Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar

Name: Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar
Brand: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Price: 161.99 EUR
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Teun Hoekstra Bonnie D. Schwartz(Editor)

John Benjamins Publishing Company

1st Edition

Published on 1. January 1994

XII, 401 pages

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This is a collection of essays on the native and non-native acquisition of syntax within the Principles and Parameters framework. In line with current methodology in the study of adult grammars, language acquisition is studied here from a comparative perspective. The unifying theme is the issue of the 'initial state' of grammatical knowledge: For native language, the important controversy is that between the Continuity approach, which holds that Universal Grammar is essentially constant throughout development, and the Maturation approach, which maintains that portions of UG are subject to maturation. For non-native language, the theme of initial states concerns the extent of native-grammar influence.
Different views regarding the continuity question are defended in the papers on first language acquisition. Evidence from the acquisition of, inter alia, Bernese, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian and Japanese, is brought to bear on issues pertaining to clause structure, null subjects, verb position, negation, Case marking, modality, non-finite sentences, root questions, long-distance questions and scrambling.
The views defended on the initial state of (adult) second language acquisition also differ: from complete L1 influence to different versions of partial L1 influence. While the target language is German in these studies, the native language varies: Korean, Spanish and Turkish. Analyses invoke UG principles to account for verb placement, null subjects, verbal morphology and Case marking.
Though many issues remain, the volume highlights the growing ties between formal linguistics and language acquisition research. Such an approach provides the foundation for asking the right questions and putting them to empirical test.

