Essential Readings in Developmental Psychology

Series Editors: Alan Slater and Darwin Muir

Queers University. Kingston, Ontario and the University of Exeter
In this brand new series of nine books, Alan Slater and Darwin Muir, together with a team
of expert editors. bring together selections of readings illustrating important methodologi-
cal, empirical and theoretical issues in the rea of developmental psychology. Volumes in
the series and their editors are detailed below:
Language Development
The Essential Readings
Edited by Michael Tomasello and
Elizabeth Bates
Infant Development
Childhood Social Development
Childhood Cognitive Development
Adolescent Development
The Psychology of Aging
The Nature/Nurture Debate
Teaching and Learning
Language Development
Children and the Law
Darwin Muir and Alan Slater
Wendy Craig
Kang Lee
Gemid Adams
William Gekoski
Steven Ceci and Wendy Williams
Charles Desforges and Richard Fox
Michael Tomasello and Elizabeth Bates
Ray Bull
Each of the books is introduced by the volume editor with a rationale behind the chosen
papers. Each reading is then introduced and contextualised with-in the individual subject
debate as well as within the wider context of developmental psychology. A selection of
further reading is also assigned, making each volume an ideal teaching resource for both
classroom and individual study settngs.
LACKWELL
On the Inseparability of Grammar and the
Lexicn: Evidence from Acquisition*
Elzabeth E3rteg> and Judth C. Goodman
Linguistics is a field that is known for controversy. However, one general trend has char-
acterized recent proposals in otherwise very diverse theoretical frameworks: more and
more of the explanatory work that was previously handled by the grammar has been
moved into the lexicn. In some frameworks (e.g., Chomsky, 1981. 1995), the gram-
matical component that remains is an austere, "stripped down" system characterized
by a single rule for movement and a set of constraints on the application of that rule.
In this theory, the richness and diversity of linguistic forms within any particular lan-
guage are now captured almost entirely by the lexicn - although this is now a very
complex lexicn that includes propositional structures and productiva rules that govern
the way elements are combined. The trend toward lexicalism is even more apparent in
alternative frameworks like Lexical Functional Grammar (Bresnan, 2001) and Head-
Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (Pollard & Sag, 1994). It reaches its logical conclu-
sin in a framework called Construction Grammar (Fillmore et al., 1988: Goldberg,
1995), in which the distinction between grammar and the lexicn has disappeared alto-
gether (see also Langacker, 1987). Instead. all elements of linguistic form are repre-
sented within a heterogeneous lexicn that contains bound morphemes, free-standing
conten and function words, and complex phrase structures wthout terminal elements
(e.g., the passive). This lexicn can be likened to a large municipal zoo. with many
different kinds of animis. To be sure, the animis vary greatly in size, shape, food pref-
erence, lifestyle, and the kind of handling they require. But they live together in
one compound. under common management. The new lexicalist perspectve is quite
different from the modular proposals that characterized the first two decades or so
of modern generative linguistics, which postulated seprate but roughly equal com-
ponents for semantics (including lexical description). grammar. and phonology (e.g.,
Chomsky. 1965).
The field of language acquisition has (with some exceptions) not kept up with this
lexicalist movement in linguistic theory. Many nvestigators within the field are still
firmly rooted in the modular perspective that characterized linguistic theory thirty
* Redacled from Langutuie and Cogiiilive Processes. 1997. 2 I 5 / 6 ) , 507-584.
On the Inseparability of Grammar and the Lexicn 735
years ago, seeking a discrete and discontinuous boundary between grammar and (he
lexicn, and/or between those lexical tems that do grammatical work and those that
do not (e.g., the distinction between closed- and open-class words - Garretl. 1992: the
contrast between regular and irregular morphology - Pinker, 1991). In this paper. we
will review evidence on the relationship between lexical developmenl and the emer-
gcnce of grammar that supports a unified lexicalist view.
We will begin with evidence on the period between 8 and 30 months, when children
make the passage from first words to grammar, showing that the emergence and elab-
oration of grammar are highly dependen! upon vocabulary size. Then we will compare
these results for normal children with studies of early language development in several
atypical populations, including early talkers, children with focal brain injury, Williams
Syndrome. and Down Syndrome. Results will show that (a) grammar and vocabulary
do not dissociate in early talkers or in children with focal brain injury, at least not
within this phase of development, (b) grammatical development never outstrips lexical
growth, even n the Williams population (a form of retardation in which linguistic abil-
ities are surprisingly spared in the adult steady state), and (c) grammatical development
can fall behind vocabulary in some subgroups (e.g., Down Syndrome). but this appar-
ent dissociation can be explained by limits on auditory processing. We conclude that
the case for a modular distinction between grammar and the lexicn in language devel-
opment has been overstated (see also MacDonald et al., 1994), and that developmen-
tal evidence is more compatible with a radically lexicalist theory of grammar (GoWberg,
1995;MacWhinney, 1993).
This does not mean that grammatical structures don't exist (they do), or that the
representations that underlie grammatical phenomena are identical to those that
underle single-content words (they are not). Rather, we are suggesting that the
heterogeneous set of linguistic forms that occur in any natural language (.e.. words,
morphemes, phrase structure types) may be acqured and processed by a unified pro-
cessing system, one that obeys a common set of activation and learning principies.
There is no need for discontinuous boundaries.
I. Grammar and the Lexicn in Normally Developing Children
Af first glance, the course of early language development seems to provide a prima facie
case for linguistic modularity. Children begin their linguistic careers with babble. start-
ng with vowels (somewhere around 3-4 months. on average) and ending with com-
binations of vowels and consonants of increasing complexity (usually between 6 and
12 months). Meaningful speech emerges some time between 10 and 12 months, on
average, although word comprehension may begin a few weeks earlier. After this, most
children spend many weeks or months producing single-word utterances. At first their
rate of vocabulary growth is very slow. but one typically sees a "burst" or acceleration
in the rate of vocabulary growth somewhere between 16 and 20 months. First word
combinations usually appear between 18 and 20 months. although they tend to be
rather spare and telegraphic (at least in Knglish). Somewhere between 24 and 30
months. most children show a kind of "second burst." a flowering of morphosyntax
that Roger Brown ( 1973) has characterized as "the ivy coming in between the bricks."
736
Introducton to Word Learninq On the Ineeparablity of Grammar and the Lexicn 37
word production
O word comprehension
- - - - O- - - grammar
nir
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Age n months
Figure 10.1 Median growth scores for word comprehension, production and grammar
expressed as a percent of available tems.
By 3-3.5 years of age, most normal children have mastered the basic morphological
and syntactic structures of their language (defined by various criteria for productivity,
including rule-like extensin of grammatical structures to novel words).
This picture of language development in English has been documented extensively.
Of course this textbook story is not exactly the same in every language (Slobin. this
volume), and perfectly healthy children can vary markedly in rate and style of deve-
lopment through these milestones (for reviews, see Bates et al, 1995a; Shore, 1995).
