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What is syntax?

When you preview text with your students, do you point out different sentence structures or patterns, to help get them ready to read and access the material? Well, you are helping them with learning about syntax- the grammatical and structural basics of English.

Syntax helps us to make clear sentences that "sound right," where words, phrases, and clauses each serve their function and are correctly ordered to form and communicate a complete sentence with meaning.

The parts of speech are groups of words that make up the grammar of the English language, which include open-class words (changeable and accepts new words, such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs) and closed-class words (function words and rarely accepts new words, such as prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, complementizers, determiners, and auxiliary verbs). In these categories, words can be described by their morphological forms and typical position in a sentence. The following website "Parts of Speech" by Heather MacFadyen offers a detailed explanation and review of the different parts of speech and how they are used in sentences:http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/partsp.html.

Next, we must look at grammar at the phrase, clause, and sentence level. Constituents are groups of words that go together and fit into larger units, which are then built into sentences. Let's look at the following sentence:

The happy boy jumped swiftly overthe rock by the pond.

The smaller constituents (i.e. the happy boy, the pond, the rock- all noun phrases) fit into larger constituents (i.e. by the pond- prepositional phrase), and even larger constituents (the rock by the pond- bigger noun phrase). These constituents follow a hierarchical structure:

Word --> Phrase --> Clause --> Sentence

In English, the 5 types of phrases include: noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases, and prepositional phrases. Clauses are composed of noun phrases as the subject and verb phrases as the predicate. Some clauses can stand independently as a sentence, and others are dependent or subordinate. Compound sentences can be formed by joining two independent clauses, joined by a conjunction or punctuation (semicolon or colon). To learn more about phrases, clauses, and sentence structure rules, you can look at this section on MacFayden's website on parts of a sentence:http://www.arts.uottawa.ca/writcent/hypergrammar/partse.html

In the classroom

Tips for Applying Syntax:

Teach Grammar without hindering communication: Encourage students to listen to and engage in English as much as possible, carefully selecting grammar rules and corrections that will support social and academic language development and effective communication, without significantly hindering it. Activities involving more self-inquiry and problem-solving/word sorting are helpful to encourage ELLs to find patterns on their own and develop a sense of the grammar rules and structures. Teaching grammar in context of student's own writing and in read-alouds is a powerful way to make learning about syntax more meaningful, giving them more opportunities to learn what "sounds right."

Explicit teaching of grammar rules and structures may be necessary for students, especially for ELLs gaining academic language. Here is a great resource, from North Carolina Public Schools, of grammar tips for teaching and numerous lessons to tackle those common grammar challenges, including concept of a sentence, run-on sentences, verb tenses:

Standard usage of prepositions and pronouns are challenging concepts that younger students are actively learning, in learning sight words and across content areas. For prepositions, teachers can make these more concrete for students, teaching prepositional words as everywhere a squirrel can go with respect to a tree (i.e. A squirrel is by the tree. A squirrel is in the tree.) For older students, teaching of prepositional words should also include their meaning in respect to time, duration, manner, and other more abstract concepts (It will take about an hour. He did it in a hurry.) For pronouns, ELLs take much longer to develop correct pronoun usage, but modeling and appropriate correction as necessary can help to support correct usage, without hindering communication.

Explore the grammatical patterns of ethnic and community dialects - through literature, film, and audio-tapes, for example - and contrast these with the corresponding features of the Standard English. Students can make such comparisons by translating a well-known or well-liked text into a particular dialect or by writing original poems, stories, and plays in one or more ethnic and community dialects as well as in the Standard English. Such language study and writing can help students appreciate each others' dialects as well as consider which dialects are most appropriate for what kinds of writing and under what circumstances. (from Teaching Grammar & Minilessons - www.usi.edu)

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Tips for Applying Syntax: Teach Grammar without hindering communication: Encourage students to listen to and engage in English as much as possible, carefully selecting grammar rules and corrections...

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Learning a second language takes time, but anyone can do it. Speech-language pathologists, or SLPs, can help.

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Imitation Theory

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How do children learn to speak? Behavioural theory assumes that children imitate what they hear, and thanks to continuous, positive reinforcement, children learn language through conditioning and habit formation. Behaviourist theorists such as Skinner also claim that all errors during first language acquisition are due to 'bad habit formation,' which, in due course, children correct as they hear and imitate accurate speech. In contrast to behaviourists, 'nativists,' like Chomsky, believe that human beings are born with an innate capacity for language development.

