University of Groningen
The acquisition of "optional" movement Zuckerman, Shalom
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Chapter 4
The acquisition of embedded auxiliary-participle structures in Dutch
1. Introduction
This chapter focuses on word-order variation in past-participle structures in embedded clauses of standard Dutch. Since the main question of this work is how children handle such cases of variation in their target grammar, these structures will be used as a test case for the acquisition of “optional” movement in Dutch. Recall that the main proposal in this work is that in the presence of “optional” movement in the input, a child will prefer to produce the more economical structure. To examine this proposal with respect to the case of embedded participle-structures in Dutch, one should first establish the properties of these structures, namely, the underlying structure and the movement operation(s) responsible for the two variants. Most importantly, one should clarify which of the two variants is the more economical (i.e., involves fewer movement operations) and thus the one expected to be preferred by children. Furthermore, one should investigate the adult speakers’ preferences; especially those that can be taken as representative tokens of the input the children receive, in order to compare them to the preferences of the children. Based on such a comparison of children’s and adults’ preferences, it will be claimed that, as predicted by the main proposal of this work, children do indeed prefer the more economical of two structures appearing in their input, while adults show a clear preference for the other option. Along the way, several aspects of the theoretical analysis of embedded participle structures in Dutch and their apparent optionality will be discussed. This chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part, the theoretical properties of the structures will be examined, in order to investigate the nature of the variation (i.e., is it truly optional?) and of the underlying structures (i.e., which order is the more economical?). In the second part, an experimental investigation that compares the production of children and adults will be presented. 62 Chapter 4
1.1 Variation in the target grammar
Standard Dutch allows syntactic variation in the order of the verbal elements in the VP. This is demonstrated below:
(1) a. dat Jan het boek heeft gelezen (the aux-part order) that Jan the book have read(participle) b. dat Jan het boek gelezen heeft (the part-aux order) that Jan the book read(part.) have ‘…that Jan read the book’
(2) a. dat Jan het boek wil lezen that Jan the book want read(inf) b. dat Jan het boek lezen wil that Jan the book read(inf) want ‘… that Jan wants to read the book’
Unlike Dutch, other Germanic languages, like, for example, German, do not allow such variation:
(3) a. dass Jan das Buch gelesen hat that Jan the book read(part.) has b. * dass Jan das Buch hat gelesen
The current paper focuses only on the auxiliary-participle structure, as in (1) above, and only occasionally will a remark be made about the other constructions. The structures in (2), which combine a modal verb and an infinitive, seem to be similar to the auxiliary-participle structures. However, in practice, Dutch speakers use the modal-infinitive order (2a) almost exclusively; thus, this structure does not qualify as the kind of optionality in the input that is of interest in the current work. In the introduction we considered the possibility that true optionality does not exist, and that at least a subtle difference exists between the interpretations assigned to Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 63
any two structures that differ in word-order. In this respect, the auxiliary-participle structures in Dutch embedded clauses seem to be a hard nut to crack. Of all the seemingly optional structures mentioned in this work, this one seems closest to being truly optional. Speakers judge both orders as equally grammatical and there seems to be no difference in respect to register or so-called ‘stylistic’ measures. Nevertheless, in the following subsection, we shall see that even in this case there are differences between the two orders that cast doubt on their being truly optional.
1.2 The nature of the variation
Current speakers of standard Dutch consider the two options in (1a-b) to be totally interchangeable. That is, when presented with the two variants most speakers will say that they see no difference with respect to grammaticality nor with respect to the interpretation assigned to the two options. This section discusses the nature of the variation and asks whether the aux-part and the part-aux orders are indeed equivalent. The question of the equivalence of the two orders will be discussed on syntactic level (grammaticality judgements), as well as the level of register and dialectal influence. In addition, the two orders will be evaluated with respect to the personal preferences of each speaker; that is, even though speakers judge both orders to be identical, it will be asked whether they demonstrate this judgement in their own use of the language. Below are several examples of proposed constraints on the aux-part/part-aux choice that have been proposed in the literature.
1.2.1 Syntactic constraints:
Ron Van Zonneveld (personal communication) observes that when the verb-cluster is nominalized, the part-aux order becomes obligatory16, as shown in (4) below.
(4) a. Het gelezen hebben van dit boek the read(part.) have of this book b. * Het hebben gelezen van dit boek
16 Ger de Haan (p.c.) points out that the contrast in (4) does not hold when the object is indefinite. That is, when the object dit boek ‘this book’ is replaced with veel boeken ‘a lot of books’ both 4a and 4b are acceptable. This observation calls for a fine graining of the relation between nominalization and movement in this construction, but nevertheless it does not diminish the argument made here, namely that in some contexts the optionality disappears. The fact that contrasts such as in (4) exist, casts a doubt on the claim that the relevant movement is optional. 64 Chapter 4
the have read(part.) of this book ‘The reading of this book’
The fact that an optional order becomes obligatory under nominalization is not unique to this case. Dative alternation in English that is optional in a matrix clause is forbidden under nominalization (see e.g. Baker 1997), and Wh-elements in French allowed both in-situ and in the fronted position are obligatorily in-situ under nominalization. This point will be elaborated later, when the underlying structure of the auxiliary-participle constructions is discussed. The important point here is that, in the context of nominalization, the apparent optionality disappears. When an auxiliary-participle construction includes a negation element (niet) or an affirmation (empathic) element (wel), speakers seem to prefer the part-aux order. However, when the sentence is neutral (without negation or affirmation), the aux- part order is preferred. This finding emerged from a translation experiment (reported in Zuckerman 1999) in which 141 Dutch-speaking students were asked to translate, from English into Dutch, a text that included 5 sentences of the discussed structures (In English, these structures are of an obligatory order and thus the translator is free to choose either of the two orders for the Dutch sentences). The results showed that while 65% of the neutral sentences were translated as aux-part structures, the sentences with negation or affirmation elements had only 35% and 41%, respectively, of that order and 65% and 59%, respectively, of the part-aux structure. Although these findings show that the presence of a negation or affirmation element creates only a change in preference and not in grammaticality judgement, the fact that such a syntactic element has an effect on people‘s preferences shows that the alternation in the auxiliary participle structure might be related to syntactic factors and is thus not truly free. Pardoen (1991) observes that sentences with the adverb vrijwel ‘nearly’ score poorly with the aux-part order (see (5a)), while with the part-aux order they are perfectly grammatical:
(5) a. ? Omdat de legers elkaar vrijwel hebben afgeslacht (aux-part) because the armies each-other nearly have slaughtered b. Omdat de legers elkaar vrijwel afgeslacht hebben (part-aux)
‘Because the armies have nearly slaughtered each-other’
Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 65
Adverbs such as vrijwel can be seen as scalar-degree relatives that carry a semantic function similar to the function of negation and affirmation markers. One can imagine a scale of such markers in which negation and affirmation elements occupy the two extreme positions and adverbs such as those above mark various intermediate positions. Under this view the observations of Pardoen (1991), and the findings of Zuckerman (1999), combine to support the following conclusion: in auxiliary-participle constructions that include negation, or affirmation, or a scalar- degree relative, the part-aux order will be preferred.