At a global level, however, the passage from sounds to words to grammar appears to be
a universal of child language development. A quick look at the relative timing and
shape of growth in word comprehension, word production, and grammar can be
seen in figure 10.1, taken from our own longitudinal study of language development
from 830 months (Goodman. 1995). The word comprehension and production est-
males are based on the same word checklist, and the grammar estmate is based
on a 37-item scale for sentence complexity (note thal Ihese comprehension data were
only collected from 8-16 months, and measurement of grammar did not begin until
16 months - see below for addilional melhodologcal delails). Assuming for a momenl
that we have a right to compare the proportional growth of apples and oranges, this
figure shows that all three domains follow a dramatic. nonlinear pattern of growth
across this age range - although these "y,ones of acceleration" are separated by weeks
or months.
As Fodor (1983) has argued. one of the ninc criteria Ihat define a "mental module"
is the observance of a "characteristic maturational course" (for discussion. see Elman
et al., 1996). Indeed. it does look as Ihough Ihe basic modules of 1960s generative lin-
guislics emerge on a fixed and orderly schedule: phonology, followed by lexical setnan-
tics, wilh Ihe grammalical componenl making its lirst appearance around two years of
age. Bickerton (1984) has taken this succession quile seriously. Following Chomsky,
1
he arges that the period of babbling and single-word production prior to two years of
age is essentially "pre-Iinguislic." True language only begins when sentences begin.
around 2 years of age.
This kind of structural discontinuity in the passage from first words to grammar is
reminiscent of Jakobson's proposal for a discontinuity between babble and meaningful
speech (1968). Jakobson went so far as to suggest that children fall silent for a brief
period between these two stages. Furlbermore, he suggested that the phonological
conten of babble (i.e., the consonants and vowels that children prefer is quite distinct
from the phonological conten of first words. These were interesling ideas, bul afler 30
years of research on child phonology, we now know Ihal Jakobson was wrong on both
these points (Goodman & Nusbaum, 1994). There is no silent period. and the specitic
sounds thal individual children prefer in their prelexical babble tend to predomnate in
the same child's first atlempts at meaningful speech. This continuous flow of preferred
and avoided phonemes suggests thal phonological and lexical developmenl are inler-
woven. Whal appeared at first glance to be an orderly and modular progression from
one linguistic componen! to another lurns oul, after a closer look. to involve bi-
direclional causality and temporal overlap.
Whal aboul Ihe passage from single words lo grammar? We have known for some
time that, within individual children, the conten, style, and patterning of first word
combinations is strongly influenced by the conten, style, and patterning of single-word
speech (Bates et al., 1988; Bloom. 1991). Bul of course no one has ever proposed Ihal
grammar can begin in the absence of words. Any rule-based device is going to have to
have a certain amount of lexical material to work on. The real queslion is: Jusl how
tight are the correlations belween lexical and grammatical development in the second
and third year of life? Are these components dissociable, and if so, lo whal exlenl? How
much lexical material is needed to build a grammatical syslem? Can grammar get off
Ihe ground and go its seprale way once a mnimum number of words is reached (e.g..
50-100 words, Ihe modal vocabulary sixe when first word combinations appear - Bates
et al., 1988; Nelson, 1973)? Or will we observe a constanl and lawful interchange
between lexical and grammatical developmenl, of Ihe sorl that one would expect if the
lexicalist approach to grammar is correct. and grammar does nol dissociale from Ihe
lexicn at any point? Our reading of the evidence suggests that the latter view is correct.
As we shall see, the funclion Ihat governs the relation between lexical and grammati-
cal growth in this age range is so lawful thal il approaches Fechner's law in elegance
and power. The successive "bursts" thal characlerize vocabulary growlh and Ihe emer-
gence of morphosyntax can be viewed as different phases of an immense nonlinear
wave Ihal slarls in Ihe single-word slage and crashes on Ihe shores of grammar a year
or so laten
Our first insighls inlo Ihis tight relationship carne in a longitudinal study of 27 chil-
dren who were observed at 10. 13. 20, and 28 months of age. using a combinalion of
structured observations (al homc and in the laboratory) and parental report (Bales el
al., 1988). Among olher Ihings. we examined Ihe concurren! and predictive relation
belween vocabulary size and grammalical status at 20 and 28 months of age. Vocabu-
Introduction to Word Learn'mq
Table 10.1 Reiations between grammatical development and voeabulary size from 20 to 28
months (From Bates et al., 1988)
20-month
vocabulary
20-month
MLU'
28-month
vocabulary
28-month
MLU
1
20-month
vocabulary
+.54"
+.64"
+.83**
20-month 28-month 28-month
MLU
1
vocabulary MLU
1
+.47*
+.48* +.73**
* p<. ( ) 5
** p<. 01
1
Mean length of utterance in morphemes.
lary size was assessed with a combination of video observations and parental report.
Grammatical development was assessed in a standard fashion, calculating mean length
of utterance in morphemes (MLU) from speech transcriptions, following the rules out-
lined by Brown (1973).
2
Table 10.1 summarizes the cross-lag correlations that we
found between lexical and grammatical development within and across these two age
levis. Results were very clear: The single best estimate of grammatical status at 28
months (right in the heart of the "grammar burst") is total vocabulary size at 20
months (measured right in the middle of the "vocabulary burst"). In fac, the correla-
tion coefflcient in this and related analyses with other grammatical variables hovered
consistently between +.70 and +.84. Because we know that no measure can correlate
with another variable higher than it correlates with itself (i.e., Spearman's Law of Reli-
ability), it is interesting to note that seprate samples of MLU at 28 months of age also
tend to intercorrelate in the +.75h.80 range. What this means, in essence, is that 20-
month vocabulary and 28-month MLU scores are statistically identical; one could be
used as a stand-in for the other in predicting a child's rank within his/her group. Of
course this kind of correlational finding does not forc us to conclude that grammar
and vocabulary growth are mediated by the same developmental mechanism. Correla-
tion is not cause. At the very least. however. this powerful correlation suggests that the
two have something important in common.
