravene canonical order-clefts, pas- sives, and so on. As well, in many languages, including English, the semantic concept of agency has the dominant role in determining subject status (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982). That is, agents make the best subjects. Thus for the English- speaking child, and indeed for any child whose language (i) relies heavily on word order, (ii) has subject nouns typically as the first noun in a sentence, and (iii) has agency and subject status correlated, noun order will encode at least the semantic distinction, agent/patient, with the first noun as agent. That children do in fact use the in- terpretative strategy, N V N = agent action patient, has been well known since Bever’s (1970) work, and Angiolillo and Goldin- Meadow (1982) have shown that young children generally place agents preverbally and patients postverbally in producing de- scriptions of actions involving two objects.

The naturalness hypothesis offers a more direct explanation of the covariation of noun order and agency, one which is independent of the acquisition of a language with the three properties just mentioned. Osgood (1980) has perhaps developed this position most fully. His point of view, overall, can be described as firmly functionalist, in that he seeks to identify properties of prelinguistic ideation which to a degree mold the forms of language. For example, and of interest for our research, Osgood claims that there is a division in cognizing between entities which initiate changes of state and those that receive them (p. 112). Furthermore, because of the greater salience of initiating entities (agents), they are coded + Prior, as against Subsequent, on a i Directionality feature. This, Osgood claims, is the cognitive un- derpinning for the prevalence of SVO among the world’s languages (Greenberg, 1963), although in doing so he is implicitly assuming, correctly it seems. that subject status and agency are correlated. It should be noted that Osgood is not alone in ad-

vancing this naturalness position. Lyons (1977, p. 51 l), for example, in discussing the priority given to agents in grammar, writes: “. in so far as transitivity and causativity are associated with motion from a source to a goal, there may well be grounds for believing, as many scholars have done, that in referring first to the agent one is adopting as the communicative point of departure what is also the more natural cognitive point of departure.” Slobin (1982) also reviews some of the naturalness positions. It should further be noted that the view that there is a directionality feature in nonlinguistic experience has not, to our knowledge, been directly established. That is, it has not been shown that agents precede patients in the world. In fact, as a re- viewer of an earlier version of this paper pointed out, when father throws the ball, father, ball, and throwing occur simulta- neously in perception. Someone espousing the naturalness of the verbal sequence rep- resenting actor-action-patient is presumably forced to claim that there is a sufficient number of nonlinguistic situations when a genuinely temporal linearity occurs for this to become the modal, or canonical, event type, or to fall back on a rather more met- aphorical position invoking something like salience, (Osgood, 1980) or the priority of intention over action (McNeill, 1975). Nev- ertheless, despite the paucity of independent (nonlinguistic) evidence for the agent- first claim, it is a claim or assumption made quite extensively throughout the relevant linguistic and psychological literature.

Our first experiment is in essence an attempt to demonstrate that rate of acquisition of an MAL is sensitive to the congruence between name order and semantic role. It is thus methodological in intent because it is not designed to differentiate between the two positions outlined above, nor, as will be seen, can the precise nature of the relationship embodied in the MAL’s reference field be tied down solely to agent-patient. We turn to these further questions once the efficacy of the technique has been established.

WORDORDER ANDMAL 379

In choosing the acquisition of an MAL as research vehicle, we were taking advantage of the following facts: subjects learning an MAL do so better when there is a reference field for the elements of the language with some kind of systematic relationship between classes of words and reference field objects than when no field exists or word- object links are unsystematic (Moeser & Bregman, 1972); organizing the reference field into configurations further assists MAL acquisition, over and above linear sequencing, as long as there is congruence between the configurational (selection) re- strictions in MAL and field-where the ordering of one violates that of the other rule processing and sequence memory deterio- rate (Moeser, 1975a, 1975b, 1976; Moeser & Bregman, 1972); young children can learn an MAL, and have been shown to be sensitive to language/reference field relationships as well (Moeser, 1977; Moeser & Olson, 1974).

