scholarly journals Growing trees: The acquisition of the left periphery

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naama Friedmann ◽  
Adriana Belletti ◽  
Luigi Rizzi
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Adjunct Questions ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Interrogative Clauses ◽  
Why Questions

We suggest here a Growing Trees approach for the description of the acquisition of various syntactic structures in Hebrew, based on the main results reported in Friedmann and Reznick (this volume) and on our own research on a corpus of natural productions. The heart of our account is that stages of acquisition follow the geometry of the syntactic tree, along the lines of the cartographic analysis of the clause, with early stages of acquisition corresponding to small portions of the adult syntactic tree, which keeps growing with the growth of the child. The lower parts of the tree are acquired first, and higher parts are acquired later. We propose three stages of acquisition connected to the development of functional layers of the syntactic tree. In the first stage, the IP is acquired, including the lexical and inflectional layers. This allows for the appearance of A-movement structures, including SV/VS alternations with unaccusative verbs, alongside SV sentences with unergative/transitive verbs. The second stage involves the acquisition of the lower part of the left periphery, up to QP, which allows for the acquisition of subject and object Wh questions, some adjunct questions, yes/no questions, and sentence-initial adverbs. In the third stage, the rich structure of the left periphery is completely acquired, including the higher CP field. This is the stage in which sentential embedding (of finite declarative and interrogative clauses), subject and object relative clauses, why questions, and topicalization appear. A further, different type of stage, which occurs on the already-grown tree and which is independent of structure building, is the acquisition of intervention configurations, allowing for the mastery of structures involving movement of a lexically-restricted object across an intervening lexically-restricted subject. The paper illustrates the fruitful dialogue between the science of syntax acquisition and the cartography of syntactic structures.

scholarly journals The Layered Syntactic Structure of the Complementizer System: Functional Heads and Multiple Movements in the Early Left-Periphery. A Corpus Study on Italian

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Moscati ◽  
Luigi Rizzi
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Landing Sites ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Simultaneous Activation ◽  
Why Questions

In this paper we document the developmental trajectory of the complementizer system (CP-system) in Italian by looking at the earliest spontaneous production of eleven young children, whose transcriptions are available on CHILDES. We conducted a novel corpus analysis, tracking down a number of constructions in which the clausal left-periphery is activated. First, we considered the appearance of the different complementizer particles in the CP-system, which overtly realize the three distinct functional projections ForceP, IntP, and FinP. The analysis revealed that children acquiring Italian correctly use these complementizer particles already in the third year of life. Second, we looked for the simultaneous activation of different functional projections within the CP-system. We went through our corpus searching for complex sentences in which more than one constituent was moved to the left periphery. This option is allowed by the adult grammar of Italian and, as our search revealed, it is also attested in the grammar of young children. Soon after their second birthday, sequences in which a left-dislocated Topic and a Wh- element co-occur are attested, directly supporting the existence of a (high) Topic position above FocusP. Moreover, movement in general conforms to the constraints of the adult grammar, with no attested violation of obligatory inversion (a consequence of the Q-Criterion). Importantly, “why-questions” did not require inversion, much as in the adult grammar of Italian. Taken together, children's use of complementizer particles and their activation of multiple landing sites for movement show that 2-year-olds already possess a richly articulated functional structure of the CP-system, aligned to the layered adult structure. In concluding the paper, we also discuss some temporal differences between constructions activating high and low portions of the CP-system. In particular, we detect a temporal precedence for wh-questions over why-questions. Since the former activate a lower projection, this is consistent with the recently proposed Growing Trees hypothesis, according to which the development of the CP-system proceeds stepwise.

scholarly journals Development of Dutch children’s comprehension of subject and object wh-questions

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 129-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris Strangmann ◽  
Anneke Slomp ◽  
Angeliek van Hout
Keyword(s):  
Selection Task ◽  
Number Agreement ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Referent Selection ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Dutch Children

