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A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut
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Shanley E.M Allen
Published/Copyright:
February 20, 2008
Abstract
This paper assesses discourse pragmatics as a potential explanation for the production and omission of arguments in early child language. It employs a set of features that characterize typical situations of informativeness (Greenfield and Smith 1976; Clancy 1993, 1997) to examine argument status in data from four children aged 2;0 through 3;6 learning Inuktitut as a first language. Results based on logistic regression analyses suggest that a discourse-pragmatics account of argument representation has good explanatory adequacy, and that several of the features characterizing informativeness are good indicators of those arguments that tend to be overtly produced rather than omitted in early child language.
Received: 1999-07-12
Revised: 2000-01-03
Published Online: 2008-02-20
Published in Print: 2000-08-30
© Walter de Gruyter
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- Where's ellipsis? Whether and why there are missing arguments in Hebrew child language
- A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut
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Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction: a functional approach to ellipsis
- Where's ellipsis? Whether and why there are missing arguments in Hebrew child language
- A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut
- On the acquisition of verb argument structure
- Learning word-order constraints under conditions of object ellipsis
- Ellipsis in Warlpiri children's narratives: an analysis of frog stories
- Increasing cohesion in narratives: a developmental study of maintaining and reintroducing subjects in French
- Notices