1.2.2 Register and dialect:
It has been claimed (e.g. in Stroop 1970, Zwart 1994)17 that the aux-part order is more characteristic of the written language and that the part-aux order is more characteristics of the spoken language. Although this observation might have been true in previous generations, it seems that current speakers of Dutch make no such distinction between the written and the spoken language. De Hoop and Smabers (1987) investigated the differences between spoken and written language in standard Dutch. One of the variants that was investigated was the difference in preference for the aux-part and the part-aux order. The authors presented 60 subjects with the different orders in a context of spoken language and in a context of written language, and asked which of the orders was more 'suitable' to the context. The results of this study showed equal numbers of responses for the written and spoken contexts; the authors concluded that there is no difference between spoken and written language. More support for the claim that there is no difference between the two registers comes from the fact that the results of a (written) translation experiment (Zuckerman 1999) and an oral experiment (presented later in this paper) showed similar percentages of speakers’ choices between the two orders (65% preference for the aux-part order). Powels (1953), Stroop (1970) and others, have shown that different dialects of Dutch show different preferences with respect to the aux-part and the part-aux orders. For example, it is claimed that the northern Gronings dialect is characterised by a strong preference for the part-aux order while in the southern Limburgs dialect 66 Chapter 4
the prominence of the aux-part order is stronger. The question relevant to the current investigation is whether these preferences carry implications for standard Dutch as it is spoken in different regions of the Netherlands. The natural assumption is that dialects of a specific region will have an influence on the preferences in the standard language spoken by people in the region. However the experiment presented in this chapter will show that adult speakers of three different regions show similar preferences, suggesting that the regional dialects have no influence, or at least no longer have an influence, on the standard language in this respect. Haeseryn (1990) also compared the preferences of adult speakers in two different regions (in the west and the south of the Netherlands) and found no difference between them with respect to the auxiliary-participle structures. Moreover, it is not clear whether the dialectal differences reported in Powels (1953) and Stroop (1970) still exist today. That is, as much as the regional dialects can influence the standard language of speakers in each region, the standard language can influence the regional dialects. Support for the latter option comes from a study reported in Booij and Meinardi (1982). They analysed the preferences of the two word-orders in the Gronings dialect. By asking speakers of different age-groups to judge sentences as accepted or not accepted, they showed that the younger the speakers are, the higher the acceptance of the aux-part order is. They also showed that the change in the acceptance of the aux-part order has happened rather quickly. While only about 8% of the speakers in the 65-85 age-group accepted this order as grammatical, 43% of the 15-22 age-group accepted it (pp. 143).
1.2.3 Personal preferences
Although the two word-orders are judged as equally grammatical, speakers seem to have a personal preference in their spoken language. Speakers can be aware or unaware of these preferences, but the results of the experiment reported below show that almost all speakers have a strong preference for one of the two orders. In the first part of this dissertation we considered the possibility that the “optionality” with respect to these structures reflects a variation among speakers (i.e. among I- languages) but not within each speaker. That is, when speakers judge both orders as grammatical, they do so based not on their ability to produce both orders but rather
17 Haeseryn (1990) investigated the use of the two orders in subjects of different occupations and found that journalists tended to prefer the aux-part order more than other people, although this difference was not Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 67
on the fact that other speakers produce it. Under the assumption that I-languages vary from one another, it is possible to assume that such variation gives rise to optionality in the general language, which is merely a sum of all I-languages.
1.2.4 Conclusion
The conclusion is that although the two word orders seem to be equivalent to such an extent that not even a difference in register exists between them, the case seems to be that there is at least a subtle difference between them. Having said that, it is reasonable to assume that these subtle differences are transparent to young children acquiring Dutch, and thus provide the appearance of contradictory evidence from which the child must either select a single option or distinguish between the two orders in a way that will allow her to produce both of them.
1.3 The underlying structure
Several proposals have been made in the literature with respect to the underlying structure of embedded clauses that contain an auxiliary and a participle in Dutch. In this section three of these proposals are reviewed, and additional evidence is presented to assist in deciding among them. Two questions stand in the center of such an investigation. Which of the two orders in (1a,b), if either, represents the base-order? Which element(s) undergo(es) movement? It is also of interest to ask what the landing site for the moved element is, and what the motivation for this movement is.
