The contribution of Greek SESEin the development of locatives

Arhonto TerziArhonto Terzi1 & Vina TsakaliVina Tsakali2 1Technological Educational Institute of W. Greece, Patras

2 University of Crete

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GREEK LINGUISTICS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON GREEK LINGUISTICS 12, University of Berlin, 16-19 September 2015 12, University of Berlin, 16-19 September 2015

Central Questions on Spatial Development

a. Does spatial development emerge in the same manner across languages?

b. Does language encoding of spatial terms affect/influence/assist spatial development?

2

Studies have shown that there are certain universal properties in the development of spatial reasoning, but language does affect the development of locatives by either obstructing or facilitating it.

more specifically …

3

Background

There was once the idea that children learn how to structure meaning via exposure to language. Languages partition the world differently, and children acquire the world view according to this partitioning (Whorf 1956).

A weaker version: languages highlights certain aspects of language than others (Athanasopoulos et al. 2009, 2011).

4

During the cognitive revolution of the 1960s and 1970s the previous idea was abandoned for the view that children's first words label concepts that originate non-linguistically.

Spatial terms seemed to offer a good amount of evidence in favor of these views since:

a) children know a lot about space before they use language to represent this knowledge.

b) words like up, down and back appear early and rapidly (a result of the related meanings having piled up already).

5

c) most importantly, spatial words for notions of containment, i.e., in, contiguity and support, i.e., on, and occlusion, i.e., under

emerge before words for proximity, i.e., next to, beside, between,

which emerge before words for projective relationships, i.e., in front of, behind.

In short,containment (in) > contiguity and support (on), occlusion

(under) > proximity (next to, beside, between) > projectives (in front of, behind).

The above follows the sequence of emergence of spatial concepts established by Piaget & Inhelder (1956) via non-linguistic tests.

6

Yet, in a series of experiments, Bowerman & Choi (1991, 2001), argued for a more interactive view of how children's early word meanings arise. They did so by utilizing spatial terms.

Evidence from 1- to 3-year-old children acquiring

English and Korean. Children learning Korean:

a) made no general distinction between contact and support

b) followed the Korean distinction between 'interlocking tightly' relations and 'loose' relations.

7

The current study

Goals

A. whether the order of development of prepositions in

Greek supports the cross-linguistic picture, and

B. whether language specific properties affect

development of spatial concepts.

8

In earlier work, Terzi, Tsakali and Zafeiri (2015), we found that the locative P pano se ‘on’ is mastered long after kato apo ‘under’, mesa se ‘in’, brosta apo ‘in front of’ and piso apo ‘behind’.

Recall in > on, under > next to, beside > in front, behind

Moreover, the overwhelming majority of children’s errors interpret it as pano apo ‘above’, a locative P that is acquired much later crosslinguistically.

We attributed the late acquisition of Greek ‘pano se’ to the fact that it shares part of its lexical make up with ‘pano apo’.

Here we focus on SE, as another candidate for assessing whether the linguistic means encoding spatial expressions affects the acquisition of related concepts.

SE is a highly frequent lexical item in Greek, and can express a number of spatial concepts, i.e.,

CONTAINMENT, SE-in, (1),

SUPPORT, SE-on, (2),

LOCATION-NOT SPECIFIED, SE-at, (3),

DIRECTION, SE-to, (4).

10

The data under discussion

(1) To vivlio ine sto sirtari [LOCATION-CONTAINMENT] The book is se +DEF drawer “The book is in the drawer”.

(2) To vivlio ine (pano) sto trapezi [LOCATION-SUPPORT] The book is se +DEF drawer “The book is on the table”.

(3) To vivlio vriskete sti vivliothiki [LOCATION-NOT SPECIFIED] The book is se +DEF library “The book is located at the library”.

(4) Pigeno sto grafio [DIRECTIONAL-GOAL] “I am going to the office”.

(5) To vivlio ine pano apo to trapezi [LOCATION-NON-SUPPORT] “The book is above the table”.

11

The issue

SE, raises the question to what extent lexical homonymity and/or semantic opacity (i.e., semantic and syntactic underspecification) is involved in the order of acquisition of the relevant locative terms.

Lexical homonymity of SE also interacts with morphological opacity since SE (on) is an alternate of pano se (on).

In turn, the latter shares a morphological part with pano apo (above).

Thus SE is also involved in a morphologically opaque pair of two distinct locative concepts, “on” and “above”.

12

CENTRAL HYPOTHESIS

If language affects the development of spatial notions, we should be able to observe differences in the developmental pattern of SE compared to the fully specified semantic counterparts (i.e. mesa se, pano se).

13

Methodology-locatives

Items 1. Pano se 'on'2. Pano apo 'above'3. SE 'in'4. SE 'on'5. SE ‘to’

6. Kato apo 'under'7. Mesa se 'in'8. Brosta apo/se 'in front of'9. Piso apo 'behind'10. Ekso apo 'outside of‘

14

Methodology-tasks

Experiments : a. Comprehension - 1 taskb. Production - 2 tasks

a. Comprehension Picture selection task, 6 and 4 sentences per item 3 pictures per sentence Sentences were recorded (by two female native speakers) Sentences were pseudorandomized Target pictures were pseudorandomized.