In a more recent series of studies, we have developed a new parental report instru-
ment called the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) to study the
relationship between lexical and grammatical development in a much larger sample of
1,800 normally developing children, primarily middle class, all growing up in Knglish-
speaking households (Fenson et al.. J994). The CDI relies primarily on a checklist
tormat to assess word comprehension (from 8-16 months). word production (from
On the Inseparability of Grammar and the Lexicn 139
8-30 months). and the emergence of grammar (from 16-30 months). Details con-
cerning these two Instruments (in Knglish and Ral l an) are provided in Casclli et al. (this
volume). For our purposes here, the most important aspects of this instrument are the
vocabulary checklist (containing 680 words on the Words and Fhrases Scale. intended
for 16-30-month-olds), and the grammatical complexity checklist. The complexity
checklist contains .37 sentence pairs. each relecting a single linguistic contrast that is
known to come in during this age rangc (e.g.. "KITTY SLEEPINU" paired with "KITTY
IS SLliEPINC"). Parents were asked to indcate (even if their child had not said this par-
ticular sentence) which sentence in each pair "sounds more like the way that your child
is talking right now." Additional Information about grammar comes from a second in
which parents write out the three longest sentences that they can remember their child
saying in the last couple of weeks (on the grounds that these would be sufficiently
recent and striking events to have some validity even in recall mode). Finally, we pro-
vided a list of irregular nouns and verbs in their correct inflected forras (e.g., teeth;
made), as well as a list of regularization errors that are common in young Knglish-
speaking children (e.g., tooths; maked). Parents were asked to check whether they had
heard their child produce any of these forms. These three different modes of assessing
early grammar were all highly correlated in the Fenson et al. study. More importantly
still. the three measures correlate very highly with traditional laboratory measures of
grammatical complexity (Dale. 1991; Dale et al., 1989), including correlations with
MLU up to the statistical ceiling (i.e.. as high as MLU correlates with itself in reliability
studies). It is thus fair to conclude that these measures constitute a valid and reliable
estimate of individual differences in grammatical development across the period from
16-30 months of age. In most of the results that follow. we will concntrate on the
relation between vocabulary size and grammar using the 3 7-item grammatical com-
plexity scale as our primary outcome variable. It is clear from the validation studies.
however. that any of these parent report and/or laboratory estmales of gross progress
in grammar would yield the same result.
As reported by Fenson et al. (1994), the relationship between grammatical com-
plexity and vocabulary size in their large cross-sectional sample replicates and extends
the powerful grammar/vocabulary relationship that had emerged in Bates et al. (1988).
Figure 10.2 (from Fenson et al.) Ilstrales the relation between performance on the
3 7-item sentence complexity scale and productive vocabulary size (collapsed over
age, with children divided into groups reflecting fewer than 50 words, 50-100
words, 101-200 words. 201-300 words. 301-400 words. 401-500 words, 501-600
words and >600 words). The linear correlation between these two measures is +.84
(p < .0001). but it is clear from Figure 10.2 that the function governing this relation-
ship is nonlinear.
Of course there is some individual variation around this function. This is illustrated
by the standard error of the mean in Figure 10.2, and by the seprate Unes in figure
10.3a, which indcate scores for children at the 9()th, 75th, 50th. 25th. and lOth per-
centiles for grammar within each vocabulary group. These variance statistics make two
points: ( 1 ) individual differences around the grammar-on-vocabulary tunction are
relativcly smal l , and (2) the variance is consisten! in magnltude at every point along
the horizontal axis beyond 50-100 words. Both these points are claritied further if we
compare the t i ght correlation between grammar and vocabulary with the clear disso-
14O
Introduccin to Word Learnii
S.
o.
o
to
E
2
C3
<50 50-100 101-200 201-300 301-400 401-500 501-600 >600
Vocabulary size
Figure 10.2 Mean and standard errors for grammatical complexity in children at different
vocabulary levis.
ciation between word Comprehension and word production observed at an earlier
point in language developmcnt. Figure 10.3b displays the relation between expressive
vocabulary (on the vertical axis) and receptve vocabulary (on the horizontal axis),
collapsed over age in children between 8 and 16 months (redrawn from the MacArthur
norming study, Fenson et al., 1994). Analogous to figure 10.3a. figure 10.3b Ilstrales
the relation between domains by plotting scores at the 90th, 75th. 50th. 25th, and
lOth percentile for word production within each Comprehension group. What we see
in figure 10.3b is a classic fan-shaped pattern of varation. including children who are
still producing virtually no meaningful speech at all despte receptive vocabularies of
more than 200 words. Henee this figure captures a phenomenon that is well attested
in the child language literature: Comprehension and production can dissociate to a
remarkable degree. A certain level of word Comprehension is prerequisite for expres-
sive language to get off the ground. but Comprehension (though necessary) is appar-
ently not sufficient. If the same t h ng were true for the relationship between vocabulary
and grammar, we would expect the same kind of fan-shaped variance in figure 10.3a.
That s. we might expect vocabulary size to place a ceiling on grammatical development
up to somewhere between 50 and 200 words (when most children make the passage
into multiword speech). After t hat point. the variance should spread outward as the
two domains decouple and grammar takes off on its own course. Instead. we tnd that
grammar and vocabulary are tghtly coupled across the 16-30-month age range.
o.
o
E
2
C5
<50 50-100 101-200 201-300 301-400 401-500 501-600
Vocabulary
Figure 10.3a Relationship between grammar and vocabulary size.
>600
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Figure 10
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700
Vocabulary size
,6 Relationship between grammatical complexity & vocabulary size for one late
talker and one early talker.
both cases (i.e., results collapsed over many different children at each data point). We
might therefore ask whether the growth curves in the longitudinal study look similar
for individual children, or whether the commonalities in figure 10.5 represen! group
trends that mask sharp dissociations in at least some individual cases. To address this
issue. we graphed the individual grammar-on-vocabulary functions for each of the 2 7
children. Results suggest a remarkable degree of similarity between these individual
growth curves and the range of curves (from the 1 Oth to the 90th percentile) summa-
rized at the group level in figure 10.3a. To Ilstrate this point. we present the grammar-
on-vocabulary functions for two individual children in figure 10.6, for each session
between 16 and 30 months. These children were selected to represent extremes in rate
of vocabulary growth, including one very late talker and one very early talker. Even
though the two children overlap perfectly in age, there was absolutely no overlap in
their vocabulary size across this period: the late talker produced only 2 72 words by the
last session at 30 months, while the early talker already had a vocabulary of 315 words
at 17 months, when administraron of the grammar scales began. It is clear from figure
10.6 that both children are making progress in grammar that is directly commensu-
rate to their lexical abilities. even though they reach their respective grammar-on-
vocabulary levis at widely different ages withi n this period of development.
We have also had an opportunity to compare the grammar-on-vocabulary functions
for two languages. Hnglish and It al i an (Caselli et al.. 19991. In both languages. the
On the Inseparablity of Grammar and the Lexicn
O English complexity
Italian complexity
145
<50 51-100 101-200 201-300 301-400 401-500 501-600
Vocabulary level
>600
Figure 10.7 Grammatical complexity as a function of vocabulary size in English vs. Italian.
grammar scale of the CDI contained 3 7 pairs of sentences designed to pick up contrasts
that are known to develop in that language between 17 and 30 months. However,
the conten of the respective grammar scales is entirely different (i.e., they are not
translations). Despite these differences, figure 10.7 shows that the same lawful and
powerful function is observed in two languages that differ markedly in their grammati-
cal structure.
