The knowledge of binding principles in early child grammar: Experimental evidence from 30-month-old toddlers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We investigated toddlers’ understanding of the hierarchical syntactic configurations that constrain the referential meanings of reflexives and pronouns. In particular, reflexives must co-refer with the c-commanding antecedent within the local domain (Principle A) (e.g., Hei washes himselfi. Johni knows that Billj likes himselfj.), and pronoun reference must be disjoint from its local c-commanding antecedent (Principle B) (e.g., Hei washes himj. Johni knows that Billj likes himi.). French-learning 30-month-olds participated in an eye-tracker task. In Experiment 1 each trial presented a simple sentence containing a reflexive or a pronoun and a target verb (e.g., Ili sei/lej lave. “hei washes himselfi/himj”), while displaying side-by-side pictures depicting self- directed versus other-directed actions of the target verb. Experiment 2 tested the locality conditions of the principles using complex sentences, with the target verb and the reflexive/pronoun appearing in the embedded clause (e.g., Le bébéi voit que le papaj sej/lei lave. “The babyi sees that the dadj washes himselfj/himi”); the pictures were those of Experiment 1, with the patient of the verb being the local antecedent in the embedded clause versus the non-local antecedent in the matrix-clause. Experiment 3 tested the c-commanding requirements of the principles with sentences containing a complex subject, a reflexive/pronoun and a target verb (e.g., Le bébéi du papaj sei/lej lave. “The babyi of the dadj washes himselfi/himj”). In the pictures the patient was the linearly farther versus closer antecedent. Eye-gazes to action images showed adult-like interpretations across sentential structures, demonstrating that binding principles are in child grammar during age two.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".