To be concrete, borrowing the techniques pioneered by Moeser and Olson (1974), we taught 3 to 5 year olds names for two toy horses and two toy carts, all on wheels. The horses could be linked to the carts and be made to pull them. Subsequently, in the ab- sence of the toy objects, we exposed the children to the four possible “sentences” created by pairing a horse name with a cart name, and tested for recall. For half of the subjects horse names preceded cart names (H + C), with the reverse situation for the remaining children (C + H). On the hypothesis that there is affinity between noun order and agency (or indeed any of several asymmetries holding between horses and carts), we predicted that learning would be superior in the H + C condition. Horses clearly have an initiating role relative to what they pull.

To summarize the logic of this study: it is known that an MAL is most readily learned when there exists congruence between the language’s structure and the organization of the reference field. We are turning matters around and using ease of learning as an index of congruence to ex-

plore the immediate questions of whether some word-class orders are more congruent with object-class properties and what may control any such congruence. The first experiment is a test of the usefulness of MAL acquisition in this context since English- speaking children can, on both theoretical grounds discussed, be expected to detect congruence between the H + C order and the reference field. Later experiments can be used to explore the nature of the congruence if the method proves sufficiently sensitive.

EXPERIMENT 1 Method

Subjects. There were seven children in each of two groups, aged between 3.6 and 4.6. In Group HC (for H + C), there were six boys and one girl, and five boys and two girls in group CH. The children came from a local preschool.

Materials and design. The miniature artificial language had the following form for both groups of subjects:

S+A+B A + Kal, Wug B + Tep, Zot.

Thus sentences consisted of an A-class word followed by a B-class word.

The reference field consisted of two toy wooden horses, easily distinguishable, and mounted on wheels, plus two wooden carts, again readily discriminated. The carts could be hooked to the horses.

Children in Group HC were taught A- class words (Kal and Wug) as the names for the horses and B-class words (Tep and Zot) for the carts. This arrangement was reversed for Group CH (Kal and Wug were carts and Tep and Zot horses).

Procedure The children were tested individually, in

a quiet part of the preschool. Two testers were involved, one to teach the names and the other, unaware of which group any child was in, to test for sentence memory.

380 BYKNE AND DAVIDSON

Each child was trained and tested for 4 con- secutive days for about 15 min each day.

During the initial approximately 10 min the first experimenter introduced the names of the toys by placing them in a line and saying “see this one, its name is Wug,” and so on. The line was rearranged and the names were repeated. This was followed by a period of game playing in which each cart was attached to each horse in both possible combinations and a variety of activities such as “races,” “ see how far they can go if you push them,” and so on, was enacted. During this time the experimenter said things like “see, Zot goes on behind Kal,” “push Wug and Tep over here,” “see how fast Zot and Wug can go.” There was no strict attempt to control the content of these utterances, but all objects were named about equally often and cart names were incorporated into the sentences in first NP position about as often as horse names were. The duration and nature of this period was modified as necessary for the attentiveness and demeanor of each child.

At the end of this naming and play period the objects were again lined up and the child was invited to name each one in turn, success or failure being noted. The line was rearranged and a recognition test was ad- ministered in which the subject was asked to “point to Tep,” and so on. Again, scores were recorded.

Following this stage the first experimenter went out, with the toys, and the second entered. She said “we are now going to play another game. Some of the new names you know go together, like friends. I’m going to say them, and I want you to say them right back to me. When we’ve said them all, I want you to tell me any you can remember. I’ll give you a raisin if you can remember some.” Each of the four sentences were then said by the experimenter, with the child repeating each one. Then the experimenter said, “Now can you tell me any we’ve said?” Any two- word combination was rewarded with a

TABLE I MEAN NUMBERS OF N4MES ANU SENTENCIS

COKKECTLY RECALLED. EXPERIMENT I

GIOllp Day I Day 1 Day 3 Day 4

(a) Names HC I .o 2.3 7.7 3.0 CH 1.3 2.4 2.7 3.4

(bl Sentences. complete data”

:Fi 5.9 II.1 13.4 IS.1 2.3 7.7 9.0 10.4

(c) Sentences, last items eliminated” HC 3.0 7.0 8.1 10.0 CH 0.9 5.1 6.3 6.6

0 See text for explanation.

raisin, except repeats (“you’ve already said that”). The child was urged to continue for a short period, and then the procedure was repeated six more times, with the sentences in a different order each time. Thus a total of 28 sentences were given each day.