We are convinced by these data that there is a powerful link between grammar and
lexical growth in this age range, a nonlinear growth function that holds for both cross-
sectional and longitudinal designs, at both the individual and the group level. These
results (even for individual children) are collapsed across a range of different gram-
matical structures. What does the relationship look like when we look at specific aspects
of the grammar? Presumably, because we know that different grammatical structures
come in at different points within this developmental window, we ought to expect indi-
vidual forms to display different degrees and (perhaps) different types of "lexical depen-
dence." For example. individual grammatical structures might require a different
"critical mass" across the whole vocabulary, or they might require a critical number of
lexical tems within a specific class.
Some insights into this issue come from Marchman and Bates (1994). who used the
MacArthur norming data to investgate the relationship between the number of verbs
that chiidren use and their progress on the verb morphology subscales on the CDI (i.e..
the checklists of irregular, regular and overregularixes forms noted above). This study
was motivated by the ongoing controversy between the connectionist "single mecha-
nism" approach to grammatical development (fi l man, t hi s volume: Klman et al.. 1 996:
MacWhinney. 1993; Plunketl & Marchman, 1993) and the symbolic "rote vs. rule"
146
Introduccin to Word Learning
Stem + corred irregular
O 1-9 10-1920-2930-3940-4950-5960-6970-7980-8990-99100+
Size of verb vocabulary
Figure 10.8 Reported production of 16 irregular verbs as a function of vocabulary size (from
Marchman & Bates. 1994).
approach(Brown. 1973; Marcusetal., 1992;Pinker, 1991). Connectionist simulations
of the acquisition of past-tense morphology have shown that a single mechanism
can display many of the same behaviors that characterize grammatical learning in
children. These include an initial stage in which the system produces high-frequency
irregular past-tense forms correctly (e.g., CAME, WENT), a lengthy intermedate phase
m which these corred forms coexist with occasional overregularizations (e.g., COMED.
GOED). followed by an asymptotic convergence on the use of correct regulars and irreg-
ulars. However. as critics of the single-mechanism account have noted (e.g., Marcus
et al., 1992), these changes are linked to the size and composition of verb vocabulary
(e.g.. high-frequency irregulars tend to domnate in the early stages; the appearance of
overregularizations correlates with an increase in the proportion of regulars to irre-
gulars in the networks "vocabulary"). This raises an important question: is past-tense
learning in real chldren also tied to changes in vocabulary size?
Figure 10.8 from Marchman and Bates iliustrates the relation between number of
verbs in the childs vocabulary (based on the subset of verbs that are used in the vocabu-
lary checklist and n the past-tense scale) and three forms of past-tense marking- xero
stem (the child is reported to use the verb in the dtation form only). correct irregulars
On the Inseparability of Grsmmar and the Lexicn 147
and ncorrect overgeneralizations. This figure reveis a strong nonlinear relatonship
between verb vocabulary size and successive phases in the developrnent of past-tense
morphemes. similar to the relationship observed in connectionist simulations of this
learning process.
This demonstration of a link belween verb vocabulary and past-tense morphology
is the only example we have right now of a link between specific grammatical struc-
tures and their requisite "critical mass" of lexical tems. A great deal more work could
be done n this rea, to determine the lexical prerequisites (if any) for specific gram-
matical forms. which may vary substantially within and across languages. For now. we
turn to a different set of questions. Is the powerful grammar-vocabulary relationship
universal for anyone acquiring English. or can we tind atypical populations in which
dissociations between lexical and grammatical developrnent are observed?
II. Grammatical Development and the Lexicn in Atypical Populations
Although grammatical developrnent invariably follows a stage in which single words
are acquired, the findings reviewed so far suggest that, aside from this temporal lag.
there is no dissociation between grammar and lexical development in normal children.
In view of the claims that have been made about the dissociability of these domains in
adults. it seemed important to us to determine whether there are any individual
children or any specific pediatric populations who deviate from the function displayed
in figures 10.2-10.6.
In fact. the literature on older children with language disorders gives us reason to
expect selective impairments in early grammar. Specific Language Impairment or SLI
is defined as a delay in expressive language abilities that is at least 1 standard deviation
below the mean for the child's chronological age. in the absence of mental retardation,
frank neurological impairment. social-emotional disorders (e.g., autism), or any other
serious biomedical risk factors that could account for the delay. Although the definition
of SLI presupposes that language can be dissociated from the rest of cognition, the
speciicity of Specific Language Impairment is still controversial (Bishop, 1997; Gopnik.
1990: Leonard, 1998). For example. many investigators report that children with SLI
score significantly below age-matched controls on at least some nonlinguistic mea-
sures, including mental imagery. symbolic play. shifting attention. and the ability to
detect rapid temporal changes in auditory stimuli (see Bishop and Leonard for reviews).
There is considerably more agreement about the nature of the language impairment
in SLI. Within every linguistic domain that has been studied to date, the expressive
and/or receptive abilities of children with SLI are qualitatively similar to those of
younger normal children. but delays seem to be greater for grammar.
The vulnerability of grammar in SLI has led to some radical proposals. For example.
Gopnik (1990) and Pinker (1991) described a family with what appeared to be a con-
genital versin of SLI, manifested in a specific dissociation between regular and irregu-
lar grammatical morphology, with relative sparing of irregular forms. They suggested
that such a dissociation is possible because irregulars are processed in trie lexicn, vvhile
regulars are handled by a seprate grammatical processor. However. a more compre-
hensive study of the same family by Vargha-Khadem et al. (1995) has shown that the
I4c9 Introduccin to Word learning
affected members of this family are equally impaired on both regular and irregular mor-
phemes, as well as on a host of other language and nonlanguage measures. Marchman
et al. (1995) have investigated the proposed regular/irregular past-tense dissociation
in a large sample of children with SU. They report significant impairmcnts in past-tense
morphology for SLI children compared with age-matched controls. However, they find
no evidence whatsoever for a dissociation between regular and irregular forms. 'The
errors produced by children with SLI are quite similar to those of younger normal
children - there are just more of them (especially omissions).
Regardless of one's position on this question, we shall see later on that the selective
vulnerability of grammatical morphology is not specitic to SLI. It has been observed in
a number of other child and adult populations, including children with Down Syn-
drome (Chapman, 1995; Contardi & Vicari, 1994). For present purposes. the point is
that a certain degree of dissociability has already been observed between grammatical
morphology and other aspects of language in older children and adults with language
impairments. What we want to determine next is whether analogous patterns of dis-
sociation are observed in the period when grammar first develops.