While Dutch welke ‘which’-questions are structurally ambiguous, number agreement cues can disambiguate them. Despite such agreement cues, children misinterpret object questions as subject questions (Metz et al. 2010, 2012; Schouwenaars et al. 2014). We investigated if adding another cue, specifically, topicality in a discourse context, helps the interpretation of which-questions in two groups of Dutch children (5;5, n = 15 and 8;5, n = 21). Using a referent-selection task, we manipulated number on the verb and postverbal NP to create unambiguous wh-questions. Moreover, the questions were preceded by a discourse which established a topic, relating either to the wh-referent or the postverbal NP referent. Nevertheless, both 5- and 8-year-olds misinterpreted object questions as subject questions, ignoring the number and topicality cues to resolve the (local) ambiguity of which-questions. Our results confirm the effect of a subject-first bias in children’s interpretation of wh-questions. We conclude that topicality, in combination with number agreement, is not strong enough to overrule this subject-first bias.

The Dialect of Jowshaqan Part One: Phonology, Morphology and Syntax

2010 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-116
Author(s):  
Habib Borjian
Keyword(s):  
Personal Pronouns ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
The Past ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Past Tenses

AbstractThis article presents the grammar of Jowshaqani, a Central Iranian dialect. Like other members of this group, Jowshaqani has its own peculiarities; for instance, it has a rich inventory of personal pronouns distinguished by gender in the 3rd person singular, as do verb endings: nen ate “he comes”, néna atea “she comes”, etc. The past tenses of transitive verbs are inflected ergatively, with the agential affixes, which float through the sentence yielding complex syntactic structures.

“Subject” clitics and particles in Provençal

Probus ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-215
Author(s):  
Paola Benincà
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Peculiar Behaviour ◽  
Subject Clitics ◽  
Interrogative Clauses ◽  
Italian Dialects ◽  
Theoretical Side

Abstract Several Occitan dialects spoken in Western Piedmont exhibit no 1sg subject clitic form (a situation widely attested in Northern Italian dialects), although interrogative clauses with a 1sg subject feature an enclitic particle ke, identical to the complementiser. Many attempts have been made to interpret this ke as a reflex of Lat. E(G)O ‘I’ or originating from the reanalysis of the analogical -k displayed by verbs such as dik ‘I say’. Rather, I claim that ke is what it seems, namely the complementiser, and entertain the hypothesis that in these varieties the complementiser ended up satisfying EPP-like features. To support this analysis, I examine data from a wider area including Provençal, Gascon and Ibero-Romance dialects in which the complementiser is used as a proclitic particle in assertive clauses (Etxepare 2010 a.o.). On the theoretical side, I submit the hypothesis that the peculiar behaviour of the complementiser ke in that area has to do with the checking of a ‘speaker’ feature in the left periphery of the clause.

Syntactic structures of Mandarin purposives

Linguistics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-126
Author(s):  
Wei-wen Roger Liao ◽  
Tzong-hong Jonah Lin
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Linear Ordering ◽  
Verb Movement ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
The Right

Abstract This paper investigates three constructions in Mandarin, all of which convey a purposive/teleological meaning, including the lai purposive, the hao purposive, and the bare purposive. Despite the fact that each type of purposive clause in Mandarin occurs at the right edge of a sentence, it is argued that none of the purposive clause is a genuine right adjunct in the underlying syntactic structure. On the other hand, our analysis shows that the lai purposive employs complementation of a secondary predicate, the hao purposive involves conjunction of two clauses, and the bare purposive should be analyzed as left adjunction that is stranded in the right edge after verb movement. The evidence for our analysis is drawn from subject and object gaps, the ba-construction in Mandarin, agentivity, and linear ordering of multiple purposive clauses. This work thus demonstrates representative cases where a structure that appears to involve right adjunction may in fact employ no right adjunction at all. The conclusion is thus consistent with the prediction of Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA).