On the second day the child was first asked to recall the names of any toys that he or she could, was reminded of any that were missed, and the procedure was con- tinued as on Day 1.

Results Name learning. These data refer only to

the recall test. Recognition scores were quite high and showed a ceiling effect which serves to hide potential differences in strength of learning between the groups.

The mean number of correctly recalled item names are presented in Table la. There was a significant Days effect (F(3,36) = 17.50, p < .OOl), but no Groups, nor Groups x Days interaction (F( 1,12) = 0.25 and F(3,36) = 0.19 respectively). Thus the two groups did not differ in the rate of name learning nor in overall levels reached. Any subsequent differences in sentence learning cannot therefore be attributed to differences in strength of name acquisition,

Sentence learning. The mean numbers of correct two-word combinations recalled are presented in Table lb. There was a significant Groups effect (F( 1,12) = 7.13, p < .05), with HC proving superior to CH. The Days effect was also significant (F(3.36) =

WORDORDERANDMAL 381

21.65, p < .Ol), while the interaction term, Days x Groups, was not (F(3,36) = 1.12).

We had a strong impression of a recency effect during testing. That is, a reasonable proportion of the subjects very quickly vol- unteered the last-presented item upon the signal to recall all four sentences, and this response was often not associated with the subjective signs of mental search which ac- companied other recall efforts. It seemed, impressionistically, that this recall was based on a temporary acoustic or articula- tory store (remember that each item was both heard and said by the child), and that it could bypass any hypothesized conceptual structures which might support recall from a longer term store. Our feelings were subsequently given support by the fact that over the entire series of experiments 37% of all correct responses were the last-presented items. Furthermore, on those occa- sions when only a single response was correct, it was the last item over half of the time (53%-chance would be 25%). A recency effect exists even for subjects as young as ours. However, it seemed even in this first study that it was variable across children. Some adopted a recency strategy on all 4 days, in some cases the last item comprising over 70% of correct responses. Other children exhibited no recency effect at all, and in some it appeared only to emerge toward the latter part of the experiment. We decided at the outset, therefore, to adopt, as a standard procedure, a re- scoring of the data by eliminating all last- presented items from the number correct. We hoped thereby to ensure that most items were recalled from a long-term store and that individual differences in the tactics of recall did not unduly contaminate the data. This decision was made prior to scoring the response protocols in this first experiment. These restored data are presented in Table lc. The Groups effect was still significant (F(1,12) = 4.88, p < .OS>, and so was the Days (F(3,36) = 16.67, p < .Ol). The interaction term remains nonsig- nificant (F < 1).

It is appropriate in MAL studies to ex- amine error types for erroneous responses. Because of the relatively small number of subjects in this experiment, and because of the lack of a control group in which the syntax and the reference field do not main- tain class correspondence, error analysis is left until Experiments 3 and 4, in each of which there were 45 subjects and which in- cluded the appropriate control groups.

