Evaluating Alternate Accounts of Pronoun Errors and

Evaluating Alternate Accounts of Pronoun Errors and Case Acquisition: Insight from a Case Study Sabra D. Pelham University of Kansas 1.1 Introduction Numerous researchers have noted that children acquiring English often make pronoun case errors (see Bloom, Lightbown, and Hood, 1975; Budwig, 1990; Chiat, 1981; Gruber, 1967; Huxely, 1970; Ingham, 1992; Loeb & Leonard, 1991; Moore, 1995; Radford, 1990b; Rispoli, 1994, 1998a 1998b; Vainikka, 1994). Interestingly, these errors are not evenly distributed across cases; while Englishspeaking children frequently make case errors in nominative contexts, they rarely do so in objective and genitive contexts (Rispoli, 1994). Over the last several decades, linguists working from diverse theoretical perspectives have proposed various hypotheses in an attempt to both explain the pattern of case errors in English and develop an adequate account of case acquisition (see the researchers referenced above as well as the following: Brown, 1973; Charney, 1979; Cruttenden, 1981; Guilfoyle and Noonan, 1992; Kaper, 1976; Nelson, 1975; Radford 1990a, 1998; Tanz, 1974; Schutze & Wexler, 1995; Schutze, 1997, 2001; Wexler, Schutze, & Rice, 1998). Theories resulting from these efforts can be categorized as one of three types: syntactic theories (Radford, 1991; Vainikka; 1994, Schutze, 1997, 2001; Wexler, Schutze, & Rice, 1998), functionalist theories (Budwig, 1990), and morphosyntactic theories (Rispoli, 1994, 1998b, 2002b). From the perspective of syntactic theories, accurate case assignment depends on other aspects of syntax. For nominative case assignment, it is the presence of a fully specified INFL along with tense and agreement features that is critical. Until children have productive use of INFL, such theories propose that nominative case assignment cannot occur, and children simply supply a default case pronoun (usually the objective case) in the subject position. The Agreement/Tense Omission Model or ATOM (Wexler, Schutze, & Rice, 1998; Schutze, 2001) is the most recent and complete syntactic theory to date, and it predicts that after INFL is present, pronouns of all cases may surface in subject position depending on what features are present in INFL. However, according to ATOM as well as other syntactic theories, pronoun errors should cease when children correctly use verbs overtly marked with tense and agreement features. If this is correct, evidence of its accuracy would include the presence of a clear and significant association between correct nominative case assignment and wellformedness of finiteness marking. Additionally, if syntactic theories are accurate, case errors should not differ in any significant way across pronoun paradigms (i.e. between 3PsgF and 3PsgM for example). Finally, given a syntactic approach, we should not find any relationship between semantics and nominative case errors.

Functionalist theories posit that children acquire language by learning the semantic/pragmatic relationships between language and the world in which they, the children, exist. However, the relationship between the case of an English pronoun and its theta-role is extremely inconsistent; in fact, nominative and objective case pronouns can have exactly the same theta-roles and pragmatic functions associated with them. This inconsistency causes confusion for children, resulting in case errors. Working from this perspective, Budwig (1990) has attempted an explicit delineation of the conditions that generate different types of case errors that might occur in nominative contexts. Her system incorporated a combination of semantic and pragmatic motivations, which unfortunately, can only work for the 1st person singular (1Psg pronoun). Rather than consider the implications of Budwig’s theory specifically, the implications of a general functionalist approach are considered here. If children rely on semantics to try to unravel the puzzle of case in English, one would expect that the subjects of passive sentences, which are patients, and the subjects of active sentences, which are often agents, would manifest different patterns of pronominal usage/errors. A second and related expectation would be that the subjects of passive sentences and the objects of active sentences would manifest the same usage/error patterns since both these types of arguments are patients. From a morphosyntactic perspective, pronominal errors in all contexts result from the fact that there is a mismatch between syntactic case and the morphology that encodes it. The most developed morphosyntactic approach, the Paradigm Building hypothesis (Rispoli, 1994, 1998b, 2002b), holds that, children ‘attempt’ to find some regularity in a system that has none. Since there is no clear match between pronouns’ cases and their morphological forms, children are fated to make errors until such time as they have learned which morphological form encodes which case for each individual pronoun paradigm (i.e. 1Psg, 3PsgM, 3PsgF, etc). If this hypothesis is correct, one would not expect to find an association between correct nominative case assignment and finiteness, nor would one expect to find any relationship between semantics and pronominal case errors. However, a morphosyntactic theory would clearly allow for the presence of significantly different patterns of case errors between some or all groups of pronouns.

