This book offers a new contribution to the debate concerning the acquisition of the syntax-discourse interface. It provides evidence that children acquiring European Portuguese have a very early ability to spontaneously produce VP ellipsis as answers to yes-no questions. It is also argued that the distribution of VP ellipsis in European Portuguese (including its co-existence with Null Complement Anaphora) supports the hypothesis that the identification condition on ellipsis is derivable from some innate knowledge of the syntax-discourse interface. Answers to yes-no questions also provide evidence concerning children’s interpretation of questions containing a cleft or the operator só ‘only’. The analysis of spontaneous production is complemented by a comprehension experiment, showing that children have two problems in the interpretation of these questions: (i) they do not understand that the cleft and só introduce a presupposition and (ii) they start with a default focus assignment strategy and may not access other focus interpretations.
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1. List of tables; 2. List of figures; 3. Preface; 4. Abbreviations used in glosses; 5. Chapter 1. Introduction; 6. Chapter 2. VPE and the structural and anaphoric properties of minimal answers in EP adult grammar; 7. Chapter 3. Learnability issues in VPE and focus; 8. Chapter 4. How early can VPE be found?; 9. Chapter 5. Answers as a window into the interpretation of questions; 10. Chapter 6. Conclusions; 11. References; 12. Subject index
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This book overall is an impressive and major contribution to the field of language acquisition. It is a model dissertation for students of language acquisition, and sets the stage for further exploration of the syntax/discourse interface in young children’s grammars.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9789027253095
Publisert
2009-03-11
Utgiver
Vendor
John Benjamins Publishing Co
Vekt
705 gr
Høyde
245 mm
Bredde
164 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet

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