15

Methodology-structures

Place prepositions: Figure is pano se(on)/mesa se (in)/SE Ground

Path prepositions: Figure is coming to Ground

16

To kadro ine (pano) ston kanape 'The picture is on the sofa.‘

To pulaki ine (mesa) sto kluvi 'The bird is in the cage.'

O skilos erhete sto spitaki tu. ‘The dog is coming to the dog house’

Methodology-participants

Participants (110 children) Age groups: 1: 4;0 - 4;5 (n=22) 2: 4;6 - 4;11 (n=22) 3: 5;0 - 5;5 (n=22) 4: 5;6 - 5;11 (n=22) 5: 6;0 - 6;5 (n=22)

Control Group: 22 adults (various educational background)

Baseline tasks: Raven's coloured progressive matrices (Raven, 1998) > 80 DVIQ morphosyntax task (Stavrakaki & Tsimpli, 2000) Expressive Vocabulary task (Vogindroukas et al. 2009).

20

Results

Comprehension

Comparison of SE-on/-in/-to

22

Comparison of SE-in to SE-on

23

Comparison of SE-in to SE-to

24

Comparison of SE-on to SE-to

25

in/on/to in both specified and underspecified form

26

Interim Conclusions What do we see so far?

SE is not uniformly acquired

a)There is a low percentage of errors (below 10%) across age-groups with SE-in, supporting claims that favor a universal cognitive shaping of locative terms (Jonhston & Slobin 1979, Casasola & Cohen 2002).

b)SE-on follows (with highest error rate 23% in the youngest group, decreasing with age).

c) SE-to errors are statistically higher compared to both SE-in and SE-on.

27

Hence: Developmental order of SE:

SE (in) > SE (on) > SE (to)

comparable to counterpart complex PPs :

Mesa SE (in) > pano SE (on) > SE (to)(Terzi, Tsakali & Zafeiri 2015)

28

Error analysis on ambiguous sentences

29

TESTING OUR HYPOTHESIS

If language affects the development of spatial notions we should be able to observe differences in the developmental pattern of SE compared to the fully specified semantic counterparts (i.e., mesa se, pano se).

30

Comparison of SE-in to MESA SE

31

Comparison of SE-on to PANO SE

32

Conclusions

Children’s comprehension of SE-in emerges earlier than SE-in and SE-to.

Errors with the fully specified semantic counterparts of these three spatial concepts show that homonymity of SE presumably affects the development of the spatial notions under investigation (cf. Johnston and Slobin 1979).

33

Conclusions Our study supports the view that language-specific

properties affect the acquisition of spatial terms.

Given that the developmental difficulties with SE are not equally distributed among its meanings, homonymity per se cannot account for these differences.

Thus, the study provides evidence for a (semi-) autonomous mapping between spatial concepts and linguistic forms.

Although the order of development of the spatial notions containment, support and goal is unvaried, the emergence of the notions in the homonymous form is significantly later than their emergence in their fully specified form.

34

Conclusions

Our findings provide further evidence that language specific input affects development of spatial terms.

Finally, the development of spatial categories undergoes considerable changes for long after their first emergence (even over the first six years) .

35

Selected References

• Bowerman, M. & S. Choi. 2001. Shaping meanings for language: universal and language-specific in the acquisition of spatial semantic categories. In M. Bowerman & S. C. Levinson (eds.) Language acquisition and conceptual development. CUP, 475-511.

• Botwinik-Rotem, I. & A. Terzi. 2008. Greek and Hebrew locative Prepositional Phrases: a unified Case-driven account.’ Lingua 118:

399-424.• Choi, S & M. Bowerman. 1991. Learning to express motion events

in English and Korean: the influence of language-specific lexicalization patterns. Cognition 41: 83-121.

• Lakusta, L. & B. Landau. 2005. Starting at the end: the importance of goals in spatial language. Cognition 96: 1-33

• Terzi, A. 2010. ‘Locative Prepositions and Place.’ In G. Cinque & L. Rizzi (eds.) Mapping Spatial PPs. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures, 196-224, Oxford University Press.

36

Selected References

• Terzi, A. & V. Tsakali. 2009. On vs. above: lexical semantics and syntactic factors affecting spatial acquisition. In Proceedings of the 33rd BUCD.

• Terzi, A., V. Tsakali & A. Zafeiri. 2015. Does language structure affect acquisition of spatial terms? In Proceedings of the 35th Studies in Greek Linguistics.

• Whorf, B. L. 1956. Language, thought and reality: selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

37

Thank you!

38

• This research has been co-financed by the European Union (European Social Fund - ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) - Research Funding Program: ARCHIMEDES III. Investing in knowledge society through the European Social Fund.

Project Title: The structure of (a)typical language:

linguistic theory and intervention

39

Acknowledgements