The foregoing discussion raises three very specific research questions: (1) Is there a statistically significant relationship between correct nominative case assignment and well-formedness of finiteness marking? (2) Is there a significant association between theta-roles and case errors? (3) In nominative contexts, are there significant differences in case usage/errors across pronoun paradigms? This study provides clear answers to these questions which in turn allows for a sound assessment of which of the above theories provides the most accurate account of nominative case errors. 2.1 The Study The present study, originally designed as a pilot study, included a brief spontaneous language sample and an experimental task. Analyses of the spontaneous data allowed for assessment of research questions one and two, while the results of experimental task addressed all three research questions and provided definitive answers to the last two. The subject for this study was a normally developing girl, age 3;2 from a relatively large metropolitan area in the central United States. The child’s mother, an American whose native language was English, was her primary caregiver. Though her father’s native language was Arabic, with the exception of isolated words, only Standard American English was spoken in the home. From the spontaneous language sample obtained as part of this study, it was established that the child’s MLU was 4.67. 3.0 Spontaneous Language Sample 3.1 Procedure: One afternoon in the child’s home, a spontaneous language sample was recorded while her mother present but in another room. During the twenty-five minute session the child was engaged in free play, and she spent most of her time looking at and showing books to the author. Within a week of the recording, the sample was transcribed, and the resulting data were analyzed to determine the child’s MLU and overall level of syntactic development. While her syntactic development was markedly advanced in some regards, she made numerous pronoun errors in nominative contexts but made no such errors in errors in objective or genitive contexts. The spontaneous data was analyzed, and an experiment was developed to test the possible source of these errors. 3.2 Coding: The analyses presented in this paper are based spontaneous utterances, with all imitations, routines, and self-repetitions being eliminated from the data. From the data, utterances containing fully intelligible subjects and verbs were isolated, and

from these utterances, the data for analysis was culled based on subject type. The utterances that were included in the analyses were those that contained nominative pronouns, objective pronouns, or a lexical NPs in subject position. Utterances containing these types of subjects were grouped accordingly, and following this, the verbs in each of the utterances were coded as either finite or non-finite. Auxiliary/modal verbs, verbs containing overt tense/agreement marking, and verbs with appropriate tense reference were coded as finite while all others were coded as non-finite. In addition, the nominative and objective case pronouns that were used in subject position were grouped based on person/number distinctions to try to assess whether there were any systematic cross-pronoun differences. 3.3 Results In the spontaneous language sample, the child produced a total of 73 utterances containing fully intelligible subjects and verbs, and of these 41 contained subjects of the relevant types. Nominative case pronouns were present in the subject position of 13 sentences, while objective case pronouns served as the subjects of 14 sentences, and lexical NPs were the subjects of the remaining 14 sentences. For each of these three groups, the percentage of the verbs that were well-formed for finiteness marking was calculated, and the results are shown in the Table 1 below. Table 1: Co-occurrence of Nominative / Objective / NP subjects & +/-finite verbs:

Nominative Pronouns (n=13) +Fin. -Fin % +Fin. 9 4 69

Objective Pronouns (n=14) +Fin. -Fin % +Fin. 8 6 57

Lexical NPs (n=14) +Fin. -Fin % +Fin. 9 5 64

Recall that research question (1) was the following: Is there a statistically significant relationship between correct nominative case assignment and wellformedness of finiteness marking? A binomial test was used to assess whether or not there was a significant association between correct case assignment and finiteness. The expected rate of finiteness was set at 69%, based on the percentage of finite verbs that co-occurred with nominative case pronouns. Given this expected rate of success, a binomial test for the objective case pronouns (where n=14 and the actual number of +finite verbs was 8), yields a value of p=.137, which is far above the maximum threshold for significance. The same test for lexical NPs yields p=.23. These results indicate that finiteness is not related to the case or type of the subject that surfaces in the Specifier of IP. Recall also research question (3): In nominative contexts, is there a significant difference in case usage/errors across pronoun paradigms? The following facts regarding the spontaneous data, while not conclusive, are highly suggestive that the answer to the preceding question is yes. The child used a total of 27 pronouns