The syntax of variable behavior verbs: Experimental evidence from the accusative–oblique alternations in Japanese

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-314
Author(s):  
SHIN FUKUDA
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Motion Verbs ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Selectional Restrictions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
Core Meaning ◽  
Acceptability Judgment

Japanese has two types of two-place motion verbs whose ‘objects’ can be marked as either accusative or oblique (accusative–oblique alternations). The accusative–goal verbs mark their objects with accusative case -o or the goal marker -ni, and the accusative–source verbs mark their objects with accusative -o or the source marker -kara. Previous studies describe systematic differences in the interpretation of the arguments of these verbs and the events they denote between the two structures. This study argues that these alternating verbs are variable behavior verbs that are linked to two distinct syntactic structures. The core evidence for this claim comes from the results of two acceptability judgment experiments with Japanese native speakers that examined: (i) selectional restrictions on the subjects of the alternating verbs and (ii) the ability of their subjects to license ‘floating’ numeral quantifiers. The results of the experiments demonstrate that the accusative–source verbs alternate between the transitive and unaccusative structures, whereas the accusative–goal verbs consistently behave like transitive verbs but assign two different structural cases to their objects. Thus, the study shows that there are multiple ways in which two-place motion verbs are mapped onto distinctive syntactic structures, whereby the core meaning of the verbs and their syntactic structures together determine their interpretation.

On the left periphery of three languages of Northern Italy

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-117
Author(s):  
Federica Cognola
Keyword(s):  
Northern Italy ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Simple Description ◽  
Functional Projection ◽  
Technical Sense ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Pragmatic Interpretation ◽  
Interrogative Clauses ◽  
Finite Verb

Abstract Through a focus on the properties of subject-finite verb inversion and XP fronting in three relaxed V2 languages, namely Cimbrian, Ladin and Mòcheno, this paper aims to widen and refine our understanding of relaxed V2 languages, i.e. languages in which the V2 property should be understood in a technical sense as obligatory V-to-C movement, not as a simple description referring to linearisation (Benincà 2006, 2013; Ledgeway 2016). It will be shown that inversion differs across relaxed V2 languages in two ways. In a first subtype, inversion is not associated with any marked pragmatic interpretation of the lexical subject and the subject appears in an A position in the IP area: this type is instantiated by Old Italian (Benincà 2006, Poletto 2014). A second option, instantiated by the languages considered in this paper, is that the lexical subject receives a pragmatically marked interpretation which is encoded in a Functional Projection (FP) in the vP periphery (Belletti 2004, Poletto 2006). This paper confirms that V3/V4 word orders involve the presence of a double articulation for foci and wh-elements, which appear in different positions in the CP layer in relaxed V2 languages (Poletto 2002, Wolfe 2015 a,b). It also contributes to our understanding of the syntax of topics in relaxed V2 languages by showing that (i) topics can be moved to CP and (ii) the movement option is not restricted to main clauses lacking an XP in the left periphery; it also occurs in interrogative clauses (unlike in the relaxed V2 varieties considered in Walkden 2014, 2015).

Zur Frageintonation im Altbabylonischen

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-74
Author(s):  
Carsten Peust
Keyword(s):  
Old Babylonian ◽  
Object Clitics ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Alternative Questions ◽  
Interrogative Clauses ◽  
Final Syllable

Abstract This paper examines the use of plene writing as a marker of interrogative clauses in Old Babylonian letters. It is argued that plene writing here denotes a specific intonation contour, most probably a sharply rising melody. Main conclusions concerning its use: (1) Only polar questions carry interrogative intonation, not so wh-questions. (2) In alternative questions, only the first half usually carries interrogative intonation, not the second. (3) The (verbal or nominal) predicate of the sentence is the default carrier of interrogative intonation, but other elements may take over this role if they are focussed. (4) Interrogative intonation is always located on the final syllable of the affected phrase. (5) This implies that interrogative intonation regularly shifts onto enclitics, such as verbal object clitics, if the phrase contains any.

Early Understanding of Subject and Object Wh-Questions

Infancy ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda Seidl ◽  
George Hollich ◽  
Peter W. Jusczyk
Keyword(s):  
Subject And Object ◽  
Wh Questions
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