Comparative Syntax and Language Acquisition

Comparative Syntax and Language Acquisition PDF Author: Luigi Rizzi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134608268
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 455

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this collection of essays, the author addresses the central issues in syntax theory, comparative syntax and the theoretically conscious study of language acquisition. Key topics are explored, including the properties of null elements and the theory of parameters. Some of the essays presented here have been highly influential in their field, while others are published for the first time.

Comparative Syntax and Language Acquisition

Comparative Syntax and Language Acquisition PDF Author: Luigi Rizzi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134608268
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 455

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this collection of essays, the author addresses the central issues in syntax theory, comparative syntax and the theoretically conscious study of language acquisition. Key topics are explored, including the properties of null elements and the theory of parameters. Some of the essays presented here have been highly influential in their field, while others are published for the first time.

The Acquisition of Syntax

The Acquisition of Syntax PDF Author: Marc-Ariel Friedemann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317881249
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume contains a collection of studies that survey recent research in developmental linguistics, illustrating the fruitful interaction between comparative syntax and language acquisition. The contributors each analyse a well defined range of acquisition data, aiming to derive them from primitive differences between child and adult grammar. The book covers cross-linguistic and cross-categorial phenomena, shedding light on major developments in this novel and rapidly growing field. Extensions to second language acquisition and neuropathology are also suggested.

Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory

Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory PDF Author: A.E. Pierce
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401125740
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Get Book Here

Book Description
The theory of language acquisition is a young but increasingly active field. Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory presents one of the first detailed studies of comparative syntax acquisition. It is informed by the view that linguists and acquisitionists are essentially working on the same problem, that of explaining grammar learnability. The author takes cross-linguistic data from child language as evidence for recent proposals in syntactic theory. Developments in the structure of children's sentences during the first few years of life are traced to changes in the setting of specific grammatical parameters. Some surprising differences between the early child grammars of French and English are uncovered, differences that can only be explained on the basis of subtle distinctions in inflectional structure. This motivates the author's claim that functional or nonthematic categories are represented in the grammars of very young children. The book also explores the relationship between acquisition and diachronic change in French and English. It is argued that findings in acquisition, when viewed from a parameter setting perspective, provide answers to important questions arising in the study of language change. The book promises to be of interest to all those involved in the formal, psychological or historical study of linguistic knowledge.

The Acquisition of Syntax

The Acquisition of Syntax PDF Author: Marc-Ariel Friedemann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317881230
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume contains a collection of studies that survey recent research in developmental linguistics, illustrating the fruitful interaction between comparative syntax and language acquisition. The contributors each analyse a well defined range of acquisition data, aiming to derive them from primitive differences between child and adult grammar. The book covers cross-linguistic and cross-categorial phenomena, shedding light on major developments in this novel and rapidly growing field. Extensions to second language acquisition and neuropathology are also suggested.

Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition

Rich Descriptions and Simple Explanations in Morphosyntax and Language Acquisition PDF Author: Giuliano Bocci
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198889488
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 481

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume offers new perspectives on the tension between the rich patterns of language variation that emerge from comparative studies and the quest for simple theoretical primitives. The chapters explore the debate between Cartography and Minimalism: on the one hand, the need for detailed and articulated descriptions of the clausal architecture, and on the other, the endeavor to reduce the theoretical apparatus to fundamental computational mechanisms. The first part of the book begins with a reflection on the goals of modern linguistic theory, and investigates the principles of human language, in an effort to subsume the regularities of particular grammars under a small set of morphosyntactic and semantic primitives. The second part examines the clausal structure - both the CP-layer and the IP-layer - from a comparative perspective, which directly relates to the fundamental questions of universality, linguistic variation, and learnability addressed in the first part of the book. With chapters written by world-leading linguists who analyze a wide range of old and new phenomena, the volume will be a valuable resource for researchers and students interested in theoretical linguistics and language development.