Late ana early talkers
Within a larger program looking for patterns of association and dissociation within and
across linguistic and cognitive domains. Thal and her colleagues have examined pat-
terns of lexical and grammatical development in infants and preschool children at the
extreme ends of the normal distribution (Thal, 1991; Thal et a!., 1996). This includes
"late talkers." defined as children in the bottom lOth percentile for expressive vocabu-
lary between 18 and 24 months of age. in the absence of the same exclusionary factors
that are used to diagnose SU in older children. It also includes "early talkers," defined
as children in the top lOth percentile for expressive vocabulary between 12 and 24
months of age. For our purposes here, we are interested in the relationship between
grammar and vocabulary in these extreme groups. If late talkers constitute an early
variant of SLI. then we might expect to find that grammar lags behind vocabulary level.
compared with children who reach the same vocabulary size closer to the normative
age. Alternatively, we might find some late talkers who have managed to develop gram-
matical abilities well in advance of their lexical levis. The same two extremes may also
be observed among the early talkers: children whose grammatical abilities are still tied
to chronological age. despite their lexical precocity. and children who are "grammar
geniuses." attaining levis of sentence complexity that are even greater than their
abilities in the lexical domain.
These were reasonable hypotheses, but they have not been supported by the data. In
study after study. grammatical development appears to be tied to lexical level even in
children at the far ends of the continuum, in patterns similar to those displayed by the
two extreme longitudinal cases in figure 10.6. Some further insights into this issue
come from case studies of children with extremely precocious language development
(Thal et al.. 1996). In one of the children in this study, grammar did appear to lag
behind vocabulary level, suggesting some degree of dissociation. However. a detailed
comparison of the free-speech data and parent report data revealed an unexpectedly
strong association between vocabulary development and inflectional morphology for
On the Inseparability of Grammar and trie Lexicn 749
both these children. even though one of them has barely moved out of the single-word
stage!
This conclusin is illustrated in Table 10.2 (from Thal et al., 1996), which provides
examples of the utterances produced by MW (1 7 months od with an expressive vocabu-
lary of 596 words in the CD1) and SW (21 months od with an expressive vocabulary
of 627 words on the CDI). With an MLU of 2.1 3, MW is right whcre we would expect
her to be in grammar, given her vocabulary size (equivalent to performance by an
average 28-30-month-old child in both domains). By contrast, SW has just begun to
combine words (MLU 1.12) despite her huge vocabulary. In fact. her grammatical
abilities are quite average for a 21-month-old child. At first glance it appears that
SW represents a striking dissociation between grammar and vocabulary. However, the
examples n Table 10.2 reveal a very curious phenomenon: production of words
with contrasting inflections (e.g., 'falling . . . fell") in single-word utterances. This is a
very odd phenomenon for children acquiring English, although it has been observed
in children acquiring a highly inflected language such as Turkish (Slobin. 1985).
Applying the criteria for morphological productivity developed by Brown (1973).
Thal et al. discovered that both children have about as much control over English
morphology as we would expect to find in a 2.5-year-old child. In fact, SW was actu-
ally more advanced than MW in grammatical morphology (i.e., productive control over
more morphemes according to Brown's rules), although both children are well within
the range that we would expect for children with more than 500 words (Marchman &
Bates. 1994).
If the difference between MW and SW does not represen! a clear dissociation
between grammar and vocabulary, how can we explain their striking differences in
utterance length? Thal et al. note that SW produced carefully articulated single words.
By contrast, MW was observed to use longer utterances that often appeared formulaic
in nature. Her parents indicated that MW could remember and produce a number of
songs and idiomatic expressions (e.g., "No way, Jos," or ''You little monkey!"). In fact,
to the surprise and amusement of her mother and the experimenten MW produced a
novel juxtaposition of two established formulae during one of the experimental ses-
sions: "No way, you monkey!" Thal et al. tentatively conclude that these two children
differ primarily in the size of the unit that they are able to store in auditory memory,
and/or the size of the unit that they are able to retrieve and reformulate in speech
production (see also Peters, 1983). As we shall see shortly, this kind of processing
account will prove useful n explaining the apparent dissociations observed in some
clinical populations.
Early focal lesione
A different perspectiva on the relationship between early grammar and the lexicn
comes from studies of infants and children with early focal brain lesions to the left or
right hemisphere. usually due to pre- or perinatal stroke (Bates et al.. 1997: Reilly et
al.. 1998). When cases with intractable seizures or other medical complications are
excluded. most studies of this population report language abilities that are well within
the normal range. regardless of lesin side. si/e, or site (Bates et al.. 1999: Kisele &
Aram, 1995; Feldman et al.. 1992: Vargha-Khadem el al.. 1994). As a group. children
Table 10.2 Examples of language production by two very early talkers (from Thal. Bates,
Zappia, & Oroz, 1996)
MW:
Age: 1 7 months od
Vocabulary 5 9 6 words
Vocabulary age: 30 months
MLU: 2.13
MLUage: 28 months
Where cup went?
Where chair went?
Teddy bear went?
Baby doing?
Wanna walk e baby.
Wanna put it on.
Wanna go ride it.
Want mom get off.
Daddy take her. (referring to self)
Help with the apple.
Can't get the teddy bear.
Teddybear the bath.
Too much carrots on the dish.
Move it around.
Clean e bottom.
Put ne sof.
Put in eye.
Momrny wear hat.
Mommy smell it.
Mommy read the book.
Mommy sit down.
Find Becky.
See Becky in the morning.
Becky is nice.
Saw Becky and goats.
SW:
Age: 2 1 months od
Vocabulary: 62 7 words
Vocabulary age: >30 months
MU! 1.1 9
MLtJ age: 20 months
Pretty.
Cute.
Big.
Round.
Dry.
Hungry.
Wet.
Different.
Enough.
Else.
More.
Minute.
Brushing.
Hiding.
Baby crying.
Hold.
Hold it.
Dropped t.
Bring it.
Falling.
Fell.
Talk.
Talking.
VVash'em.
Shirt on.
Teddy up.
Mommy shoe.
On the In&eparability of Grammar and the Lexicn
151
with unilateral brain damage tend to perform below normal controls. bul do not qualify
for a diagnosis of aphasia. This conclusin holds even for chiklren whose injuries
involve the classical language xones, and for some children who have had the entire left
hemisphere removed. Jn fact, when children with early lesin onset are studied after
5-7 years of age, current evidence suggests that there are no significant differenccs at
all between children with left- vs. right-hemisphere injury.
In view of all this evidence for plasticity, what can children with focal brain injury
tell us about the relationship between grammar and the lexicn? The stereotypical vicw
of aphasia in adults might lead one to expect that these children would provide evi-
dence for a dissociation between grammar and the lexicn - at least in the early stages,
when they are trying to get grammar off the ground. Instead. children with early brain
injuries show a tight relationship between dficits observed in grammar and the lexicn
across the years in which these skills develop (Bates et al., 1997; Vicari et al., 2000).
Before 5-7 years of age. brain damage does exact a very heavy cost: regardless of side
or site of injury, infants with early unilateral injuries are often 10-20 months behind
the norm for their age. Furthermore, we can find specific effects of lesin side and site
during the years in which language is first acquired - but surprisingly, these effects bear
little resemblance to the lesion-symptom correlations observed in adults with aphasia.
