The acquisition of verbal passives by Portuguese-speaking children
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Celina Agostinho
Abstract
Previous cross-linguistic research showed that verbal passives are delayed in child grammar. Moreover, Maratsos et al. (1985) found that actional passives elicit more adult-like results than non-actional passives in child English. Hirsch & Wexler (2006) proposed that the adult-like results children achieved with actional passives are due to a resultative adjectival passive analysis, unavailable for non-actional verbs. Alternatively, Snyder & Hyams (2015) proposed that this delay is due to the need of semantic coercion to passivize non-actional verbs. Here we present an experiment testing children’s comprehension of short and long passives of actional and perception verbs in European Portuguese, a language with different auxiliaries for adjectival and verbal passives. The results replicate previous findings for English, despite the difference in auxiliary.
Abstract
Previous cross-linguistic research showed that verbal passives are delayed in child grammar. Moreover, Maratsos et al. (1985) found that actional passives elicit more adult-like results than non-actional passives in child English. Hirsch & Wexler (2006) proposed that the adult-like results children achieved with actional passives are due to a resultative adjectival passive analysis, unavailable for non-actional verbs. Alternatively, Snyder & Hyams (2015) proposed that this delay is due to the need of semantic coercion to passivize non-actional verbs. Here we present an experiment testing children’s comprehension of short and long passives of actional and perception verbs in European Portuguese, a language with different auxiliaries for adjectival and verbal passives. The results replicate previous findings for English, despite the difference in auxiliary.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The acquisition of verbal passives by Portuguese-speaking children 9
- Plus in the French negative system 29
- An experimental approach to parallelism in ellipsis 49
- On focal and wh -projections, indirect wh -questions, and quantificational chains 73
- Is there a dative alternation in Romanian? 91
- The interpretation of null subjects in Romanian 111
- Verum focus and Romanian polar questions 135
- The downward grammaticalisation of irrealis subordinators in Romanian, Salentino and southern Calabrese 157
- Differential object marking 171
- The effects of language ecology on syntactic structure 193
- The syntactic distribution of raddoppiamento fonosinttatico in Cosentino 205
- The causative-inchoative alternation (as we know it) might fall short 239
- On wh -extraction in de + que constructions in Spanish 263
- On another apparent violation of the subject-island constraint in French 277
- Moving towards an event 297
- Cyclicity without containment in Romanian perfects 311
- Dative clitics in Romanian ditransitives 335
- Syntactic vs pragmatic passive 357
- Index 373
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The acquisition of verbal passives by Portuguese-speaking children 9
- Plus in the French negative system 29
- An experimental approach to parallelism in ellipsis 49
- On focal and wh -projections, indirect wh -questions, and quantificational chains 73
- Is there a dative alternation in Romanian? 91
- The interpretation of null subjects in Romanian 111
- Verum focus and Romanian polar questions 135
- The downward grammaticalisation of irrealis subordinators in Romanian, Salentino and southern Calabrese 157
- Differential object marking 171
- The effects of language ecology on syntactic structure 193
- The syntactic distribution of raddoppiamento fonosinttatico in Cosentino 205
- The causative-inchoative alternation (as we know it) might fall short 239
- On wh -extraction in de + que constructions in Spanish 263
- On another apparent violation of the subject-island constraint in French 277
- Moving towards an event 297
- Cyclicity without containment in Romanian perfects 311
- Dative clitics in Romanian ditransitives 335
- Syntactic vs pragmatic passive 357
- Index 373