Deliberations continue between linguists regarding the importance of 'nature' over 'nurture' in acquisition of language.

Language Acquisition as a Result of Nurture

Behaviourists propose that a child's environment is the most important factor in first language acquisition, and if a child is exposed to 'rich language,' then 'good habit formation,' and proper language development will occur. It is possible that first language acquisition includes speech imitation, but:

Children do not imitate everything they hear; they appear to be very selective and only reproduce unassimilated language chunks. Therefore, their replications seem to be controlled by an internal language-monitoring process.

Children learn the basic rules of language at around the age of five; the behaviourist theory cannot account for the speed that first language is acquired.

Children say things that are not adult imitations; in particular they use inflectional overgeneralisations such as 'goed,' 'putted,' 'mouses,' and 'sheeps.'

Children produce language structures that do not exist; you often hear, "Where I am?" instead of "Where am I?"

Children that acquire language from habit formation seem to memorize certain structures prematurely. These phrases become lodged in their minds as unassimilated chunks of information that they cannot incorporate into their own verbal expressions.

Children produce many more sound-combinations than they hear, and understand many more than they can produce.

Children are exposed to language performance and not to language competence. Often they are exposed to "debilitated" language, yet, they manage to extract the language rules from these utterances and speak correctly.

Click to Read Page Two: We Are Wired to Acquire Language

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First Language Acquisition Theories: Nature vs. Nurture

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How do children learn to speak? Behavioural theory assumes that children imitate what they hear, and thanks to continuous, positive reinforcement, children learn language through conditioning and habit formation. Behaviourist theorists such as Skinner also claim that all errors during first language acquisition are due to 'bad habit formation,' which, in due course, children correct as they hear and imitate accurate speech.

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Reinforcement Theory

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by Henna Lemetyinen published 2012

Language is a cognition that truly makes us human. Whereas other species do communicate with an innate ability to produce a limited number of meaningful vocalizations (e.g. bonobos), or even with partially learned systems (e.g. bird songs), there is no other species known to date that can express infinite ideas (sentences) with a limited set of symbols (speech sounds and words).

This ability is remarkable in itself. What makes it even more remarkable is that researchers are finding evidence for mastery of this complex skill in increasingly younger children. Infants as young as 12 months are reported to have sensitivity to the grammar needed to understand causative sentences (who did what to whom; e.g. the bunny pushed the frog (Rowland & Noble, 2010).

After more than 60 years of research into child language development, the mechanism that enables children to segment syllables and words out of the strings of sounds they hear, and to acquire grammar to understand and produce language is still quite an enigma.

Early Theories

One of the earliest scientific explanations of language acquisition was provided by Skinner (1957). As one of the pioneers of behaviorism, he accounted for language development by means of environmental influence.

Skinner argued that children learn language based on behaviorist reinforcement principles by associating words with meanings. Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realizes the communicative value of words and phrases.

For example, when the child says 'milk' and the mother will smile and give her some as a result, the child will find this outcome rewarding, enhancing the child's language development (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011).

Universal Grammar

However, Skinner's account was soon heavily criticized by Noam Chomsky, the world's most famous linguist to date. In the spirit of cognitive revolution in the 1950's, Chomsky argued that children will never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input alone.

Consequently, he proposed the theory of Universal Grammar: an idea of innate, biological grammatical categories, such as a noun category and a verb category that facilitate the entire language development in children and overall language processing in adults.

Universal Grammar is considered to contain all the grammatical information needed to combine these categories, e.g. noun and verb, into phrases. The child's task is just to learn the words of her language (Ambridge & Lieven). For example, according to the Universal Grammar account, children instinctively know how to combine a noun (e.g. a boy) and a verb (to eat) into a meaningful, correct phrase (A boy eats).

This Chomskian (1965) approach to language acquisition has inspired hundreds of scholars to investigate the nature of these assumed grammatical categories and the research is still ongoing.

Contemporary Research

A decade or two later some psycho linguists began to question the existence of Universal Grammar. They argued that categories like noun and verb are biologically, evolutionarily and psychologically implausible and that the field called for an account that can explain for the acquisition process without innate categories.

Researchers started to suggest that instead of having a language-specific mechanism for language processing, children might utilise general cognitive and learning principles.

Whereas researchers approaching the language acquisition problem from the perspective of Universal Grammar argue for early full productivity, i.e. early adult-like knowledge of language, the opposing constructivist investigators argue for a more gradual developmental process. It is suggested that children are sensitive to patterns in language which enables the acquisition process.