For example, initial delays in "cracking the code" (word comprehension and gesture
from 10-20 months) are actually greater in infants with damage to the right hemi-
sphere, exactly the opposite of what is typically seen in brain-injured adults. Children
with damage involving the frontal lobes are often especially delayed in word and
grammar production - but it doesn't seem to matter whether the frontal lobe injury
occurs on the left or right side! So far, there is only one clue to the left-hemisphere spe-
cialization for language that usually emerges n uninjured adults: between 1 and 5
years of age (which is a fairly long time), delays n word production are greatest in chil-
dren whose lesions include the temporal lobe (a sensory rea) in the left hemisphere. It
may seem strange that a sensory rea is associated with production delays, but Bates
et al. (1999) point out a possible reason for this correlation: When children are learn-
ing to talk for the first time, they have to carry out a much more detailed perceptual
analysis of the speech signal ("hearing for production") than they need to figure out
what those words mean in the first place ("hearing for understanding"). By 5-7 years
of age (including longitudinal samples), all of these effects seem to disappear. Although
brain-injured children are still slightly behind normal controls, there are no left-right
differences (at least not in most well-controlled studies), and the children have almost
all moved into the normal range.
One final conclusin is most important for present purposes: If children with early
focal brain damage are delayed in vocabulary, they are delayed in grammar - and vice
versa. There seems to be no evidence in this population for a specific lesin that selec-
tively affects grammar (leaving vocabulary intact) or selectively affects vocabulary
(leaving grammar intact). To Ilstrate this last point. figure 10.9 shows the relation-
ship between grammar and vocabulary for 19 individual children in the Bates et al.
(1997) study. compared with the means for normal controls at different vocabulary
levis between 19 and 31 months of age from the MacArthur COI norming study
(Fenson et al., 1 994). We have plotted grammatical complexity against vocabulary si/e
n this figure in a form that faciltales comparison between the focal lesin data and the
752 Introduccin to Word Learning
I
E
S
O
A +Left temporal damage
A Left damage with temporal sparing
o Right damage
On the Inseparability of Grammar and the Lexicn 153
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700
Vocabulary size
Figure 10.9 Grammar as a function of vocabulary size in children with focal brain injury
(Unes = lOth. 50th & 90th percentile for normis).
other populations considered so far. Seprate symbols are provided to distinguish cases
with left-hemisphere injuries involving the temporal lobe, left-hemisphere injuries that
spare the temporal lobe, and right-hemisphere damage. The three unes in figure 10.9
represen! the 1 Oth, 50th. and 90th percentiles for grammar as a function of vocabu-
lary size in the Fenson et al. normative sample. It should be clear from this figure that
children with focal brain injury display the normal nonlinear relationship between
grammar and vocabulary, even though some of them are markedly delayed on both
(clustered in overlapping symbols in the bottom left quadrant). Of course there is
some variance around this function, but the variance is no greater than we observe
with normal children. Eighteen out of 19 focal-lesion cases fall within the 10-90
window for normal children. and one falls outside; we would expect between 1 and 4
cases to fall outside that window f we were drawing children randomly from the
normal population. In short, there is no evidence for a dissociation between vocabulary
and grammar in this phase of development, even in children who have suffered pre- or
perinatal injuries to the classical language zones within the left hemisphere.
Williams Syndrome and Down Syndrome
Williams Syndrome (WMS) and Down Syndrome (DNS) are genetically based forms of
mental retardation (Bellugi et al.. ] 994: Contardi & Vicari, \ 994; Giannotti & Vicari.
1994: Mervis et al.. 1999: Miller. 1992). In both groups. mean [Qs generally hover
between 40 and 60. although a broader range of JQ scores can be observed at every
stage from infancy through adulthood. People with WMS and DNS tend to end up in
the same special classrooms and residential centers; some adults are able to hold down
simple Jobs, but they are rarely able to live independently. Despite these similarities in
global IQ and life experience, recent studies have revealed sharp contrasts between the
two groups. For our purposes here, we are particularly interested in the claim that
WMS and DNS represen! a double dissociation between language and nonlinguistic
cognition. and between lexical and grammatical aspects of language processing.
Children with DNS are markedly delayed in the acquisition of language. More
importantly. their language abilities at virtually every stage (including the adult steady
State) fall below the levis that we would expect based upon their mental age (Chapman,
1995; Miller. 1992). Furthermore, children and adults with DNS appear to be
especially impaired in the production of bound and free grammatical morphemes.
constituting a form of congenital agrammatism that is even more severe than the
selective delays in grammatical morphology reported for children with Specific
Language Impairment. The function word omissions and structural simplifications
produced by older children with DNS are especially salient in a richly inflected
language like Italian (Contardi & Vicari, 1994), resulting in profiles that are quali-
tatively similar to much younger normal children. although rates of omission are
actually higher in DNS than controls when mean length of utterance is controlled
(Fabbretti et al., 1997).
By contrast. older children and adults with WMS display levis of linguistic knowl-
edge and language use that are surprisingly good when they are compared with the low
levis of performance shown by children with DNS at the same mental age (Bellugi
et al., 1994; Karmiloff-Smith et al., 1995; Mervis et al., 1999). This does not mean that
individuis with WMS are "language savants." Those studies that have used normal
controls have shown that the linguistic performance in WMS falls invariably below
chronological age - which is, of course, not surprising for subjects with an IQ score
around 50. When children with WMS are compared with younger normis matched
for mental age, the picture is mixed. On most measures, performance s closely tied to
mental age (Capirci et al., 1996: Giannotti & Vicari. 1994: Volterra et al., 1996). Per-
formance above mental age is observed in children with WMS in two kinds of tasks:
language tasks that draw heavily on auditory short-term memory (Wang & Bellugi,
1994), and/or language tasks that elicit affectively charged and colorful speech (Reilly
etal.. 1991).
The peculiar patterns of sparing and impairment that are observed within the
language domain in WMS are complemented by equally interesting patterns of sparing
and impairment outside of language. For example, people with WMS and DNS differ
markedly in basic measures of information processing. WMS tend to be extremely sen-
sitive to sound (i.e., hyperacusis). and they perform significantly better than IQ-matched
individuis with DNS on tests of auditory short-term memory (Contardi & Vicari, 1994;
Vicari et al., 1996: Wang & Bellugi. 1994). DNS is often associated with mild to mod-
rate dficits in hearing, but DNS children show significantly better performance than
age-matched WMS on gestural tasks. and DNS adults perform significantly better than
WMS adults on measures of visual short-term memory. These differences in processing
modality may be relevant to the contrasting grammatical profiles observed in WMS and
DNS (see below).