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LANGUAGE ACQUISITION STUDIES IN GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
Editorial page
Title page
Copyright page
Table of contents
Tables and Figures
Abbreviations
Contributors
Introduction On the Initial States of Language Acquisition
1. Introductory Remarks
2. Overview of Papers
3. Concluding Remarks
References
V2, Null Arguments and COMP Projections
1. Introduction
2. Verb Second
3. Null Arguments
4. A Learnability Argument for COMP
4.1 V-to-C in Icelandic Child Language
5. Concluding Remarks
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Crosslinguistic Evidence for Functional Projections in Early Child Grammar
1. Background
2. The Comparative Acquisition Data
2.1. Negation in English and French Acquisition
2.2. Subjects in English and French Acquisition
2.3. Comparative German Acquisition
3. Verb Movement to COMP
3.1. Evidence from Swedish
3.2. Evidence from French
3.3. Evidence from English
3.4. U-shaped Development
4. The Optionality of V-to-C
4.1. An Economy Account
4.2. Empty Auxiliaries
4.3. Distinctions in Parameter Setting
5. Summary
Notes
References
The Seeds of Structure A Syntactic Analysis of the Acquisition of Case Marking
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Considerations
2.1. Theories of Phrase Structure Development
2.2. Assumptions on Phrase Structure Positions
2.3. Assumptions on the Developmental Relation between Case Marking and Phrase Structure
3. Case Marking and Phrase Structure in Adult German
3.1. Case Morphology
3.2. Phrase Structure
4. Results on German Child Language
4.1. Hypotheses
4.2. Data
4.3. Overview
4.4. The Acquisition of the Prenominal Genitive
4.5. The Prenominal Genitive and the Structure of Noun Phrases
4.6. The Acquisition of Accusative and Dative
4.7. Preliminary Summary
5. Case Marking and Phrase Structure in Adult Finnish
6. Results on Finnish Child Language
6.1. Hypotheses
6.2. Results
7. Summary and Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
From Adjunct to Head
1. Introduction
1.1. Three Types of Categories
1.2. Functional Categories: The acquisitional debate
2. Negation and Modality
2.1. Some Properties of Dutch Syntax
2.2. Negative Modals in Early Dutch
2.2.1. Two Negatives and Their Distrib ution
2.2.2. Finite and Nonfinite Clauses
2.2.3. Modals
2.4. The Syntactic Representation of Negative Modals
2.5. The Triggering of Reanalysis
3. Scrambling and Subscrambling
3.1. Scrambling in the Adult System
3.2. The Development of Scrambling
3.3. The Phenomenon of Subscrambling
4. Two Speculative Other Examples
4.1. Degree Extractions
4.2. Embedded Clauses
5. Concluding Remarks
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Early Null Subjects and Root Null Subjects
1. Introduction
2. Some Structural Properties of Early Null Subjects
3. Subject Drop in Diaries
4. Topic Drop
5. Null Constants
6. Discourse Identified Null Elements Revisited
7. Cross-linguistic Variation and Developmental Sequence
8. Speculations on Developmental Correlations
9. Root Expletive Subjects
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Asking Questions without CPs? On the Acquisition of Root wh-Questions in Bernese Swiss German and Standard German
1. Preliminaries
2. The Data: Early Root Constituent Questions in German and Bernese
3. The Analysis
3.1. Preliminaries
3.2. The 'Inverted' Structures
3.3. The V-end Structures
3.4. On Dummy Copula Constructions
4. Relating the Analysis to the Proposed Solutions
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Successful Cyclic Movement
1. Introduction
1.1. Evidence in Favor of Successive Cyclic Movement
1.2. Evidence against Successive Cyclic Movement
1.2.1. The No Movement Stage
1.2.2. The Local Movement Stage
2. The Experiments: Testing Between the Comp eting Accounts
2.1. Experiment 1: Elicitation of Adjunct Extraction Qu estions
2.1.1. Method
2.1.1.1. Subjects
2.1.1.2. Materials
2.1.1.3. Procedures
2.1.2. Results
2.2. Experiment 2. Comparison of Comprehension and Production Data
2.2.1. Method
22.1.1. Subjects
2.2.1.2. Materials
2.2.1.3. Procedures
2.2.2. Results
2.3. Experiment 3. Interpretation of Long-Distance Questions
2.3.1. Method
2.3.1.1. Subjects
2.3.1.2. Materials
2.3.2. Results
2.4. Experiment 4. An Experiment in the Manipulation of Pragmatics
2 4.1. Method
2.4.1.1. Subjects
2.4.1.2. Materials
2.4.1.3. Procedures
2.4.2. Results
3. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Early Acquisition of Scrambling in Japanese
1. Introduction
2. Production Data
3. Experiment
3.1. Linguistic Background
3.2. Method
3.3. Results
3.4. Discussion
4. Young Children's Case Marking
5. Conclusion
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Direct Access to X'-Theory Evidence from Korean and Turkish Adults Learning German
1. Introduction
1.1. L2 Acquisition Compared to L1 Acquisition
1.1.1. Adult Access to UG
1.1.2. The Weak Continuity Approach
1.2. Syntactic Background
1.2.1. Word Order in the VP
1.2.2. Word Order in the IP
1.2.3. Empty Subjects
1.2.4. Subject-Verb Agreement
2. Methods and Materials
2.1. Data Collection
2.2. Preliminary Analysis of the Data
3. Crosslinguistic Data as Developmental Data
3.1. The Implicational Table
3.2. The Implicational Scale and the Developmental Stages
4. Stages of Development
4.1. The First Stage: The VP Stage
4.2. The Third Stage: The AGRP Stage
4.3. The Second Stage: The FP Stage
4.3.1. Verb Raising and Agreement
4.3.2. Empty Subjects
5. Discussion
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Word Order and Nominative Case in Non-Native Language Acquisition A Longitudinal Study of (L1 Turkish) German Interlanguage
1. Introduction
2. Clause Structure in Turkish and German
3. Mechanisms for Nominative Case Checking
4. The L2 Data
4.1. The Subject
4.2. The Corpus
4.3. The Interlanguage Developmental Path
4.3.1. Stage 1 (22 October 1982 to 10 February 1983)
4.3.2. Stage 2 (9 June 1983 through 16 May 1984)
4.3.3. Stage 3 (5 August 1984)
4.3.4. Summary of the Stages
5. The Analysis
5.1. Stage 1
5.2. Stage 2
5.3. Stage 3
6. Speculations on Etiology and Learnability in Adult L2A
6.1. The Etiology of Stage 1
6.2. The Etiology of Stage 2
6.3. The Etiology of Stage 3
7. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Optionality and the Initial State in L2 Development
1. Introduction
2. "If the Verb Can Move, It Must Move
3. Features and Values
4. 'Optional Inversion' in L2
5. Strong agreement and the optional inversion period?
6. The acquisition of tense
7. Agreement
8. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
References
Index of Languages
Index of Names
Index of Subjects

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