in subject position, and Table 2 below shows which pronouns she used and the number of times each was used. Table 2: Pronouns used in subject position of spontaneous utterances 3Psingular 3P plural 1Psingular 3Psingular Feminine masculine Nom. Obj. Nom. Obj. Nom. Obj. Nom. Obj. She Her They Them I Me He Him 1 2 1 2 7 9 4 0 33% 33% 44% 100% The subject’s correct nominative usage of 3PsgF and 3Ppl pronouns was identical at 33%, and her correct nominative usage of 1Psg, which was 44%, does not appear to differ significantly from that. However, her 100% correct nominative usage of 3PsgM pronouns does appear to be significantly different from her usage of any of the other pronoun paradigms. Unfortunately, since she only used 3PsgM pronouns in the spontaneous data four times, a reliable binomial test was not possible. These results, nonetheless, seem to indicate that cross-pronoun differences may indeed have existed. 4.0 Experimental Task: 4.1 Procedure: The experiment involved an elicited imitation/correction task of 41 sentences as well as an act out task for 8 of the sentences. In order to reveal as much information as possible about the state of the child’s case acquisition and the possible source of her case errors, the stimulus sentences in the imitation/correction task contained active transitive and intransitive verbs with pronominal subjects and objects and passive verbs with pronominal subjects. The experiment was conducted in two parts with the task for the active sentences done on one day and the tasks for the passive sentences done the next day. The pronouns included were 1Psg, 3PsgM, 3PsgF, and 3Ppl pronouns. Nominative, objective and genitive case pronouns were provided in all the active sentences while only nominative and objective case pronouns were provided in the passive sentences. Since on the first day of the experiment the child did not accept genitive pronouns in any of the sentences and since she exhibited test fatigue toward the end of the experimental task on day one, the genitive pronouns were eliminated from the passive sentences. For the passive sentences, in addition to the imitation/correction task, the child was asked to demonstrate the actions those sentences described. Pronominal objects were provided in the active sentences in combination with pronominal subjects in the passive and active sentences to provide a sound basis for assessing whether or not theta-roles were motivating the child’s case errors. All sentences contained finite verbs which allowed for an

assessment of whether or not finiteness was associated with correct case of subject pronouns. In order to engage her, the experimental tasks were presented to the child as a game of copycat. A monkey puppet was used, and she was instructed that sometimes the monkey talked funny so that he sounded silly. If the monkey said something that sounded funny, she was told that she should tell him how to say it so it did not sound silly. However, if the monkey said it so that it did not sound funny, she was told that she was to copy what the monkey said. The sentences were provided for imitation or correction as many as three times. If the sentence contained an incorrect pronoun and it was imitated rather than corrected, the sentence was repeated a second time and the subject was asked, “Does that sound funny?” If she said it did not sound funny, the next sentence was given. If she said the sentence sounded funny, it was repeated a third time, and she was asked, “What does that mean?” This final repetition and the following question were given so to as to ascertain whether or not the subject had correctly heard and interpreted the sentence. For the act-out portion of the experiment with the passive sentences, the monkey puppet and several of the child’s stuffed animals and toys were used. 4.2 Coding: The experimental sentences were categorized as either correct or incorrect for pronominal case assignment. Imitation of nominative and objective case pronouns in appropriate contexts was considered correct for pronoun case assignment, as was correction of incorrect pronouns. In order for a sentence to be categorized as incorrect for pronoun case assignment, the child had to both imitate and accept a nominative, objective or genitive case pronoun in an inappropriate context. Recall that when the subject incorrectly imitated a pronoun, the sentence was repeated and she was asked if it sounded funny, as in Conversation 1, below: Conversation 1 Puppet: “Me ate some grapes.” Child: “Me ate some grapes” Researcher: “Me ate some grapes. Does that sound funny?” If the child indicated that the sentence did not sound funny, it was considered incorrect, and her response was coded as imitated and accepted (I/A). If she said the sentence did sound funny but offered no correction, the sentence was repeated, and she was asked what it meant. This occurred a number of times, and one such conversation is given below:

