scholarly journals Prescriptive infinitives in the modern North Germanic languages: An ancient phenomenon in child-directed speech

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-276
Author(s):  
Janne Bondi Johannessen
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Child Language ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Very Old ◽  
The North ◽  
Very Young Children ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Germanic Languages

The prescriptive infinitive can be found in the North Germanic languages, is very old, and yet is largely unnoticed and undescribed. It is used in a very limited pragmatic context of a pleasant atmosphere by adults towards very young children, or towards pets or (more rarely) adults. It has a set of syntactic properties that distinguishes it from the imperative: Negation is pre-verbal, subjects are pre-verbal, subjects are third person and are only expressed by lexical DPs, not personal pronouns. It can be found in modern child language corpora, but probably originated beforead500. The paper is largely descriptive, but some theoretical solutions to the puzzles of this construction are proposed.

scholarly journals A native origin for Present-Day English they, their, them

Diachronica ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelle Cole
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
The North ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Pronominal System ◽  
Germanic Languages

Abstract It is commonly held that Present-Day English they, their, them are not descended from Old English but derive from the Old Norse third-person plural pronouns þeir, þeira, þeim. This paper argues that the early northern English orthographic and distributional textual evidence agrees with an internal trajectory for the ‘þ-’ type personal pronouns in the North and indicates an origin in the Old English demonstratives þā, þāra, þām. The Northern Middle English third-person plural pronominal system was the result of the reanalysis from demonstrative to personal pronoun that is common cross-linguistically in Germanic and non-Germanic languages alike.

Parameterization in labeling: Evidence from child language

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-172
Author(s):  
Keiko Murasugi
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Child Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Early Child ◽  
Very Young Children ◽  
Case Markers

AbstractThis paper examines very early child grammars from the minimalist perspective. It discusses the well-known erroneous strings very young children produce such as Root Infinitives in English and their Japanese counterparts, preverbal object sentences in English, and sentences without Case markers in Japanese. The main question to be addressed is whether those sentences children produce are labeled, and if so, how the labeling takes place. Assuming that ϕ-feature agreement and suffixal Case markers play crucial roles for labeling in English and Japanese respectively (Chomsky 2013; Saito 2016), I consider two possibilities. One is that children are equipped with those almost from the outset although they are not phonetically realized. This means that even the erroneous strings children produced are properly labeled. The other is that those strings are not labeled in the adult way and that children at the relevant stage are still in the process of figuring out how the {XP, YP} structure is labeled in their respective languages. I argue that the latter is a viable possibility, given the parameterization in the labeling mechanism, and receives support from the child data as well. This conclusion implies that a main part of the acquisition of syntax is for a child to discover how her/his target language labels the {XP, YP} structure.

scholarly journals Introduction: Case variation and change in the Nordic languages

2012 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 213-218
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Keith Parrott
Keyword(s):  
Rural Community ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
The North ◽  
Major Language ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Case Morphology ◽  
Germanic Languages

Shortly after arriving in Copenhagen five years ago, I realized what many linguists have long understood: the case situation in the Nordic languages is formidably complex. Of course, the broad outlines of inter-speaker (or, cross-linguistic) variation in Nordic nominal case inflection are well known. Within two major language families, (North) Germanic and Uralic, there are dozens of closely related language varieties. The Finnic and Sami languages of Uralic have adpositional case systems, while the North Germanic languages can be further subdivided into the Mainland and Insular groups, partially on the basis of their different case systems. The latter group, namely Icelandic, Faroese, and Älvdalian (which is spoken in a fairly isolated rural community in the interior of Sweden), has ‘rich’ inflectional case morphology on a range of elements comprising nominal phrases, including articles, determiners, demonstratives, nouns, pronouns, wh-words, and more. The former group, namely Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, are ‘case-poor’, maintaining only a vestige of their historically rich case morphology on a subset of personal pronouns, which have Nominative, Oblique, and Possessive forms. Furthermore, certain varieties of Swedish and Norwegian retain vestigial Dative forms of clitic pronouns.

Grandparents Reveal Their Secrets: A New Holocaust Narrative for the Young ‘Third Generation’ in Israel

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Darr
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Safe Distance ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Very Young Children ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
New Type

Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's literature. This new narrative is directed towards very young children, from preschool to the first years of elementary school, and its official goal is to instil in them an authentic ‘first Holocaust memory’. This essay presents the literary characteristics of this new Holocaust narrative for children and its master narrative. It brings into light a new profile of both writers and readers. The writers were young children during the Holocaust, and first chose to tell their stories from the safe distance of three generations. The readers are their grand-children and their grand-children's peers, who are assigned an essential role as listeners. These generational roles – the roles of a First Generation of writers and of a Third Generation of readers – are intrinsically familial ones. As such, they mark a significant change in the profile of yet another important figure in the Israeli intergenerational Holocaust discourse, the agent of the Holocaust story for children. Due to the new literary initiatives, the task of providing young children with a ‘first Holocaust memory’ is transferred from the educational authority, where it used to reside, to the domestic sphere.

Use of diluted insulin in the management of very young children with type 1 diabetes: case report and literature review

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Emile J Hendriks ◽  
Ross L Ewen ◽  
Yoke Sin Hoh ◽  
Nazia Bhatti ◽  
Rachel M Williams ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Type 1 Diabetes ◽  
Case Report ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Diabetes Case ◽  
Very Young Children
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