The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research

The Comparative Method of Language Acquisition Research PDF Author: Clifton Pye
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022653961X
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Mayan family of languages is ancient and unique. With their distinctive relational nouns, positionals, and complex grammatical voices, they are quite alien to English and have never been shown to be genetically related to other New World tongues. These qualities, Clifton Pye shows, afford a particular opportunity for linguistic insight. Both an overview of lessons Pye has gleaned from more than thirty years of studying how children learn Mayan languages as well as a strong case for a novel method of researching crosslinguistic language acquisition more broadly, this book demonstrates the value of a close, granular analysis of a small language lineage for untangling the complexities of first language acquisition. Pye here applies the comparative method to three Mayan languages—K’iche’, Mam, and Ch’ol—showing how differences in the use of verbs are connected to differences in the subject markers and pronouns used by children and adults. His holistic approach allows him to observe how small differences between the languages lead to significant differences in the structure of the children’s lexicon and grammar, and to learn why that is so. More than this, he expects that such careful scrutiny of related languages’ variable solutions to specific problems will yield new insights into how children acquire complex grammars. Studying such an array of related languages, he argues, is a necessary condition for understanding how any particular language is used; studying languages in isolation, comparing them only to one’s native tongue, is merely collecting linguistic curiosities.

Elements of Comparative Syntax

Elements of Comparative Syntax PDF Author: Enoch Aboh
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 1501504037
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 542

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume brings together a selection of articles illustrating the multifaceted nature of current research in generative syntax. The authors, including some of the leading figures in the field, present analyses of typologically diverse languages, with some studies drawing on dialectal, acquisitional and diachronic evidence. Set against this rich empirical background, the contributions address an equally wide range of theoretical issues.

Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar

Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar PDF Author: Teun Hoekstra
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027281750
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 415

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is a collection of essays on the native and non-native acquisition of syntax within the Principles and Parameters framework. In line with current methodology in the study of adult grammars, language acquisition is studied here from a comparative perspective. The unifying theme is the issue of the 'initial state' of grammatical knowledge: For native language, the important controversy is that between the Continuity approach, which holds that Universal Grammar is essentially constant throughout development, and the Maturation approach, which maintains that portions of UG are subject to maturation. For non-native language, the theme of initial states concerns the extent of native-grammar influence. Different views regarding the continuity question are defended in the papers on first language acquisition. Evidence from the acquisition of, inter alia, Bernese, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian and Japanese, is brought to bear on issues pertaining to clause structure, null subjects, verb position, negation, Case marking, modality, non-finite sentences, root questions, long-distance questions and scrambling. The views defended on the initial state of (adult) second language acquisition also differ: from complete L1 influence to different versions of partial L1 influence. While the target language is German in these studies, the native language varies: Korean, Spanish and Turkish. Analyses invoke UG principles to account for verb placement, null subjects, verbal morphology and Case marking. Though many issues remain, the volume highlights the growing ties between formal linguistics and language acquisition research. Such an approach provides the foundation for asking the right questions and putting them to empirical test.

Current Approaches to Syntax

Current Approaches to Syntax PDF Author: András Kertész
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110540258
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 616

Get Book Here

Book Description
Even though the range of phenomena syntactic theories intend to account for is basically the same, the large number of current approaches to syntax shows how differently these phenomena can be interpreted, described, and explained. The goal of the volume is to probe into the question of how exactly these frameworks differ and what if anything they have in common.Descriptions of a sample of current approaches to syntax are presented by their major practitioners (Part I) followed by their metatheoretical underpinnings (Part II). Given that the goal is to facilitate a systematic comparison among the approaches, a checklist of issues was given to the contributors to address. The main headings are Data, Goals, Descriptive Tools, and Criteria for Evaluation. The chapters are structured uniformly allowing an item-by-item survey across the frameworks. The introduction lays out the parameters along which syntactic frameworks must be the same and how they may differ and a final paper draws some conclusions about similarities and differences.The volume is of interest to descriptive linguists, theoreticians of grammar, philosophers of science, and studies of the cognitive science of science.

Syntactic architecture and its consequences I

Syntactic architecture and its consequences I PDF Author: András Bárány
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961102759
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 562

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters address research questions on the relation of syntax to other aspects of grammar and linguistics more generally, including studies on language acquisition, variation and change, and syntactic interfaces. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and give the reader a sense of the lively nature of current discussion of topics in synchronic and diachronic comparative syntax ranging from the core verbal domain to higher, propositional domains.