Conversation 2 Puppet: “Their ride the bike.” Child: “Their(?) ride the bike.” Researcher: “Their ride the bike. Does that sound funny?” Child: “Yes.” Researcher: “Their ride the bike. What does that mean?” Child: “Ride the bike over there.” For all but one of the sentences that the subject imitated but said sounded funny to her, she offered a meaning like the one above that made it clear that she had not interpreted the pronoun as a pronoun at all. Each sentence that she said sounded funny was considered a correct rejection of the pronoun, and these sentences were coded as imitated but rejected (I/R). 4.3 Results As already noted, in the spontaneous data, the child only made pronominal errors in nominative contexts. In addition, all such errors were over-extensions of an objective case pronoun. Providing that the spontaneous data were an accurate reflection of child’s language development, one would expect to find consistencies between that data and the experimental data. Expected consistencies would include the following: she would not make any mistakes with the 11 sentences containing pronominal objects; she would not accept genitive pronouns in the subject position. Both of these expectations are born out in the experimental data. With regard to the sentences containing pronominal objects, she imitated three ungrammatical sentences (see Table 3: Mommy kissed my; Mommy kissed I; Amani likes their). However, for each of the three sentences she indicated that they sounded strange to her. In addition, the meanings that she attributed to two of the sentences indicated that she was not interpreting the pronouns as pronouns. For the sentences, “Mommy kissed my,” and “Mommy kissed I,” she said both meant, “Mommy kissed my/the eye.” The sentence, “Amani likes their,” was apparently nonsense for her as she maintained that the sentence sounded funny but could offer no meaning for it. In an effort to be as conservative as possible in interpreting the subject’s responses, this sentence was coded as correct rejection. Given the foregoing, it seems clear that the child’s treatment of the pronominal objects in the experimental task did not differ from her use of pronominal objects in the spontaneous data.

Table 3: Performance on Pronouns in Object Position 3P Singular Feminine 1P Singular The man helped she. C Mommy kissed I. I/R The man helped her. I Mommy kissed me. I Mommy kissed my. I/R 3P Plural Amani likes they. Amani likes them. Amani likes their.

C I I/R

3P Singular Masculine The girl fed he. C The girl fed him. I The girl fed his. C

(I=imitated, A=accepted, R=rejected, C=corrected & bold=incorrect) With two exceptions, the child only imitated nominative and objective case pronouns in subject position (see Table 5). She did imitate “Their rode the bike,” and “Their ran,” but she indicated that both these sentences sounded funny to her, and when asked what the sentences meant, she indicated that ‘their’ had a locative meaning, i.e. she interpreted ‘their’ as ‘there’, saying that the sentences meant, “Rode the bike/Ran over there.” Given her interpretation of these sentences, her imitations were clearly not instances of accepting genitive pronouns in subject position, and these results are consistent with the spontaneous language data. Let us turn now to research question (2): Is there a significant association between theta-roles and case errors? Pronominal objects were provided in the active sentences in combination with pronominal subjects in the passive and active sentences to provide a basis for assessing whether or not theta-roles were contributing to the child’s case errors. In order for any such assessment to be valid, it was first necessary to establish whether or not the child could correctly interpret passive sentences. To that end, she was asked to demonstrate the actions described in the eight passive sentences. She correctly demonstrated the actions in seven of the eight sentences, a result that is significantly different from chance (n=8, p=.031). In the one sentence where she failed to accurately demonstrate the action, her behavior in response to the act-out task for that sentence did not indicate that she had attributed an active meaning to the passive sentence; she was simply off task. Having established that she did indeed understand the passive sentences, it is possible to address the question at hand. If theta-roles were motivating the child’s case errors, one would expect that she would manifest the same patterns of case errors/ usage for the passive subjects and active objects while manifesting different patterns of case errors for the subjects of the active and passive sentences. As has already been established, the child made no errors with the pronominal objects (theta-role = patient), though she made several pronoun errors

with the subjects of the passive sentences (theta-role = patient). In contrast, she made exactly the same errors with the subjects of the passive sentences (theta-role = patient) as she did for the subjects of the active sentences (theta-role = agent) Both these results are just the opposite of what would be expected if theta-roles were the source of case errors in the child’s grammar. Now let us return to research question (3): In nominative contexts, is there a significant difference in case usage/errors across pronoun paradigms? In order to address this question, a discussion of the ways in which paradigms vary and how these variations would be expected to affect error rates across paradigms is necessary. Table 4 below, adapted from Rispoli (1994), shows all the pronouns investigated in this study. A cursory inspection reveals two ways in which these paradigms differ. Table 4: Pronouns Paradigms Case 3P Singular Feminine Nominative she Objective her Genitive

