van der Lely H K
Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK.
Cognition. 1994 Jan;51(1):29-72. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(94)90008-6.
Canonical linking rules for mapping thematic roles with syntactic functions were studied. Three experiments were undertaken to investigate the nature of productive forward linking (from semantics to syntax) and productive reverse linking (from syntax to semantics). I proposed that reverse linking, in contrast to forward linking, requires more detailed specification of the syntactic structure; that is, a syntactic representation which specifies each particular syntactic frame and all the argument positions within that frame. Six specifically language-impaired children (aged 6;1 to 9;6) were matched on language abilities to 17 younger, normally developing children (language age 3;1 to 6;6). In Experiment 1--forward linking--the children were shown the meaning of a novel verb and had to describe the event using the novel verb. Experiment 2--a comprehension task--required acting out sentences containing the newly learned verbs. In Experiment 3--reverse linking--the children were told a sentence with a novel verb and had to act out its meaning, assigning thematic roles on the basis of the syntactic frame. Group and individual analysis generally revealed no significant differences between the specifically language-impaired children and the language age control children in Experiments 1 and 2, but a significant difference was found for Experiment 3. The normally developing children showed a good use of productive forward and reverse linking. The specifically language-impaired children demonstrated good productive forward linking but were significantly worse at reverse linking. An interpretation of the data, showing differences in the syntactic representation required for forward versus reverse linking, can account for the findings. I propose that a deficit in the area of "government" or "locality" which underlies c-selection and specifies the syntactic relationship between constituents can account for the data from this study and the data from previous investigations of specifically language-impaired children.
研究了将题元角色与句法功能进行映射的规范链接规则。进行了三项实验，以探究生成性正向链接（从语义到句法）和生成性反向链接（从句法到语义）的本质。我提出，与正向链接相比，反向链接需要对句法结构进行更详细的说明；也就是说，一种句法表征要明确每个特定的句法框架以及该框架内所有的论元位置。六名特定语言障碍儿童（年龄在6岁1个月至9岁6个月之间）在语言能力上与17名年龄较小、发育正常的儿童（语言年龄在3岁1个月至6岁6个月之间）进行了匹配。在实验1（正向链接）中，向儿童展示一个新动词的含义，他们必须用这个新动词描述事件。实验2（一项理解任务）要求儿童表演包含新学动词的句子。在实验3（反向链接）中，告诉儿童一个带有新动词的句子，他们必须表演出句子的意思，并根据句法框架分配题元角色。组间和个体分析总体上显示，在实验1和实验2中，特定语言障碍儿童和语言年龄对照组儿童之间没有显著差异，但在实验3中发现了显著差异。发育正常的儿童能够很好地运用生成性正向和反向链接。特定语言障碍儿童表现出良好的生成性正向链接，但在反向链接方面明显较差。对数据的一种解释表明，正向链接和反向链接所需的句法表征存在差异，这可以解释这些研究结果。我提出，“支配”或“局部性”领域的缺陷是c选择的基础，并确定了成分之间的句法关系，这可以解释本研究的数据以及先前对特定语言障碍儿童的调查数据。
