Mismatches between phonology and syntax in French DP acquisition
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Maren Pannemann
Abstract
Children are known to produce non-adult-like structures, leaving out functional elements as determiners for instance. A number of previous studies account for determiner omission by assuming that the D-layer is not available at the onset of acquisition. However, these models are forced to postulate structures that conflict with the referential properties of bare nouns in child language. The goal of this paper is to account for the non-adult-like omissions in children’s speech while at the same time adhering continuity between child and adult grammar. We argue that the D-layer is available in very early stages. However, the correspondence between phonological items and their syntactic representations is not yet target-like. These mismatches explain the observed differences between child and adult speech. It follows from our approach that DP-structure is acquired item-by-item rather than rule-based. This view is supported by the results of a case study in French L1-acquisition.
Abstract
Children are known to produce non-adult-like structures, leaving out functional elements as determiners for instance. A number of previous studies account for determiner omission by assuming that the D-layer is not available at the onset of acquisition. However, these models are forced to postulate structures that conflict with the referential properties of bare nouns in child language. The goal of this paper is to account for the non-adult-like omissions in children’s speech while at the same time adhering continuity between child and adult grammar. We argue that the D-layer is available in very early stages. However, the correspondence between phonological items and their syntactic representations is not yet target-like. These mismatches explain the observed differences between child and adult speech. It follows from our approach that DP-structure is acquired item-by-item rather than rule-based. This view is supported by the results of a case study in French L1-acquisition.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Foreword v
- Table of contents vii
- The quirky case of participial clauses 1
- Answering strategies: A view from acquisition 19
- Transfer in periphrastic causatives in L2 English and L2 Spanish 39
- Clitic omission, null objects or both in the acquisition of European Portuguese? 59
- Metrical structure, tonal association and focus in French 73
- On affixal scope and affix-root ordering in Italian 99
- Scope economy in positive polarity: Extreme degree quantification 115
- The acquisition of aspect in L2 Portuguese and Spanish. Exploring native / non-native performance differences 131
- Mechanisms of scope resolution in child Italian 149
- When scope meets modality: The scope of indefinites in subjunctive environments 165
- Listen to the sound of salience: Multichannel syntax of Q particles 185
- Instability and age effects at the lexicon-syntax interface 201
- On the ambiguity of N-words in French 213
- Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children: The case of dislocation 229
- Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan 259
- Mismatches between phonology and syntax in French DP acquisition 281
- Pragmatic solutions for syntactic problems: Understanding some L2 syntactic errors in terms of discourse-pragmatic deficits 299
- A poverty-of-the-stimulus argument for the innateness of the identification conditions on VP ellipsis 321
- Index 335
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Foreword v
- Table of contents vii
- The quirky case of participial clauses 1
- Answering strategies: A view from acquisition 19
- Transfer in periphrastic causatives in L2 English and L2 Spanish 39
- Clitic omission, null objects or both in the acquisition of European Portuguese? 59
- Metrical structure, tonal association and focus in French 73
- On affixal scope and affix-root ordering in Italian 99
- Scope economy in positive polarity: Extreme degree quantification 115
- The acquisition of aspect in L2 Portuguese and Spanish. Exploring native / non-native performance differences 131
- Mechanisms of scope resolution in child Italian 149
- When scope meets modality: The scope of indefinites in subjunctive environments 165
- Listen to the sound of salience: Multichannel syntax of Q particles 185
- Instability and age effects at the lexicon-syntax interface 201
- On the ambiguity of N-words in French 213
- Cross-linguistic influence in bilingual children: The case of dislocation 229
- Cartography of postverbal subjects in Spanish and Catalan 259
- Mismatches between phonology and syntax in French DP acquisition 281
- Pragmatic solutions for syntactic problems: Understanding some L2 syntactic errors in terms of discourse-pragmatic deficits 299
- A poverty-of-the-stimulus argument for the innateness of the identification conditions on VP ellipsis 321
- Index 335