1.3.1 SOV or SVO
The question of the underlying structure of these constructions is directly related to the general question of the basic order of the Dutch language. Is it an SOV or an SVO language? An analysis that views Dutch as an SOV language assumes that heads (at least in the IP and VP projections) appear to the right of their complements, that movement is rightward and that adjunction is to the right. An SVO approach assumes that all heads appear to the left of their complement and that movement and adjunction are to the left. In the following sub-sections a statistically significant. 68 Chapter 4
theory representing each approach is presented (Koster 1975, Zwart 1993) along with a third theory (based on Haegeman 1995) that proposes a new analysis. In Koster (1975, see also Den Besten 1977), Dutch is claimed to be an SOV language. The base order of the embedded auxiliary-participle construction is therefore the part-aux order (1b), since the auxiliary takes a complement -- a second VP projection with the participle in its head-position-- to its right. The base order according to the SOV approach is presented in (6) below.
(6) [ VP1 het boek [VP2 [V2 gelezen [V1 heeft
The aux-part alternative is derived via movement of the participle to the right into the head position of VP1, where it adjoins the auxiliary. This operation is presented in (7) below.
(7) [VP1 het boek [VP2 [V2 ti [V1 heeft - gelezeni
Recently Zwart (1993,1997, see also Den Dikken 1996) challenged the traditional SOV analysis by proposing that Dutch is an SVO language with a general head- initial property that applies to all projections. The apparent ‘surface‘ SOV order, according to this approach, is the result of leftward movement of the VP complement (e.g., the NP, and in the present case, the participle as well). The base order, according to this approach, is the aux-part order (1a), presented in (8) below. The part-aux order is derived via leftward movement of the participle, which adjoins to the auxiliary to the left, as presented in (9) below.
(8) [AgrO het boeki [VP1 [V1 heeft [VP2 [V2 gelezen [NP ti
(9) [AgrO het boeki [VP1 [V1 gelezenj-heeft [VP2 [V2 tj [NP ti
A second proposal of the SVO approach is made in Zwart (1994). The analysis here is that the landing site for the participle is the specifier of VP1 (the auxiliary of which occupies the head position). Zwart (1994) further proposes that the auxiliary heeft ‘have’ is represented, as proposed in Kayne (1993), for possessives in English by two different projections (named BE and OF). Since each of these two projections has an (empty) specifier position, the moved participle has two possible Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 69
landing sites (the specifier of BE and the specifier of OF). These are assumed to be equidistant from the trace of the participle. This analysis is presented in (10) below.
(10) [AgrO het boekj [SpecBE (gelezeni) [ BE [ SpecOF (gelezeni)[ OF [ ti [tj
Through this analysis Zwart (1994) answers the question of the optionality of this operation. He assumes that the movement of the participle to the left is obligatory (as it is obligatory for adjectives in e.g. dat het boek groot is ‘that the book big is’) and that the optionality is the result of the equidistant landing-sites for this movement. The two orders in (1a,b) are thus the result of the participle moving to spec of BE (part-aux) or to the spec of OF (aux-part).
1.3.2 Arguments against the proposed solutions
Although these two approaches (SVO and SOV) are practically opposite to each- other, they do share some features. First of all, in both approaches the participle is the element that undergoes movement, while the auxiliary is assumed to be in its base position in both orders. Secondly, according to both analyses, the moved element --the participle-- is assumed to remain in the VP domain after the movement, or, in other words, not to move out of the lexical domain into a functional projection. Thirdly, in both proposals, the movement can be said to be unmotivated, which accounts for its optional nature.18 In what follows, new arguments that weaken both of the proposals above will be presented, and a new analysis will be considered. New evidence from Dutch child-language seems to contradict one of the assumptions shared by both SOV and SVO accounts, namely, the claim that the auxiliary remains in its based-generated position. In an experimental investigation (a sentence repetition task) with Dutch-speaking children, several doubling errors were observed in which the auxiliary was produced twice – once in a position preceding the participle and once following it. These doubling errors are presented in (11) – (13), below.
(11) Als Nijntje een tijdje heb gezwommen heeft (Koen 3:5) when Nijntje a short-while have swum(part.) has
18 In Zwart (1994) the movement is in fact motivated but the landing site (spec of BE vs. spec of OF) is not. This difference is not relevant to the current discussion. 70 Chapter 4
(12) Omdat ze de duinen al heeft gezien heb (Marjon 3:7) Because she the dunes already has seen(part.) have
(13) Koekiemonster heeft zere buik omdat ie veel koekjes heeft gegeten heeft (vincent 4:1) Cookie-monster has painful tummy because he a-lot cookies has eaten(part) has
The existence of doubling errors has been reported in many investigations of child- language (e.g.,Crain and Nakayama 1987, Roeper 1990, Thornton 1990, Penner 1996, Guasti et-al 1995) as well as in aphasic-speech (e.g, Thompson et-al 1996, Friedmann 1998, Friedmann in press). Although these errors do not seem to be very frequent, one can nonetheless deduce a lot from their occurrence. These child- constructions are a perfect example of the contribution that child-language research can make to the field of theoretical linguistics. Roeper (1990) reviews several examples of such errors in child-English and claims that the doubled element exposes the “movement path” of this element, through moving the element to its destination-position accompanied by spelling out the trace. In terms of the copy- theory of movement (Chomsky 1995), one can describe these errors as spell-out of both sides of a chain. Following Roeper’s (1990) claim that doubling errors reveal a movement path, the new evidence presented in (11) – (13), above, indicates that the auxiliary does undergo movement, contrary to the assumption made both in Koster (1975) and in Zwart (1993). Notice that in addition to indicating that movement of the auxiliary takes place, these doubling errors further show that this movement is to the left. If the movement were to the right, as assumed in a SOV approach, we would expect a doubling error to look like (14) below, where both copies of the auxiliary follow the participle.
(14) # Als Nijntje gezwommen heeft heeft when Nijntje swum(part.) has has
Such errors are not attested in Child-Dutch. Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 71
The aux-doubling errors therefore weaken both analyses by challenging the claim that the auxiliary remains in its base position. This calls for a new account that includes a leftward movement of the auxiliary19 to explain the underlying structure of auxiliary-participle constructions. A second argument that can shed light on the underlying structure of embedded auxiliary-participle constructions is based on an observation mentioned in a previous section: in nominalized auxiliary-participle structures the aux-part order is blocked, as shown in (4) above and in (15) below.