Discussion

Children for whom the horse names preceded the cart names in sentence learning performed at a higher level throughout the 4 days of the experiment than children for whom cart names preceded horse names. This result is not attributable to being more familiar with the name-referent associations, as can be seen from the data from the name learning stage. It is likely, therefore, that there is congruence between the HC word order and the object field that does not hold, or is violated, for CH order, and we have suggested so far that it is the agent-patient relationship of horses and carts. However, there are other asymmetries between horses and carts and in the next experiment we change the reference field to test for both animacy and spatial order as possible critical factors. What does seem clear, however, is that MAL acquisition rates are sensitive to the congruence- when name order reflects the perceptual and/or conceptual priority as- sumed to inhere in horses as against what they pull, acquisition is easier. To this ex- tent, the results of this study can be seen as a small-scale laboratory demonstration of Slobin’s (1979) Universal 3: The closer a grammatical system adheres to a one-to- one mapping between semantic elements and surface elements, the easier it is to ac- quire. In the present case, the mapping re- quirements include sequencing.

EXPERIMENT 2

In this experiment new groups of chil-


dren learned names for a pair of toy graders and toy boulders, and subsequently were trained in and tested for recall of two-word combinations in which grader names preceded boulder, or vice versa. This new reference field contrasts with the horse/cart combination in several ways. One is animacy; following Braine and Wells (1978) and Angiolillo and Goldin-Meadow (1982), who reserve animacy for people and ani- mals, the horse/cart field is asymmetric with regard to animacy, the grader/boulder field is uniform (inanimate). If the results of the first experiment depended upon a mapping of name order into animacylinan- imacy. with congruence occurring when horse names came first, the effect should disappear in Experiment 2. A second way in which the two object selections differ is in the joint occurrence of agentive role and spatial superiority. The graders are designed to push the boulders in front of them, and hence the motivating force is behind the passive object. With horses and carts it is the other way round. Thus if congruence in Experiment 1 occurs when the first word represents the object at front of a moving combination, children in the BG (boulder + grader) condition should learn two-word combinations better than those in GB. On the other hand, if the agent/patient category is crucial, GB learning should be superior to BG. (Other asymmetries, such as size, would predict the same result. One experiment cannot explore all possibilities).

Method

Subjects. The children, again ranging in age from 3.6 to 4.6, were selected from the same preschool as those in the first study. There were 11 in each group, 5 boys and 6 girls. Median age in both groups was 4.2.

Materials, design, and procedure. The sole difference between this study and the last was in the reference field. It consisted of two wooden graders, easily distin- guished, and two “boulders” (actually, lawn bowls), marked differently. The graders had blades which could be used to

TABLE 7 MEAN NUMBERS OF NAMES AND SENTENCES

CORRECTLY RECALLED, EXPERIMENT 7

GIDUP Day 1 Day ? Day 3 Day 4

(a) Names GB 1.3 2.0 2.2 2.9 BG 1.1 1.3 2.2 2.4

(b) Sentences, complete data GB 9.3 12.0 13.6 15.4 BG 8.8 11.2 12.0 12.6

Cc) Sentences, last items eliminated GB 3.6 1.6 8.6 10.3 BG 2.5 5.8 6.7 6.8

push the heavy bowls around. For one group (GB) the A-class words (Kal, Wug) referred to the graders and B-class (Tep, Zot) to the boulders. For the group BG the A-class names applied to boulders, B-class to graders. The procedure followed Exper- iment 1, except of course that pushing games were played with the toys rather than the pulling games appropriate to horses and carts.

Results

Name learning. Table 2a contains the mean correctly recalled names from the name learning phase. There was a significant Days effect (F(3,60) = 16.37, p < .Ol), but no Groups (F(1,20) = 1.33, p > .05) and no Groups x Days interaction (F = 1.0). Thus the groups could not be distin- guished in terms of how firmly they acquired word/referent pairings.

Sentence learning. The mean numbers of correct two-word recalls are displayed in Table 2b. While the children in Group GB had consistently higher means, the result was not significant (F(1,20) = 1.21, p > .05), nor was the Days x Groups interaction (F(3,60) = 1.10). The Days effect was, as expected, statistically significant (F(3,60) = 19.99, p < .Ol).