An example of this gradual pattern learning is morphology acquisition. Morphemes are the smallest grammatical markers, or units, in language that alter words. In English, regular plurals are marked with an -s morpheme (e.g. dog+s). Similarly, English third singular verb forms (she eat+s, a boy kick+s) are marked with the -s morpheme. Children are considered to acquire their first instances of third singular forms as entire phrasal chunks (Daddy kicks, a girl eats, a dog barks) without the ability of teasing the finest grammatical components apart.

When the child hears a sufficient number of instances of a linguistic construction (i.e. the third singular verb form), she will detect patterns across the utterances she has heard. In this case, the repeated pattern is the -s marker in this particular verb form.

As a result of many repetitions and examples of the -s marker in different verbs, the child will acquire sophisticated knowledge that, in English, verbs must be marked with an -s morpheme in the third singular form (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011; Pine, Conti-Ramsden, Joseph, Lieven & Serratrice, 2008; Theakson & Lieven, 2005). Approaching language acquisition from the perspective of general cognitive processing is an economical account of how children can learn their first language without an excessive biolinguistic mechanism.

Conclusion

However, finding a solid answer to the problem of language acquisition is far from being over. Our current understanding of the developmental process is still immature. Investigators of Universal Grammar are still trying to convince that language is a task too demanding to acquire without specific innate equipment, whereas the constructivist researchers are fiercely arguing for the importance of linguistic input.

The biggest questions, however, are yet unanswered. What is the exact process that transforms the child's utterances into grammatically correct, adult-like speech? How much does the child need to be exposed to language to achieve the adult-like state?

What account can explain variation between languages and the language acquisition process in children acquiring very different languages to English? The mystery of language acquisition is granted to keep psychologists and linguists alike astonished a decade after decade.

References

Ambridge, B., & Lieven, E.V.M. (2011). Language Acquisition: Contrasting theoretical approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press.

Pine, J.M., Conti-Ramsden, G., Joseph, K.L., Lieven, E.V.M., & Serratrice, L. (2008). Tense over time: testing the Agreement/Tense Omission Model as an account of the pattern of tense-marking provision in early child English. Journal of Child Language, 35(1): 55-75.

Rowland, C. F.; & Noble, C. L. (2010). The role of syntactic structure in children's sentence comprehension: Evidence from the dative. Language Learning and Development, 7(1): 55-75.

Skinner, B.F. (1957). Verbal Behavior. Acton, MA: Copley Publishing Group.

Theakston, A.L., & Lieven, E.V.M. (2005). The acquisition of auxiliaries BE and HAVE: an elicitation study. Journal of Child Language, 32(2): 587-616.

Recommended Reading

An excellent article by Steven Pinker on Language Acquisition

Pinker, S. (1995). The New Science of Language and Mind. Penguin.

Tomasello, M. (2005). Constructing A Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Harvard University Press.

How to reference this article:

Lemetyinen, H. (2012). Language acquisition. Retrieved from www.simplypsychology.org/language.html

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by Henna Lemetyinen published 2012 Language is a cognition that truly makes us human. Whereas other species do communicate with an innate ability to produce a limited number of meaningful vocalizations (e.g. bonobos), or even with partially learned systems (e.g.

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Behaviorist Theory

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Behaviorist theory on language acquisition

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Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers.

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Games, Activities & Word Walls

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Post resources for teachers about morphology related topics here. You may include informational resources or classroom activities to teach morphological concepts (roots, affixes, decoding activities etc.) in the classroom. 

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ESL Board Game - Have You Ever (Present Perfect) - EFL worksheet

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Board game for elementary students of English. It is very useful to practice the use of present perfect question, and also helps with speaking and pronunciation. It can be used either with individual (one-on-one) students, small groups or whole classes.

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Visual

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The online visual dictionary LookingLearning is the solution ...it uses a person's powerful visual skills as the primary pathway to learn English fast, accompanied by audio pronunciation by a native speaker plus a unique interactive function make a picture sentence.

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Mrs. Scott 3rd Grade

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Biography or science launch with cartoon
version

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Flipgrid is where social and emotional learning happens! The leading video discussion platform for millions of PreK to PhD educators, students, and families.

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Transcript of "Txtng is killing language. JK!!!"

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TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: Does texting mean the death of good writing skills? John McWhorter posits that there's much more to texting -- linguistically, culturally -- than it seems, and it's all good news.

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very interesting and informative