(15) a. Het gelezen hebben van dit boek the read(part.) have of this book b. * Het hebben gelezen van dit boek the have read(part.) of this book ‘The reading of this book’
By looking at nominalization of structures that are optional in different languages, one can observe that often one of the word-orders is blocked under the nominalization. Furthermore it seems that the order that is blocked under nominalization is the one that involves a movement operation. This is demonstrated in (16) – (18).
(16) Dative alternation in English (cf. Baker 1997): a. the giving of the box to bill b. *the giving (to) Bill (of) the box
(17) Wh-questions in French20 a. Faire quoi, est une erreur Do(inf) what, is a mistake b. * Que faire, est une erreur what do(inf), is a mistake ‘doing what is a mistake?’
19 This is not to say that the aux-doubling errors weaken the SVO or SOV approaches in general. With respect to SOV, one can still claim, for example, that the IP is head initial while the VP is head-final or that this aux-movement is to the left since scrambling is assumed to be to the left. With respect to SVO, one can claim (as in fact is claimed in Haegeman 1995 and in the current analysis) that both the auxiliary and the participle move in this construction, both of them to the left. 72 Chapter 4
(18) Copula-adjective structures in (formal) Hebrew a. ha-adam haya levado the man was alone(3p sing)
b. ha-adam levado haya the man alone(3p sing) was ‘man was alone’
c. heyot ha-adam levado being the-man alone
d. *levado heyot ha-adam alone being the-man ‘the being of man alone’
The blocking effect of nominalization on movement operations is also attested in obligatory contexts, as demonstrated below for topicalization and for Wh-movement in English:
(19) a. * What doing was a mistake b. Doing what was a mistake
(20) a. * This book reading was a mistake b. Reading this book was a mistake
Following the argument that nominalization blocks movement, one can conclude that in the case of auxiliary-participle constructions in Dutch, the evidence from nominalization points to the aux-part order, which is blocked under nominalization, as the order derived by movement.
20 Compare (21) with its English parallel in (23). In both cases the structures must be related to a previous utterance (e.g: doing that was a mistake). However, these are not cases of echo-questions in which the speaker already knows the answer to his questions (e.g: you did what?). Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 73
This argument from nominalization constitutes a clear problem for the SVO view (as it is presented above), which considers the part-aux order to be the derived one. Nevertheless, the SOV approach is also weakened by the observation above. Recall that one of the assumptions shared by both approaches is that the moved participle remains in the VP domain. Assuming that the Nominalization examples above reflect a nominalization of the VP, one might expect that movement that does not cross the borders of the VP domain, or that adjoins the VP, will not be blocked. Notice that the examples above, of movement operations that are blocked under nominalization, reflect movement operations that exceed the local domain (e.g., topicalization, Wh-movement). One might speculate, therefore, that movement operations that are blocked under nominalization reflect a non-local movement, i.e., movement that crosses the local projection domain (in our case – the VP projection). If this idea is correct, then the facts from nominalization of verb clusters, presented above, show not only that the aux-part order is derived by movement, but also that this movement is a non-local one, and that the moved element does not remain in the VP but rather moves to a higher (functional) projection. As mentioned above, Pardoen (1991) observes that in structures that include the adverb vrijwel ‘nearly’ only the part-aux order is allowed, as shown in (5) and repeated in (21) below.
(21) a. ? Omdat de legers elkaar vrijwel hebben afgeslacht (aux-part) because the armies each-other nearly have slaughtered b. Omdat de legers elkaar vrijwel afgeslacht hebben (part-aux)
The fact that such a limitation on the grammaticality of the aux-part structure exists casts doubt on the claim made by both SOV and SVO theories that the relevant movement operation is optional and unconstrained. Another argument against the optionality and the ‘free’ nature of the movement responsible for the aux-part and part-aux variation, comes from a comparison of Dutch with other Germanic languages and dialects. As shown in (3) above, the aux- part order is ungrammatical in German. Under the assumption that the structure of the VP in Dutch and German share a meaningful basis, one can wonder how a movement operation is optional in one of these languages but obligatory in the other. From a Principle and Parameters perspective, word-order differences 74 Chapter 4
between languages are explained through changes in parameter-values that usually correspond to a certain feature or filter that motivates or blocks the relevant movement. But if a movement is said to be unmotivated in one language, it is not clear how it can be blocked in the other.21
1.3.3 A new analysis for embedded auxiliary-participle structures in Dutch
Summing up the arguments presented in the previous sub-sections, the following assumptions, shared by The SOV and the SVO approaches, were brought into question: the assumption that the auxiliary does not move, the assumption that the movement is unmotivated, and the assumption that the moved element does not cross the lexical domain. The conclusion is thus that a new analysis that assumes movement of the auxiliary into a functional projection is in order. The analysis offered here is based on a proposal made in Haegeman (1995,1998). Haegeman’s analysis accounts for IPP constructions in West-Flemish; these share some properties with the auxiliary-participle structures discussed in the current chapter. Haegeman considers the existing solutions of the SOV and SVO approaches and concludes that a new proposal is in order. She postulates that an analysis is possible if we assume a two-stage movement instead of a single movement. Adopting Haegeman’s (1995,1998) analysis for the present discussion of auxiliary- participle structures in standard Dutch, the following account is proposed: The basic word order is, as proposed by Zwart (1993), an SVO order with the participle following the auxiliary. (22), below, presents this initial structure after a movement of the object to AgrO has taken place).
(22) [AgrO het boeki [VP1 [V1 heeft [VP2 [V2 gelezen[ NP ti
In a first step, the participle moves to the left into a VP internal position as presented in (23).