There was, however, reason to believe that the BG means were inflated by the recency effect discussed in Experiment 1. We calculated for each child the proportion of correctly recalled items that comprised last-presented items. The median propor-

tion for all 22 subjects was .39, and 8 of the Fijian is typically agent- as well as subject- members of Group BG were above the me- final. Thus: dian (3 below, of course, and the respective numbers for GB subjects were 3 and 8). In A tauva nai lavo mai na kato na tagane.

fact, 5 of the BG children had proportions past take Art. money from Art. box Art. man

above SO, whereas only 2 GB subjects fell “The man took money from the box.”

(Keenan, 1978, p. 275) into this class. When last-presented items E mokut-i Wati o Bale. correctly recalled were removed from the 3Sg. hit- Obj. Wati Topic Bale data (see Table 2c) a Groups effect emerged “Bale hit Wati.”

(F(1,20) = 4.46, p < .05). The usual Days (Keenan, 1978, p. 289)

effect was found (F(3,60) = 19.36, p < .Ol), Fijian children thus provide a convenient

and, again, the interaction term was not sig- subject group upon whom to test the prop-

nificant (F = 0.77). osition that the (putative) agent-first phenomenon of Experiments 1 and 2 resulted

Discussion not from a natural predisposition to order agents before patients but from having ac-

Taking the results from both experiments quired a language with a typical agent-first into consideration, it does not appear that form.’ the MAL/reference field congruence is de- In this experiment and the next a control fined over spatial organization (at least of group was added in which the class corre- the front/back sort) nor over an animacy spondence between word position and ob- variable. As a first approximation, it can be ject type was destroyed. This was achieved claimed that a two-word MAL is congruent in the name learning phase by linking one with a reference field when the first word refers to the object with the agentive role

A-class word with a horse (or grader-Ex- periment 4) and the other A word with a

and the second to the patient. However, as cart (boulder). A similar arrangement held, noted several times already, more experi- naturally, for the B words. We wished to ments are needed to distinguish among this locate the performance of CH and BG and various other plausible accounts. The Groups with reference to a “neutral” po- fact that differences in sentence learning sition in order to discover if the differences have emerged in a second experiment does detected so far can be attributed to a psy- lend weight to the claim that MAL acqui- chological advantage holding for HC and sition is a viable method for studying rela- GB or a disadvantage attaching to CH and tions between conceptualization and its lin- BG. There is nothing particularly profound guistic expression. about this refinement, but it would be in-

teresting if we were to discover, for ex- EXPERIMENT 3 ample, that CH and BG were actually

This experiment and the next were in es- worse than the noncongruence control con-

sence replications of the first two in that dition.

the same MAL and reference fields were used. The major new factor in the last two Method

studies was the choice of subjects, Fijian Subjects. Initial pilot work made it clear children, in villages on the main island, that we could not use village children as near Suva. Fijian is one of the minority young as the Australian subjects. They group of languages which is regarded as subject-final, as it operates in its least r Fijian does permit other orders, including SVO, and

marked form (Keenan, 1978), and is 1 of there may be variation among dialects (Geraghty,

possibly only 11 VOS languages. It also 1978). Keenan concludes “that Fijian is basically a VOS language, but less rigidly so than Malagasy, for

seems clear from published examples that instance.” (1978, p. 278)

WORD ORDER AND MAL 383


were not at ease in the testing situation, presumably because of a lack of any ex- posure to tasks with a test component and to visits to the villages by westerners. Our final three groups were made up as follows: HC, range 48-69 months, median 62; CH 44-72 months, median 59; Control (see below) 42-68 months, median 59. The number of children in each group was 15, with 9, 10, and 7 females, respectively.

Materials, design, and procedure. The MAL and the reference field were the same as used in Experiment 1. As well as Groups HC and CH, a Control group was added in which one class A word was the name of a horse and one named a cart. Similarly the two class B words referred to different object classes. Thus class correspondence between words and objects was destroyed.

The instructions were translated into Fijian, and two native speakers, females, were trained as experimenters. They were unaware of the experiment’s rationale, and in addition the second tester was blind to group membership of her subjects. In other details the procedure of Experiment 1 was followed, except that testing was conducted in the subjects’ homes, away from other family members and distractions.