1P Singular

3P Plural

I me my

they them their

3P Singular Masculine he him his

First, the nominative forms for 1Psg and 3PsgF are suppletive, which might be expected to result in more nominative case errors in these paradigms than in others (Rispoli, 1994). A second difference is that three of the paradigms, 1Psg, 3Ppl, and 3PsgM, encode three distinct cases with three distinct forms, while 3PsgF has only two forms to encode three cases, something that also might be expected to result in more nominative case errors in this paradigm than in others. Hence, if morphosyntax is a factor in this child’s case errors, of the four paradigms included in the experiment, the highest error rate should occur with 3PsgF pronouns, and the remaining paradigms, which all contain three forms, should be more similar in error rate. Table 5 shows the child’s performance on all the sentences containing pronouns in subject position. These are grouped according to person/number distinctions, and the percentage of correct responses to sentences in these groups is provided in the far right column.

Table 5: Transitive I ate some grapes. Me ate some grapes. My ate some grapes. They rode the bike. Them rode the bike. Their rode the bike. She fixed the horsy. Her fixed the horsy. He threw the ball. Him threw the ball. His threw the ball.

Intransitive I/A I/A C I/A I/A I/R I/A I/A I/A C C

I slept. Me slept. My slept. They ran. Them ran. Their ran. She swam. Her swam. He walked. Him walked. His walked.

Passive I/A I/A C I/A I/A I/R I/A I/A I/A C C

I was kissed by the bear. Me was kissed by the bear.

Correct I/A I/A

1Psg/ They were tickled by the man. I/A 3Ppl 62.5% Them were tickled by the man. I/A She was hugged by the sheep. I/A 3PsgF Her was hugged by the sheep. I/A 50% He was hit by the monkey. I/A 3PsgM Him was hit by the monkey. C 100%

(I=imitated, A=accepted, R=rejected, C=corrected & bold=incorrect) These data seem to indicate that there are significant cross-pronoun differences, and binomial tests confirm this. The child’s perfect performance on 3PsgM was compared to her performance on 3PsgF, and her performance with the feminine pronoun (50%) was set as the expected rate of success. Considering only the sentences containing nominative and objective case pronouns, n=6 for the 3PsgM pronouns, the binomial test revealed a significant result of p=.016. Based on the fact the 1Psg/3Ppl each contain three distinct forms and that the child’s performance on these was identical, these paradigms were grouped and compared to 3PsgM. Taking the child’s performance of 62.5% on the 1Psg/3Ppl as the expected rate of success, with n=8, this binomial test also revealed a significant result; in this case p=.023. 5.1 Discussion The data for this case study are somewhat limited, and it is crucial that researchers exercise caution in drawing conclusions based on such data. The present study, however, has to its advantage the fact that it includes two types of data, spontaneous and experimental. In addition, the spontaneous and experimental data are extremely consistent. Given this, it is possible to draw sound conclusions with regard to the research questions. The spontaneous and experimental results both provide a clear answer to the first research question, is there a statistically significant relationship between correct nominative case assignment and well-formedness of finiteness marking, and that answer is no. Statistical analyses of the spontaneous data showed no significant association between finiteness and case assignment, and while all the experimental sentences were well-formed for finiteness, the child’s nominative case errors were consistent with those in the spontaneous data. These results are