(23) [AgrO het boeki [VP1 gelezenj heeft [VP2 [V2 tj [NP ti
21 Zwart’s (1994) theory, which assumes a split auxiliary projection, is faced with the same problem when Dutch is compared with German. It must be explained why the auxiliary is split in Dutch, but not in German. Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 75
What is relevant here is not the exact landing site, but rather the fact that the movement of the participle is obligatory. It is possible that this movement is a parallel of the obligatory movement adjectives undergo in, for example dat het boek groot is ‘that the book big is’. This obligatory movement creates the part-aux order. In a second stage the auxiliary moves to the left across the participle, into a functional projection (FP) located, as proposed in Haegeman (1998), in the lower middlefield of the phrase marker. This operation, leading to the aux-part order, is presented in (24).
(24) [AgrO het boeki [FP heeftk [VP1 gelezenj tk [VP2 tj [NP ti
Notice that under this analysis, the initial aux-part order (22) is a non-converging structure. When a Dutch speaker utters a sentence of the aux-part order, it is represented by the structure in (24) rather than (22). This is a crucial point for the current discussion since, although the current proposal assumes a basic SVO order, the aux-part option is the less economical of the two options: the part-aux order requires one step of movement while the aux-part order requires two steps. This movement of the auxiliary into (the head of) FP constitutes the deviation and the addition to the existing analyses. As proposed by Haegeman (1995,1998) this aux-movement appears to be optional, but is in fact motivated by feature(s) located in FP. In Haegeman’s analysis of West Flemish, these features are related to negation and tense; in the current proposal for Dutch, the nature of these FP features might be related to negation and affirmation markers and to scalar degree relatives such as vrijwel ‘nearly’. This two-stage movement analysis is compatible with the evidence from doubling errors that children make (examples (11)-(13) above), as well as with the asymmetry created by nominalization (example (15), above). The effect that adverbs such as vrijwel ‘nearly’ and negation (niet) and affirmation (wel) markers have on the two word-orders is assumed to be related to the requirements of the functional features located in the assumed functional projection FP. The analysis proposed here is definitely not an exhaustive one; further research of these structures is undoubtedly required. The precise nature of the features responsible for the assumed aux-movement to FP has yet to be established and an investigation of structures with more than two elements in the verbal cluster, which were not discussed in this analysis, is necessary. Nevertheless, for the purposes of 76 Chapter 4
this discussion, the above analysis is sufficient. The main questions raised with respect to the underlying structure of auxiliary-participle structures have been answered in a way that allows us to identify the base order as well as the intermediate steps that lead to each of the word-order options.
1.3.4 Conclusions
Before turning to the predictions and the experimental part of this chapter, let us summarize the conclusions from our investigation of embedded auxiliary-participle structures in Dutch. The outstanding characteristic of these structures is the apparent optionality with respect to the use of the aux-part and the part-aux order. The existence of such optionality and the theories proposed to account for it were brought into question in the sections above. The following conclusions emerged.
• Although the aux-part and the part-aux variants appear to be interchangeable in the speech of Dutch speakers, they are in fact subject to several syntactic and constraints.
• Although claims have been made for a difference between spoken and written Dutch with respect to the two word-orders, it seems that in current standard Dutch, such a difference does not exist.
• At the personal level, a clear division seems to exist between speakers who use the aux-part order almost exclusively and people who use the part-aux order almost exclusively. It seems that most speakers have a strong preference for one of the orders. It was speculated that the case might be that on the personal level --the I-language in the terms of Chomsky 1995-- optionality, with respect to the two orders , does not exist, while in the general language ,which is merely a sum of all speakers’ I-languages, it does.
• Regarding the underlying structure of these constructions, it was concluded that the basic order is an SVO order and thus an aux-part order. However, it was claimed that this basic order is not a converging one. It is assumed that the part- aux order is achieved by a local movement of the participle to the left and that the converging aux-part order is achieved through a second movement of the auxiliary into a functional projection FP. The participle movement is assumed Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 77
to be obligatory and the aux-movement, which seems to be the optional one, is assumed to be motivated by functional features located in FP.
• Based on the last point, it is concluded that the part-aux order is the more economical order.
1.4 Predictions
The case of embedded auxiliary-participle structures in Dutch appears to be a good testing environment for the proposal and predictions made in the first part of this dissertation. Under the assumption that young children miss the subtle differences that exist between the two word-order variants, the current proposal predicts that children will not acquire the “optionality” and will therefore show a preference for one of the orders. It is further predicted that this preference will be for the more economical part-aux order, and that this preference will be unanimous. Recall, however, that in chapter 3 we said that one should not expect a 100% preference for the more economical order but rather a preference higher than the one exhibited in the input. The specific predictions for the current case of auxiliary-participle structures in Dutch are, therefore, the following.
(25) Prediction 1 In a comparison of the production of children to the production of their parents, children will be shown to produce the part-aux variant more often than their parents.
(26) Prediction 2 In a repetition task, children will be shown to convert the aux-part order into a part-aux order but not vice-versa
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2. The experiments
2.1 Experiment 1: Production; Comparing children and parents
Methods: Subjects: 27 children, divided into two age groups, and 19 adults were tested. All subjects were native Dutch speakers. • Younger children group: 17 Dutch speaking children (ages 3;2 - 3;11, mean age: 3,4). 9 of the children were from Groningen (north), 4 from Zeeland (south-west) and 4 from Limburg (south-east). All children attended a part-time kindergarden. Their mothers were their main caretakers. • Older children group: 10 pre-school children ages 5:0 – 6:0, all from the south. • Adults group: 19 adults were tested. 14 of these were parents of children in the younger children group; 5 were kindergarden teachers. All of them had daily contact with the tested children and they were thus taken as representatives of the children’s input. . Procedure: The method used was a question answering task (elicited production), regarding pictures presented to the subjects. The task of answering a question was employed in order to encourage the subjects to begin their answers with Omdat ‘because’, which is a complementizer in Dutch, and by that to encourage use of an embedded structure. All the questions were therefore 'Why-Questions'. The content of the pictures and the way they were presented to the child encouraged the subjects to use the verb cluster structure. The questions were presented to the children through a puppet that had been introduced to them earlier. In the experiment with the parents, the questions were presented together with two extra distracter questions for each picture, to ensure that the parents are not aware of the structure that was being tested. Each subject was presented with between 11 and 21 pictures. All pictures contained a known children’s figure in a situation that showed the result of an action. The experimenter presented the action in the picture using the matrix auxiliary- participle construction. The puppet then asked a question for which the expected Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 79
response was the repetition of the verb cluster structure, but in an embedded clause beginning with Omdat.