Results

Name learning. The data are displayed in Table 3a. There is the usual Days effect

(F(3.126) = 68.32, p < .Ol), but no Groups effect (F( 1,42) = 1.48, p > .05) nor interaction (F(6,126) = 2.01, p > .05). Compar- ison of the means with those in Table I shows that the Fijian and Australian children performed at much the same level.

Sentence learning. The means of the three groups are presented in Table 3b. The children in Group HC performed best, with a significant Groups effect (F(2,42) = 4.17, p < .05). There was also the usual improvement over days (F(3,126) = 42.48, p < .Ol), and on this occasion a significant interaction term (F(6,126) = 2.59, p < .05).

Since the interaction was significant, we conducted post hoc comparisons of group means within each of the 4 days. Group HC was superior to CH on Days 2,3, and 4 and to Controls on Days 3 and 4. In turn, Con- trol means were higher than those for CH on the second and third days (New- man- Keuls technique).

When the last-presented items were dropped from the data, the pattern of results remained much the same (Table 3~). The Groups effect is borderline (F(2,42) = 3.00, p = .06), though the interaction remained significant (F(6,126) = 2.27, p < .05), as did Days (F(3,126) = 34.87, p < .Ol).

Error analysis. We analyzed all two-word errors, excluding those rare cases when a name was repeated. Since no corrective

TABLE 3 MEAN NUMBERS OF NAMES AND SENTENCES CORRECTLY RECALLED, EXPERIMENT 3

Group Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4

HC CH Control

HC CH Control

HC CH Control

(a) Names 0.8 2.3 1.5 2.1 1.7 2.0

(b) Sentences, complete data 9.8 11.5 7.8 8.5 9.3 11.7

(c) Sentences, last items eliminated 4.6 7.5 4.7 5.0 5.1 7.2

2.6 3.2 3.1 3.5 2.9 3.3

15.5 16.8 11.0 11.9 13.5 12.9

10.5 11.0 7.3 7.5 8.9 8.7


feedback was given, these mistakes can be seen as indicative of the existence of any internal pressures to generate “sentences.” Three types of errors can be made; A + A, B + B. or B + A. The numbers of each error type for the groups are in Table 4. Several features stand out. There is a low proportion of A + A errors. Since the same two names always were A-class words (WUG and TEP in this experiment) it is not known whether this feature is word specific or class specific. Second, and most impor- tant, Group CH had a high proportion of B + A errors (68%, compared with 44% for HC and 55% for Control). Since there are altogether four possible A + A and B + B errors, and four possible B + A errors, the conservative null hypothesis is that half of the errors should be A + A and B + B, and half B + A. We tested whether the preponderance of B + A errors for this group was significant, via a within-subject t test. It was significant (t(14) = 3.02, p < .05). Thus there was a strong tendency for children in Group CH to spontaneously produce Horse + Cart combinations, which is what B f A sequences represent, even though they were never provided as models.

Another aspect of the data related to errors and which confirms the superior learning of HC children was the fact that 77% of their two-word responses were correct, compared with 72% for Controls and 64% for CH subjects.

Discussion

The sentence recall data conforms to the pattern found with English-speaking children in Experiment 1 -combinations rep-

resenting horse-cart ordering were better learned than cart-horse sequences. It seems, therefore, that whatever forms the basis for congruence between the reference field (toys) and the MAL, agency perhaps, is not dependent upon acquisition of a language which is typically subject-first in surface form.

It also appears that there was some real inhibitory process at work insofar as CH subjects were inferior to controls, for whom not even class correspondence held between word position and toy type. A clue to the nature of this process was provided by the error data, which showed that CH children had a strong “regularizing” tendency to generate horse-cart sentence types. They produced more errors than children in the other groups (see Table 4), and over two-thirds of these were of B + A form.