inconsistent with a syntactic model of case acquisition though they pose no difficulty for either functionalist or morphosyntactic theories. It should be noted that according to ATOM, the crucial feature in nominative case assignment is agreement, and verbs that are overtly marked for agreement should never surface with non-nominative pronouns unless the child lacks productive use of the correct nominative form (Schutze 2001). While most of the experimental sentences were in the past tense, and therefore were not overtly marked for agreement, all the passive sentences contained agreeing verb forms. Correct imitation of ‘was’ and ‘were’ in the passive sentences provides a sound basis for the interpretation that neither form served as the canonical past tense of ‘be’ in the child’s grammar and attests to their status as agreeing verb forms. Three sentences contained the agreeing verb form ‘was’ and in two of those sentences the child imitated and accepted the incorrect pronominal forms ‘me’ and ‘her’ while in the third she corrected the incorrect form by supplying the nominative pronoun ‘he’. Further she correctly imitated the verbs in the two passive sentences containing ‘were’, yet she incorrectly imitated and accepted the objective case pronoun ‘them’ as the subject of one of those sentences. Finally, it is clear that the child did have productive use of all the correct nominative forms, but she failed to supply those correct forms in several sentences with verbs overtly marked for agreement. This, along with the lack of association between finiteness and nominative case assignment in the spontaneous data, plainly demonstrates that a syntactic theory in general and ATOM specifically does not provide an adequate account of this child’s case errors. Turning to the second research question, is there a significant association between theta-roles and case errors, the experimental results were exactly the opposite of what would be expected if semantics were motivating this child’s case errors. Recall that the child clearly understood the passive sentences, which means she correctly understood that the theta-role of the subjects in those sentences was patient. Nonetheless, she made the same errors with the subjects of the passive and active sentences, which means her pronoun case errors were based on grammatical relations and not theta-role. Given this, it is evident that a functionalist approach does not and could not accurately account for this child’s case errors. However, the lack of semantic influence on pronoun errors that was revealed in the data is consistent with both syntactic and morphosyntatic theories. And lastly, turning to the third research question, there were significant differences in case usage/errors across pronoun paradigms. This was suggested in the spontaneous data and confirmed by the experimental results. In both the spontaneous and experimental data, the child had 100% accurate nominative case with the 3PsgM pronoun. However, her accuracy with the other paradigms ranged from 33% in the spontaneous data to 62.5% in experimental data. Binomial tests of the experimental data confirmed that the differences in the child’s case errors/usage across the pronoun paradigms tested were statistically significant.

This result is inconsistent with syntactic theories, which propose that prior to the acquisition of INFL children supply a the same default case without paradigmatic variation, and upon acquisition of INFL and its features children supply pronoun case consistently across pronoun paradigms. In contrast, a morphosyntactic hypothesis has no difficulty in accounting for the cross-paradigm differences evident in this child’s language. It is necessary to point out that while the overall results of this study are consistent with a general morphosyntactic approach to case errors, Rispoli’s paradigm building hypothesis (1994) is not perfectly born out in the data. According to the paradigm building hypothesis, the child should have had more case errors with 1Psg pronoun than with 3Ppl pronoun because while both these paradigms have three distinct pronominal forms, the nominative form for 1Psg is suppletive and the nominative form for 3Ppl is not. However, the percentage of the child’s errors with 3Ppl was actually higher than 1Psg in the spontaneous data and identical to 1Psg in the experimental data. The data are entirely consistent with the general principle of the paradigm building hypothesis. Children must build separate morphological paradigms for each group of pronouns, and the idiosyncrasies of the English pronominal system will make this difficult and lead to case errors. Furthermore, in more recent work, Rispoli (1998a, 1998b, 2002b) has proposed that within individual pronoun paradigms, different children follow different paths to acquisition. An extension of this logic would allow for different paths to acquisition among paradigms and could easily account for this child’s case errors/usage. 6.1 Conclusion This research is important in that it isolates and then evaluates the contribution of factors thought to be involved in English-speaking children’s case errors. The results of the study demonstrate that while correct nominative case assignment may indeed require that children learn the syntactic apparatus of English, in and of itself, such knowledge is not sufficient to a insure that children will not make pronoun errors. This is so because children must not only learn what case is required in a given context and how it is assigned, but also which pronominal form encodes that case. To some, this statement may seem so obvious as to be unnecessary, but others may remain skeptical, maintaining that once INFL and its features are acquired, pronoun case errors must and do cease. To convince researchers in that theoretical camp, replication of these results will certainly be necessary. References Bloom, L., Lightbown, P. & Hood, L. (1975). Pronominal-nominal variation in child language. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 40/2, ed. by Lois Bloom: 231-238. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

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