154 Introducton to Word Learning
Based on findings like these, the initia) view of WMS as language savants has giren
way to an interest n this syndrome for the insight that this syndrome offers into Ian-
guage deve/opment under different conditions of information processing (especially
auditory processing), affect and cognition (see Karmioff-Smith, this volume). One of
the most interesting questions revolves around the relationship between grammar and
the lexicn in people with WMS. Earlier papers describing anguage in WMS suggested
that grammar may be "spared" while semantics and pragmatics are deviant or "odd"
(Bellug et al., 1994: Reiiiy et al.. 1991). Pinker (1991) has made the further sugges-
tion that WMS may be particularly adept in the use of regular morphemes, resulting
in overgeneralization errors on irregular forras (e.g.. "goed" instead of "went").
I lowever, more recent evidence suggests that grammar and lexical semantics are both
abnormal in the WMS population. Rubba and Klma (1991) have shown that English-
speaking WMS produce peculiar substitutions of prepositional forms. Karmiloff-Smith
and colleagues have provided evidence suggesting that French-speaking WMS find it
difficult to generalize regular gender morphology to novel words - even though they
are very good at repeating the same novel iteras. Comparative studies of WMS and DNS
in Italian suggest that both groups are markedly impaired in the production of gram-
matical morphemes, including both regular and irregular forms. However, the two
groups differ markedly in the kinds of errors they produce. As noted above, Italian
speakers with DNS tend to err by omisson and simplification, yieldng profiles similar f
to those that are observed in Italian Broca's aphasics, Italians with SLI, and very young
talian-speaking normis. By contrast, Italian speakers with WMS have been shown to I
produce a range of morphological substitutions that are rarely observed in normis at
any age, bearing a distant resemblance to the substitution errors observed in Italian
Wernicke's aphasics (Bates et al., 1991).
In view of the many contrasts observed in older children and adolescents with WMS
syndrome vs. Down Syndrome, it is interesting to ask just how early the two groups
seprate in their profiles of Ianguage developmen t. Is the Ianguage advantage in WMS
(or the Ianguage disadvantage in DNS) present from the very beginning, or does it
emerge only after some critica! cognitive or linguistic milestone is reached? This ques-
tion was addressed by Singer Harris et al. (1997), who used the MacArthur CD to
obtain early Ianguage data from a large sample of children with WMS or DNS between
one and six years of age. In the period of development covered by the infant scale
(equivalent to normal children between 8 and 16 months), WMS and DNS were equally
and severely delayed in both word comprehension and word production. The predicted
separation between WMS and DNS did not emerge until the period of development
covered by the toddler scale (equivalent to normal children between 16 and 30
months). Both groups were still delayed by approximately two years at this point, with
no significant difference in overall vocabulary size. However, Singer et al. found strik-
ing differences in the emergence of grammar. Interestingly, this difference relects a
DNS disadvantage rather than a WMS advantage.
To faciltate comparison across groups. we have plotted the data for individual WMS
and DNS from Singer Harris et al. in figure 10.10, in the same format adopted through-
out this chapter. Within WMS. grammatical development appears to be paced by vo-
cabulary size, in the normal fashion. In fact. when these children are compared with
lexically matched normal controls from the CDJ sample, the relationship between
On the Inseparabilty of Grsmmar and the Lexicn
155
o Williams Syndrome
Down Syndrome
50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 650 700
Vocabulary size
Figure 10.10 Grammar as a function of vocabulary size in children with Williams vs. Down
Syndrome (lines = lOth. 50th & 90th percentile for normis).
grammar and vocabulary size is identical. following the same nonlinear accelerating
function described above for normis and for children with focal brain injury. In short,
there is no evidence for a dissociation between grammatical and lexical development in
WMS - at least not in this early phase of grammatical development.
By contrast, the DNS sample provides our best evidence to date for a significant
dissociation between grammar and the lexicn. In particular, DNS children scored
significantly below the grammatical levis displayed by normal children and by WMS
matched or vocabulary size (Figure 10.10). However, the term "dissociation" must be
used with caution here. Correlational analyses show that grammar and vocabulary
are tightly related in both children with WMS and children with DNS (correlating
around +.70). There is a real difference between these groups, but it lies in the amount
of vocabulary that children in each group seem to need in order to get grammar off
the ground: WMS need the same amount required by normal children of the same mental
age, while DNS require more than the normal amount of vocabulary in order for grammar to
emerge.
As we noted earlier. there is a double dissociation in these two groups between audi-
tory short-term memory (signiflcantly better in WMS) and visual short-term memory
(significantly better in DNS). It appears that DNS suffer from a selective impairment in
one or more aspects of auditory processing, a dficit that is superimposed u pon their
more general cognitive delay. Under these circumstances. it is perhaps not surprising
the DNS are selectively impaired in the ability to detect. store, and/or retrieve those
aspects of their l i ngui st i c i nput t hat are lovvest in what I.eonurd (1998) refers to as
56 Introduction to Word Learning
"phonological substance," or salience. This argument is similar to one that Tallal and
hercolleagues have used to explain the selective grammatical dficits displayed by older
children with SU (Tallal et al., 1985). We will return to this issue later on, with refer-
ence to selective impairments of grammar in brain-injured adults.
Explaining the Link
Why is the relationship between grammar and the lexicn so strong in this period of
development? The same basic nonlinear relationship appears in longitudinal and cross-
sectional data, in at least two dramatically dfferent languages (see Caselli et al., this
volume), in different domains of grammar. in children who are developing on a normal
schedule and in children who are developing at an aberrant rate. We do find a viola-
tion of this relationship in children with Down Syndrome, but the deviation seems to
involve not a dissociation between grammar and the lexicn, but a pathological differ-
ence in the amount of vocabulary required in order to learn grammar. There is no a
priori reason why this had to be the case. Por example, many adults who try to acquire
a second language in the classroom find themselves in a situation in which their stock
of grammatical rules outstrips their limited vocabulary. The dependence of early
grammar on vocabulary size is so strong and the nonlinear shape of this function is
so regular that it approaches the status of a psychological law. akin to the reliable psy-
chophysical functions that have been observed in perception (e.g.. Weber's Law,
Fechner's Law). But explanation by legislatura is not very satisfactory, and it is parti-
cularly unsatisfactory if better explanations are available. We can offer at least five
reasons why grammar and vocabulary track each other so closely in this stage of lan-
guage development. None of them are mutually exclusive.
1 Perceptual bootstrapping. Nusbaum and Henly (1992) have proposed that
efficient word perception requires a certain amount of top-down processing, per-
mitting the listener to weed out inappropriate candidates from a large pool of
tems that overlap (at least partially) with the blurred word tokens that so often
occur in fluent speech. To the extent that this is true. it is probably even more
true for the perception of grammatical function words and bound inflections.