Example: Picture shows Nijntje with a scooter. (Nijntje is a known child figure) Experimenter: "Nijntje got a scooter. She is very happy” (“Nijntje heeft een step gekrijgen. Ze is erg blij.”) Puppet: Warrom is Nijntje Blij? ‘ Why is Nijntje happy?’
Expected answer: Omdat ze een step heeft gekregen. (aux-part order) Because she a scooter has got(part.) or: Omdat Ze een step gekregen heeft. (part-aux order) Because she a scooter got(part.) has
As can be seen in the example, the child was completely free to choose either one of the two orders. The order in the matrix sentence presented by the experimenter is obligatory (the auxiliary placed in second position) and thus had no influence on the child’s response.
Scoring: The answers of the children and adults were recorded with an audio tape-recorder and then transcribed and analyzed. Responses were divided into two categories (aux-part and part-aux). Other responses, such as using the simple past instead of the past-participle, answering with a non-embedded structure, and irrelevant responses were not counted. For each subject the proportion of part-aux responses was calculated, and this figure was taken to reflect the subjects’ preferences and was used for comparisons across the different variables.
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Results: Table 1 below presents the individual results of children of the younger age group (3,2 – 3,11). Table 1 Individual results younger children Name Age Region totalAux-part part-aux Proportionpa rt-aux Thom 3,02 South 8 0 8 1 Mandy 3,03 South 11 6 5 0,45 Vera 3,03 South 10 1 9 0,9 Koen 3,05 South 10 9 1 0,1 Bo 3,06 South 19 3 16 0,84 Britte 3,08 South 10 2 8 0,8 Rowin 3,10 South 11 3 8 0,73 Tuen 3,11 South 17 0 17 1 Total– South 96 24 72 0,75 Wiebe 3,02 North 6 0 6 1 Mea 3,02 North 15 9 6 0,4 Wouter 3,03 North 3 1 2 0,67 Jessica 3,04 North 2 0 2 1 Hidde 3,05 North 6 1 5 0,83 Joey 3,05 North 11 2 9 0,82 Marjon 3,07 North 9 0 9 1 Lyssane 3,07 North 8 1 7 0,88 Bobbie 3,08 North 4 1 3 0,75 Total–North 64 15 49 0,76 TOTAL 160 39 121 0,76
The first and most prominent finding emerging from table 1 is the clear preference of the young children for the part-aux order. Of 160 relevant responses given by the children, 121 (76%) were in the part-aux order. Looking at the responses of the individual children, one can see that this preference is shared by the vast majority of the children. Only 3 of the 17 children produced the part-aux order in less than 65% of their responses. Of these three, only one (Koen 3;5) can truly be said to show the opposite preference22. Possible differences between the southern and the northern sections, and a possible association with age within the younger group, will
22 As the results from the older children’s group show, at some point (no later than age 5) there is a remarkable shift in children’s preferences towards the aux-part order. One can thus assume that Koen simply demonstrates a faster acquisition process than his peers, which puts him on the adult’s side at an age earlier than expected. As MLU scores of these children are not available, this claim cannot be checked. Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 81
be considered below. Table 1 shows what appears to be an unexpected result with respect to the total amount of relevant responses given by each child (column 4 in table 1): it appears that the southern children produced more relevant responses than the northern children. However, this result seems to be an artifact due to the fact that the southern children were slightly older than the northern ones. Below, we shall see that there is a relation between the age of the child and the number of relevant responses she produced. This is to be expected since the older the child was, the better she understood the task and the better her concentration was. The older children (who were still pre-school) showed a totally different pattern from the younger ones. This is presented in table 2:
Table 2 Results of the older children’s group (n=10, ages 5;0-6;0) aux-part Part-aux %part-aux Older children 152 38 0,2
Table 2 reveals a clear preference that is totally opposite that of the younger group. As all children in the older group are from the same region (south), a regional comparison is not possible. As the main purpose of this experiment was to compare children to their parents, table 3 below presents the individual results of the adults. Table 3 reveals a general pattern of a preference that is opposite to that of the young children. The adults show a preference of 64% for the aux-part order. A comparison between the three tested groups is presented in figure 1, below:
Figure 1 responses of the three subject-groups
200
150 aux-part 100 part-aux 50
0 parents child 3-4 child5-6
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Table 3 Responses of the parents (+teachers) Parents Region aux-part part-aux proportion part-aux Britte Mother South 9 2 0,18 Mandy Mother South 7 3 0,3 Koen Mother South 3 6 0,67 Vera Father South 0 10 1 Rowin Mother South 19 1 0,05 total parents – south 38 22 0,37 Sindy Teacher South 17 2 0,11 Gerty Teacher South 7 13 0,65 Miranda Teacher South 2 18 0,9 Nikkol Teacher South 20 0 0 Klaudia Teacher South 18 2 0,1 total teachers south 64 35 0,35 Wouter Mother North 2 4 0,67 Jessica Mother North 2 9 0,82 Wiebe Mother North 11 0 0 Marjon Mother North 5 6 0,55 Hidde Mother North 17 3 0,15 Lyssane Mother North 17 1 0,06 Mea Mother North 3 11 0,79 Joey Mother North 9 8 0,47 Bobbie Mother North 13 2 0,13 total parents north 79 44 0,36 TOTAL 181 101 0,36
A t-test analysis of the differences between the three groups reveals a significant difference between the responses of the younger children and the adults (t=3.778, p=0.01), between the younger children and the older children (t=5.278, p=0.00). The difference between the older children and the adults is not significant (t=1.548, p>0.05).
