Bloom, Merkin and Wootten (1982)

Bloom et al. showed that there were three linguistic factors that co-varied with the sequence of acquisition and determined the cognitive requirements for learning wh-words. These factors were: a) the syntactic function of the wh-words, b) the

complexity of verbs in the questions, and c) the use of wh-questions in different discourse environments.

In this study, seven children were observed longitudinally from 22 months to 36 months. Each of them was the firstborn child from college-educated parents living in university communities in New York City. During the observation sessions, the data were all audio-recorded, and transcriptions included the speech of the children and others; besides, the transcriptions also provided a non-linguistic context (e.g.,.

children’s and others’ actions while speaking). There were 7,877 wh-questions produced in total.

The question acquired earlier in the sequence differed syntactically from those acquired late. The wh-words which first emerged with verbs were where, what, and who. These wh-words asked for the major sentence constituents that they replaced, and were described as wh-pronominals. On the contrary, those late acquired wh-words such as how, why, and when were sentence adjuncts rather than verb arguments of verbs. These later acquired questions were described as wh-sententials, which have a semantic scope that extends over the whole proposition expressed in the sentence.

In terms of verb complexity, the wh-pronominal questions first emerged with the copula. At this time, the children asked for the identities of objects, persons or places with copula in such questions as ‘What’s this?’ and ‘Where’s the girl?’. Regarding to the verb use with non-identifying wh-question, all-purpose pro-verbs (do, go, happen) were mostly used. Do refers to activities in general, go refers to locative actions, and happen refers to completed actions and events. On the other hand, the wh-sentential questions were most likely to occur with another group of verbs, called descriptive verbs, which were semantically more complex such as sing, break, and fix. The results showed that what, where, and who predominately occurred with pro-verbs and the copula, while why and how occurred most with descriptive verbs.

The last analysis was on the discourse. There were three kinds of discourse adjustments that differentiated among the wh-questions with development: verb deletion, linguistic contingency and verb cohesion. First, the verb deletion was of two types, a) obligatory verb deletion (i.e., in complete questions in which a verb is obligatory in adult’s language but deleted in children’s), and b) nonobligatory (i.e., a verb is not expected such in the example as ‘why?’ or ‘What book’ responding to

‘Give me the book.’) The results showed that what, where, and who presented an increase in the pattern of verb ellipsis with non-obligatory verbs. In contrast, how and why presented a pattern of increasing expansion of utterance length with verbs that were optional in the discourse. Second, why questions showed the highest proportion of linguistic contingency and how questions showed the lowest. Third, in terms of verb cohesion, verb cohesion was the greatest with why questions, indicating that even though they mostly occurred with descriptive verbs, why and how functioned differently in discourse. Why questions were responsive to topics initiated by someone else, and how questions introduced new topics.

Bloom et al. provide another analysis for discussing the sequence of wh-words acquisition. Nevertheless, the methodology may pose a question on the sequence of acquiring wh-words. By drawing the conclusion only from the production data, the exact order of acquiring wh-words is not clear. There may be a chance that children have already acquired certain wh-questions but they do not produce them. Therefore, some data from a comprehension task is necessary.

2.3.3 Clancy (1989)

Clancy analyzed the order in which wh-questions were comprehended and produced in Korea, focusing on the meanings of wh-questions and their functions. In this study, two girls, W aged 1;8 and H aged 1;10, were longitudinally observed and

were audio-recorded for one hour in spontaneous interaction with their caregivers every two weeks for a year. The sessions included a wide range of daily activities, such as playing with toys, reading book stories, eating snacks, etc. Throughout the whole observation sessions, W, whose MLU ranged from 1.5 to 3.9, produced 418 questions, and her mother asked a total of 963 wh-questions. H, whose MLU ranged from 1.3 to 3.4, produced 367 wh-questions, and her mother produced a total of 407 wh-questions.

The comprehension and production order of wh-questions for both children were overall similar to previous findings. However, it was obvious that the children had a grasp of some certain wh-questions which occurred only a few months later.

Therefore, the grasp of a particular notion was not a sufficient condition for productive use. Besides, the appearance of wh-forms conformed Bloom et al. (1982) in that certain wh-forms occurred with certain verbs, followed by a gradual expansion to a larger range of linguistic context. Later emergence of how, why, and when was interpreted as a reflection of relative difficulty, abstractness, and heterogeneity of the notions manner/means, causality and temporality.

In addition to the cognition account, input frequency was adopted to account for emergence of the wh-questions of W and H. A Spearsman rank-order correlation was computed for the data. The correlation between frequency and order of production was significant for W and her mother, and was strong although non-significant for H and her mother. Take the acquisition of why for example, which was most frequently used to manipulate or react to the children’s behavior. Why can be either questioning the cause or serving as a rhetorical question and both can be used elliptically or sententially. In the case of H, her mother used a much higher percentage of elliptical why functioning as a rhetorical question, which made it difficult for H to grasp the meaning of causal why. Therefore, H acquired elliptical rhetorical why before using

causal why productive in sentences. On the other hand, W acquired both usages at the same time, which was consistent with the frequency of causal why in her input.

Therefore, the functional potential of particular wh-questions in interaction influenced input frequency, which in turn influenced the order in which wh-questions were acquired.

The other input factor that influenced the sequence of wh-question acquisition was the timing of introduction. In the speech of H’s mother, elliptical why started being used one month after H began responding appropriately. Similarly, W’s mother introduced why in a sentence two weeks after W reached the criterion for productive use for why. Therefore, the two mothers delayed their introduction of causal wh-questions until there was clear evidence from their children’s production or comprehension that they were able to grasp the notion of causality. These results showed that input itself did not constitute an independent determinant on the acquisition, but it itself was constrained by the children’s conceptual limitations. In other words, the children’s conceptual levels affected both the order in which wh-forms can be understood and the timing care-givers introduced them.

The frequency of input and the development of cognition did not guarantee the active use of certain forms. It was found that the function of the form selected must fit the children’s current interests, activities, and purpose in asking questions. The functional account could probably explain the lack of temporal when in the mothers’

speech since the children of two years rarely have the temporal information that their mothers lacked. Consequently, the children did not receive sufficient input of when to permit acquisition.

To sum up, according to Clancy (1989), function influenced the children’s selectivity in production and the frequency of wh-questions input, and this in turn influenced the emergence of the children’s wh-questions. Besides, the conceptual

limitations on the children’s development influenced the wh-questions acquisition by forcing the care-givers to adjust their timing in introducing wh-questions and their frequency in the input. Thus, the functions presented in the input and selected by the children would interact with cognitive development in creating the order in which wh-questions were acquired across languages.

Clancy’s study offers an interesting discussion on the acquisition sequence of wh-questions. Nevertheless, there is no strong evidence for her to argue for the influence of the input frequency. Indeed, the strong correlation between the input frequency and the emergence of wh-forms is statistically significant in W’s production, but not in H production.