EXPERIMENT 4 This study is a replication of the grader-

boulder experiment (2) with Fijian subjects and the addition of a no-correspondence control group.

Method

Subjects. We located another 45 young village children, 15 for each group. In Group GB the ages ranged from 51 to 66 months, with a median of 60 months. The analogous figures for Groups BG and Con- trol were 52-72, 59.4 and 48-72, 59. The number of females in the three groups were, in order, 7, 8, and 10.

Materials, design, and procedure. The execution of the experiment was in line with Experiment 2 as far as materials and procedure are concerned, and Experiment

TABLE 4 FREQUENCY OF TWO-WORD ERROR TYPES, EXPERIMENT 3

Group AiA B+B B+A Total

HC 15 122 107 244 CH 25 79 223 327 Control 26 101 153 280


3 with respect to the MAL. Thus for sentence learning all children were given

S+A+B A + Wug, Tep, B + Kal. Zot,

with A-class words naming graders and B- class words naming boulders for Group GB, the reverse situation for BG, and no class correspondence holding for Control.

Results

Name learning. In Table 5a are the mean correct responses across the 4 days of testing for name recall. As in the other three studies there is an improvement over time (F(3,126) = 51.23, p < .Ol), but no difference among the groups (F(2,42) = 1.23, p > .05) and no interaction (F(6,126) = 0.52). The absolute figures are close to those in the previous experiments.

Sentence learning. Table 5b contains the data for the three groups. Group GB had the highest daily mean scores, and the Groups effect was significant (F(2.42) = 11.06, p < .Ol). There was a clear improvement for all children across the duration of the experiment, equally so for each group. The Days effect was significant (F(3,126) = 25.04, p < .Ol), while the interaction was not (F(6,126) = 1.58, p > .05). Post hoc comparisons of means (Newman-Keuls) showed that GB was superior to both con-

trols and BG, but that there was no difference between the latter two groups. This pattern is consistent with data on per- centage of correct two-word responses- 92, 79, and 74 for GB, BG, and Control, respectively (see error analysis below).

Reanalysis with last-presented items eliminated (Table 5c) does not change the picture. The Groups effect was significant (F(2,42) = 9.38, p < .Ol), as was Days (F(3,126) = 42.11, p < .Ol). There was no interaction (F(6,126) = 1.52, p > .05).

Errors. The pattern that emerged in Ex- periment 3 was again in evidence, though weakly so. The data in Table 6 show that Group BG made a relatively high proportion of B + A (grader + boulder) errors, 57%. In both the other groups less than half the errors were B + A. However, the mean number of these reversal mistakes com- mitted by children in BG, 7.6, was not sig- nificantly higher than the combined number of their A + A and B + B errors (5.8- t(14) = I. 16, p > .05), so this error pattern cannot be said to support the acquisition data in the way that it did in Experiment 3.

Discussion

The acquisition data were similar to those obtained with Australian children. The name sequences were better learned in an order that mirrored the grader-boulder order even though in the physical arrange-

TABLE 5 MEAN NUMBERSOFNAMESAND SENTENCES CORRECTLY RECALLED~EXPERIMENT~

Group Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4

GB BG Control

GB BG Control

GB BG Control

(a) Names 1.6 2.7 1.1 2.3 1.4 2.1

(b) Sentences, complete data 11.3 15.5 9.5 10.8

10.6 11.4

(c) Sentences, last items eliminated 6.3 10.3 5.1 6.9 5.1 7.5

3.1 3.6 3.0 3.4 3.1 3.2

17.4 18.9 12.7 13.1 13.5 14.6

11.8 12.9 8.1 8.5 9.3 9.7


ment of the toys the boulder was in front. Something other than spatial organization, of the front/back kind, characterizes congruence between MAL and reference field.