Apart from the difference in the general preference between the three groups, there is a clear difference between the younger children and the adults with respect to the unanimity of the responses. While children exhibited an almost unanimous preference for the part-aux order, the adults‘ preferences are distributed in what looks like a bipolar distribution. 10 of 19 adults showed a strong preference (over Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 83
70%) for the aux-part order, 7 adults showed a preference (over 65%) for the part- aux and only two adults showed a real variation with respect to their use of the two orders. A comparison of the different regions with respect to the responses of adults and of the younger children reveals no difference between the regions (for the children, t=-0.721, p>0.05; for the adults t=0.053, p>0.05). This can be seen in tables 4 and 5, below:
Table 4 Comparison between regions – adults aux-part Part-aux proportion part-aux South 102 57 0.36 North 79 44 0.36
Table 5 Comparison between regions – younger children aux-part Part-aux proportion part-aux South 24 72 0.75 North 15 49 0.76
Table 6, below illustrates that no difference exists between the responses of mothers and teachers, showing that the inclusion of teachers as subjects in the experiment was justified.
Table 6 Comparison between parents and teachers aux-part Part-aux proportion part-aux Parents (n=14) 117 66 0.36 Teachers (n=5) 64 35 0.35
As the strong preference for the part-aux order of the younger children is shown to disappear at age 5, one can assume that there will be an association between the age 84 Chapter 4
of the children in the younger group and their preferences. However, table 7 shows that such an association does not emerge:
Table 7 Association with age (mean age: 3;4) Total Aux-part part-aux proportion part-aux Below mean age (n=7) 55 17 38 0.69 Above mean age (n=10) 105 22 83 0.79 t=0.006, p>0.05
Furthermore, it could be speculated that a correlation will be found between the responses of each child and his or her own parent, since the parents are considered the main source of input. However, a correlation analysis between children’s responses and their own parents‘ responses reveals no significant finding: Pearson = -0.205 , P>0.05.
Discussion:
The first prediction of this chapter, specified in (29) above, is borne out. Children are clearly shown to produce more part-aux structures than their parents. It is also shown, as predicted by the main proposal of this dissertation, that this preference is characteristic of a stage in child-Dutch, as older children 5-6 years old no longer manifest these early preferences. Apart from confirming the main prediction, the data emerging from the experiment contribute to the discussion of the auxiliary-participle structures. The comparison between the different regions shows, as discussed above, that there no longer seem to be differences in the preferences of speakers from different regions, thus regional dialects seem to have no effect on the standard language. With respect to the adult data, the fact that the percentage of preferences for the aux-part order in this production task is similar to the percentage reported in Zuckerman (1999) for a written (translation) task, supports the claim that there are no differences between registers of a written and spoken language.
Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 85
2.2 Experiment 2: Repetition task
The purpose of the second experiment was to demonstrate children’s preferences with respect to the two word-orders through a “conversion error”. In such an error, the child does not repeat the target sentences correctly but instead produces in her response the other word-order alternative. If an asymmetry is attested with respect to such errors, that is, if one order is converted to the other but not vice- versa, we can conclude that children have a preference for the order they repeated correctly. As stated in prediction 2 in (26) above, the present expectation is that children will convert the aux-part order into the more economical part-aux order but not vice-versa. Preliminary support for this prediction comes from a repetition experiment reported in Barbier (1995), which showed that such asymmetry in conversion does indeed exist. A secondary purpose of the experiment is to encourage the children to produce doubling errors of the type presented in (11)-(13) below. Crain and Nakayama (1987) and Nakayama (1988) show that doubling errors in English can be the result of processing “heaviness”. In their experiments, the length of a relative clause in the subject position created heaviness and resulted in doubling errors. In the present experiment each of the target sentences includes one auxiliary and two coordinated participle verbs. It was speculated that such a structure would create a processing “heaviness”.
Methods: Subjects: 8 Dutch-speaking children ages 3:5-4:1, all from the north of the Netherlands (Groningen)
Procedure: Sentence repetition. The children were presented with 20 sentences accompanied by pictures and were asked to repeat the sentences. All sentences included embedded clauses with the complementizer dat ‘that’ or omdat ‘because’. All sentences included one auxiliary and two participles in a coordination structure. Half of the sentences were in the aux-part order and half in the part-aux order.
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Examples: (27) Ik zie dat het jongetje in de regen heeft gelopen en gespeeld (aux-part) I see that the boy in the rain has walked(part) and played(part)
(28) Nijntje’s buik is vol omdat ze gegeten en gedronken heeft (part-aux) Nijntje’s tummy is full because she eaten(part) and drunk(part) has
The responses of the children were recorded with an audiocassette recorder and later transcribed and analyzed.
Scoring: The responses of the children were divided into four categories: correct responses (which included any response that was in the embedded form and included an auxiliary and at least one participle in the target order), conversion error (when the child converted the order of auxiliary and participle producing an aux-part order for a part-aux target and vice-versa), aux-drop (where the auxiliary is omitted) and a forth category labeled as other (which included irrelevant responses or responses that did not fall into any of the other categories). Examples of the three error types are given below:
(29) Conversion error:
Target: Ik zie dat het jongetje in de regen heeft gelopen en gespeeld (aux-part) Response: ‘K zie dat ‘t jongetje in de regen gespeeld heeft (part-aux)
(30) Aux-omission error:
Target: Het varkentje is blij omdat hij heeft gehuppeld en gesprongen Response: Het varkentje is blij om hij gehuppeld en gesprongen
(31) Other
Target: Koekiemonster heeft zere buik omdat hij te veel gegeten en gedronken heeft Response: Koekiemonster heeft veel te veel gegeten en gedronken (matrix clause)
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Results: The total results for the 8 children are presented in table 8.