For a variety of reasons. these units are particularly hard to perceive (Herrn &
Bates. 1997; Hurlburt&Goodman. 1992:Leonard. 1998).Theytendtobeshort
and low in stress even in speech that is produced slowly and deliberately. In infor-
mal and rapid speech, speakers have a tendency to exploit the frequency and pre-
dictability of function words and bound morphemes by giving them short shrift.
deforming their phonetic structure and blurring the boundaries between these
morphemes and the words that surround them. In fact, when grammatical func-
tion words are clipped out of connected speech and presented in isolation. adult
native speakers can recogni/e them no more than 40-50% of the time (Herrn
& Bates. 1997). This is true of speech directed to children as well as speech
directed to adults (Goodman & Nusbaum. 1994). Under these circumstances. we
should not be surprised that young children are unable to acquire grammatical
On the Inseparability of Grammar and trie Lexicn 157
forms until they have a critical mass of conten words. providing enough top-
down structure to permit perception and learning of those "littlc sounds" t hat
occur to the right or left of "real words."
2 Logical bootstrapping. Studies in several different languages have shown that
verbs and adjectives are acquired later than nouns (see Caselli el al., this volume).
Except for a few terms like "up" and "no" that can stand alone, function words
tend to appear later still, well after the first verbs and adjectives appear. Fur-
thermore, many relatively early prepositions (e.g., "up") may not be used in the
same way by children as by adults. Adults use them to specify a relation between
objects or a location. Children on the other hand use them to refer to events
(Tomasello & Merriman, 1995) instead of using them as "grammatical glue." It
has been suggested that this progression from ames to predication to grammar
is logically necessary, based on a simple assumption: Children cannot under-
stand relational terms until they understand the things that these words relate.
One can arge about the extent to which this assumption holds for individual
structures, but it may provide a partial expianation for the dependence of
grammar on lexical growth.
3 Syntactic bootstrapping. The perceptual and logical bootstrapping accounts
both presuppose that the causal link runs from lexical growth to grammar.
However, studies from several different laboratories have shown that children
between 1 and 3 years of age are able to exploit sentential information to learn
about the meaning of a novel word (Goodman et al., 1998; Naigles et al.. 1993;
Tomasello, 1992). Naigles et al. (1993) refer to this process as "syntactic boot-
strapping," although t has been shown that children can use many different
aspects of a sentence frame for this purpose, including sentence-level semantics.
morphological cues, word order, and prosody. It is therefore possible that the
accelerating function in Figures 10.2-10.10 is due in part to the effect of the
child's emerging grammar on lexical growth.
4 Nonlinear dynamics of learning in a neural network. The above three
accounts all support a link between lexical and grammatical development, but
it is not obvious from these accounts why the function ought to take the non-
linear form that appears so reliably across populations and age levis. We noted
earlier that the nonlinear functions governing the relation between verb vocabu-
lary and the emergence of regular and irregular past-tense marking appear in
a similar form in English-speaking children and in neural network simulations
of past-tense learning (Elman, this volume; Marchman & Bates 1994; Plunkett
& Marchman. 1993). This is only one example of a more general point: Multi-
layered neural networks produce an array of nonlinear growth functions,
reflecting the nonlinear dynamics of learning and change in these systems. The
kinds of critical-mass effects that we have proposed to underlie the relation
between lexical and grammatical growth may be a special case of this more
general approach lo the nonlinear dynamics of learning (Thelen & Smith.
1994).
5 Lexically based grammar. Finally. as we noted at the outset of this paper. the
historical trend in modern linguistics has been to place in Ihe lexicn more and
15& Introduction to Word learning
more of the work that was previously carried out in a seprate grammatical com-
ponent. The powerful relation between grammatical and lexical development
that we have observed here is precisely what wc would expect if grammar is an
inherent part of the lexicn.
Points 1-4 all pertain to learning. Point 5 is a stronger claim, extending to the
relationship between grammar and the lexicn in the adult steady statc. The data
that we have reviewed so far may be relevan! only to the early stages of language
development, the period in which the fundamental properties of language-specific
morphosyntax are laid down. It is entirely possible that a modular distinction between
grammar and the lexicn may emerge at a latter point in development. in accordance
with the processes of "modularization" described by Karmiloff-Smith (1992): see also
Bates et al., 1988). This question is best addressed by looking at the literature on
language disorders in older children and adults. where strong claims about the
modularity of grammar and the lexicn have been made. Our review of this literature
suggests that the lexicalist approach stands up to the evidence for older children
and adults as well. For every clinical group for whom grammatical dficits have
been reported. lexical dficits have also been demonstrated. In fact, a dficit in word
finding (called "anomia") is the one symptom that is present in every form of adult
aphasia (Goodglass, 1993). Conversely. in every clinical group for whom lexical
dficits are reported, some kind of grammatical problem is observed as well. A par-
ticularly interesting observation about these links is the fact that grammar and the
lexicn tend to break down in the same way within individual patients. Non-fluent
Broca's aphasics tend to err by omission; they leave out grammatical inflections
and function words. but they also tend to leave out conten words (especially verbs).
This omission profile is also seen (usually in a milder form) in children with Down
Syndrome and children with Specific Language Impairment. Fluent Wernicke's
aphasics tend to err by substitution, putting in the wrong conten word (or a blend
of words). In richly inflected languages, the same tendency (called paragrammatism)
is observed for inflections and function words. This "substitution profile" is also
observed in children with Williams Syndrome, if they are acquiring a language
with enough morphology for such substitutions to surface (Volterra et al., 1996).
Finally. patients with Alzheimer's disease and patients with milder forms of aphasia
rarely make frank grammatical errors of any kind (omission or substitution).
However, they tend to avoid production of complex syntactic structures (e.g.. the
passive. Bates et al., 1995b), a grammatical symptom that mirrors their problems
in lexical production (i.e., an overreliance on pronouns and other "light forms"). A
mild versin of this "avoidance profile" is also seen in normal aging. In short, grammar
and the lexicn continu to travel together in adulthood. and they break down in
similar ways.
Grammar and the lexicn develop together in infancy, and they break down together
in brain-injured adults. In our view, the most parsimonious explanation for these facts
would be a mental/neural architecture in which grammar and the lexicn are repre-
sented together, and handled by the same mechanisms for learning and processing - in
short, a lexicalist view of the sort that has gained considerable acceptance in modern
linguistics.
On the InseparaWity of Grammar and the Lexicn
Notes
159
1 "Observation of early stages of language acquisilion may be quite misieading in this regard.
It is possible that at an early stage mere is use of languagelike expressions. but outside the
framework imposed. at a later stage of intellectual maturation, by the faculty of language -
much as a dog can be trained to respond to certain commands, though we would not
conclude. from this. that it is using language." (Noam Chomsky, Reflections on language
(p. 53). New York, Pantheon Books, 1975).
2 We also looked at many other metrics of grammatical development, including propositional
complexity and morphological productivity. After all that work we were surprised to find that.
at least in this period of development, MLU is so highly correlated with other, more
sophisticated measures, that there was no point in using any other estmate of grammar in
correlational analyses with other variables; for a discussion of this point. see Bates et al..
1988.
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