The control group, with no congruence between name position and object class, did about as well in acquisition as Group BG, who, after all, did have position/class congruence in their MAL. This equality stands in contrast to the relevant compar- ison in Experiment 3, where Controls were better learners than CH subjects on some days at least. It is safe to conclude, however, that having a systematic relationship between reference field and MAL syntax is not always an advantage. If the relationship in some sense violates an acquired or “natural” basis for congruence, learning is no better than when no congruence at all holds, and may even be worse.

GENERAL DISCUSSION

Young children, in two quite different cultures and with two quite different languages, were better at learning two-word combinations which described a horse-cart combination and a grader-boulder combination (in those orders) than at learning cart-horse and boulder-grader name pairs. Error data were partially consistent, and one of the “reverse” pairings, cart- horse, was harder to learn than name pairs which were not congruent with the reference field in terms of sentential position. The facts are relatively firm; their interpretation is not.

One problem of interpretation centers on what is the essential feature of the two reference fields which defines congruence with word order. Two possible explanations can be eliminated. One is correspondence

between temporal and spatial priority. Horses precede carts, but graders follow boulders. The second is animacy. Horses are animate, graders are not. In this latter regard our results support the observations of Angiolillo and Goldin-Meadow (1982), which showed that agency rather than animacy governed order-of-mention (agents typically first). Hence it is sensible to consider the agent-patient-like asymmetry between horses and carts and between graders and boulders as the crucial element in these studies. But there are other differences which need to be considered. For example, the horses used were bigger than the carts, and the graders were bigger than the boulders. As well, the children mostly handled the horses and graders in the course of playing pulling and pushing games. Thus it may be that the object which is most cen- tral in the child’s actions assumes some priority which is well captured in H + C and G + B sentences, and violated in their opposites. A finding consistent with an “action pattern” interpretation is reported by Moeser (1977). Children learned names for round blocks and larger geometric blocks into which the round ones fitted. (The subjects uniformly handled the blocks that way-putting the round ones into the geometric ones.) In sentence learning there was evidence of acquisition above a control group’s performance (learning names for arbitrary figures which did not interlock) only for the “motor correlation” group in which round block names preceded geometric block names. The reverse group (geometric name + round name) did not perform well. Further studies in which all interaction between child and reference field is removed would shed light on this question. It is not difficult to imagine other

Group

GB BG Control

TABLE 6 FREQUENCY OF TWO-WORD ERROR TYPES, EXPERIMENT 4

A+A B+B B+A

19 29 39 16 71 114 36 97 104

Total

87 201 237


reference fields which would test for the several perceptual and cognitive asymmetries common to the two we have used.

Whatever it is that defines congruence, however, does not appear to depend upon knowing a language with a strong subject- and agent-first structure. Fijian is subject- final (though not rigidly so). Yet the Fijian children gave acquisition results as clear as the Australian children, favoring the putative agent-first representation. The results thus provide support for the “naturalness” position of Osgood and others. There may be a “primitive” congruence between the conceptual asymmetry inherent in agent- patient relationships and linguistic sequencing which puts agents in initial position. The research we have done in no way uncovers why this may be (if it is so), but in the context of linguistic expression several authors have commented on the time sequencing which is implicated in the notion of causality, which in turn is linked closely to the notion of agent (see Givbn, 1979). This may then account for the agent- first phenomenon in these experiments- agent names more naturally precede patient names just as causes precede effects. But if the basis of congruence is something else, say perceptual salience, then the appropri- ateness of referring first to the horse and to the grader represents a less direct form of isomorphism, something akin to the order with which attention is seized by the reference objects (Jakobson, 1963; Watt, 1970).

We consider that the tentative evidence we have gathered for a direct mapping of semantic role into linguistic organization renders more plausible the idea that children’s initial word combinations can be characterized semantically as against purely syntactically (Braine, 1976). It would seem odd for humans to have this mapping capacity and not make use of it, and it has been suggested that direct representation may be used as a bootstrapping device to help “crack the code” of lan-

guage (Bates & MacWhinney, 1982). But such speculations go well beyond the data we have presented.

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(Received May 30, 1983) (Revision received September 26, 1984)

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