Table 8 General results for 8 children; 20 sentences each Correct Conversion Aux-drop Other Total aux-part target (10 items) 24 41 10 5 80 part-aux target (10 items) 68 5 1 6 80
Notice that the target sentences were relatively long and included a relatively complex structure (composed of one auxiliary and two coordinated participles). Nevertheless in most of the cases (149 out of 160) the children produced a response that included enough information for the purposes of this experiment. That is, when children produced an embedded form that included at least one of the participles, their response fell into one of the three relevant categories (correct, conversion and aux-omission). With respect to the correct responses, in which an auxiliary and at least one of the participles were produced in the correct order, there was a clear difference between the aux-part condition, which received 24 correct responses, and the part-aux condition, which received 68 correct responses. A 2x2 chi-square test shows that this difference is a significant one (chi-square=47.28, p<0.05). As shown in table 8, the most frequent incorrect response was the conversion error, in which children converted the order of auxiliary and participle and produced an order opposite to the one in the target sentence. However, table 8 further shows that these conversion errors occurred much more frequently with an aux-part target than with a part-aux target. Of the 80 aux-part target sentences, 41 (51%) were converted to part-aux, while only 5 (6%) of the 80 part-aux sentences were converted to aux-part. A chi-square test shows that this difference is significant (chi-square= 37.37, P<0,05). With respect to the third category – aux omission-- an interesting finding emerges: although this type of error was not common (11 out of 160 responses, 7%), its distribution between the two conditions was clearly uneven. This aux-omission 88 Chapter 4
error was more frequent when the target order was aux-part. Of the 80 responses to the aux-part target sentences, the auxiliary was omitted 10 times (12%) compared to only one aux-omission response out of the 80 responses to the part-aux sentences. A chi-square test shows that this difference is significant in the ,05 level (chi-square= 6.24, P<0.05). The fourth category, which included any response that did not fall into the previous three categories, (namely, irrelevant responses or responses that were not in the embedded form) received only 11 cases (7%) evenly distributed between the two conditions. The anticipated doubling errors did not emerge. Only one such error was produced in this experiment. It is presented in (13) above.
Discussion The results of the repetition experiment confirm prediction 2 of the current chapter stated in (26) above and thus support the general proposal and prediction made in this dissertation. Children are shown to have a clear preference for the more economical word-order. The conversion errors made by the children show further that they see the two alternatives as related to each other; that is, they consider them as contradictory evidence for the same structure and allow only one of them. This finding supports the notion of uniqueness or contrast discussed in part 1 of the dissertation, according to which two different word-orders cannot represent the same meaning. The fact that children did not simply fail to produce the less economical order but, for the most part, converted it to the more economical one, shows that they do not, strictly speaking, have a problem with movement. Rather, in the presence of a more economical option, movement will be disfavored. Moreover, if the aux-part order was problematic independently of an alternative that exists for it, we would also expect the errors in the category other to distribute unevenly, but table 8 shows that this is not the case. However, the present data also include a finding that is problematic for the current proposal. These are the auxiliary omission errors that occur with the aux-part target. Recall that under the current proposal, children are assumed to fail to perform a movement operation only if another convergent alternative exists. The aux-less structures (as in (30) above) are not grammatical in Dutch; consequently they cannot be said to constitute an alternative for the aux-part structure. In this Auxiliary-Participle in Dutch 89
respect, the current data support what we have called a ‘local’ approach for the type of economy children are using. According to this approach, any structure that includes movement is problematic for children and they will fail to perform it even in the absence of a more economical grammatical alternative. The current ‘global’ approach however, can account for these facts in the following way: the case might be that children consider the aux-less structure to be a true alternative for the aux- part and the part-aux orders. Wijnen (1996) reports on spontaneous speech cases of such “root participles” (in these cases, in a matrix clause). These are presented below:
(32) Root-participle structures
Wiel afgehaald (Josse 2;3.28) Veewagen gerepareerd (Mathijs 2;7.8) Een schoorsteen mond gestopt (Niek 3;0.10) Peter emmer (ge)daan (Peter 1;10.3)
If the intermediate grammar of a child allows such root participles, it is possible to explain the aux-omission errors made in the current experiment by assuming that such omission represents a structure that is less costly than the structure in which the auxiliary has undergone movement (i.e., the aux-part structure). The aux- omission responses consist of only 7% of the total responses, so further research must establish whether this is a real phenomenon or merely a performance error. It is important to note, however, that the asymmetry in the production of these responses suggests that omission errors in child language, which exist with respect to many elements in spontaneous speech, may be related to movement and to economy considerations, since such errors were more likely in structures in which movement had taken place.
3. Summary and conclusions
In this chapter we have focused on a structure that appears to be optional in Dutch. We have shown that embedded clauses in standard Dutch allow for two possible orders of the auxiliary and the participle. In the first part of this chapter we showed that although these “alternatives” are judged to be identical, several grammatical 90 Chapter 4
factors and constraints play a role in the derivation and use of these structures, which casts doubt on their being truly optional. Furthermore, we have proposed an analysis for the derivation of these structures in which the aux-part order is seen as the less economical order, since it involves two movement operations, one of the participle and one of the auxiliary. Based on this analysis, as well as on the proposal made in the previous chapter, we predicted that the more-economical part-aux structures will be preferred by children acquiring Dutch. Two experiments were presented to support this prediction. These showed that children do indeed produce more part-aux structures than their parents and that children convert the costly aux-part structure into the more economical part-aux structure.