Author: Sandra Villata
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1036403505
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Tailored for scholars and researchers in linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science, this monograph embarks on an in-depth exploration of the intriguing realm of long-distance dependencies in human language. These dependencies exhibit a compelling duality: they are unbounded, as they extend across an arbitrary number of words, yet they are constrained by the grammar. Historically, linguists and psycholinguists have pursued distinct paths to account for the intricacies of these dependencies. Bridging these traditions together, this monograph leverages the concept of similarity, focusing on two canonical phenomena in theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics: wh-islands and agreement attraction. These serve as test cases for an extensive empirical and theoretical investigation, unraveling the interplay between formal linguistic properties and memory operations.

Author: Sandra Villata
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description

Author: Ivano Caponigro
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107276691
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
In recent years, the study of formal semantics and formal pragmatics has grown tremendously, showing that core aspects of language meaning can be explained by a few principles. These principles are grounded in the logic that is behind - and tightly intertwined with - the grammar of human language. In this book, some of the most prominent figures in linguistics, including Noam Chomsky and Barbara H. Partee, offer new insights into the nature of linguistic meaning and pave the way for the further development of formal semantics and formal pragmatics. Each chapter investigates various dimensions in which the logical nature of human language manifests itself within a language and/or across languages. Phenomena like bare plurals, free choice items, scalar implicatures, intervention effects, and logical operators are investigated in depth and at times cross-linguistically and/or experimentally. This volume will be of interest to scholars working within the fields of semantics, pragmatics, language acquisition and psycholinguistics.

Author: Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 9402419322
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This book presents a comprehensive, state-of-the-art treatment of the acquisition of Indo- and Non-Indo-European languages in various contexts, such as L1, L2, L3/Ln, bi/multilingual, heritage languages, pathology as well as language impairment, and sign language acquisition. The book explores a broad mix of methodologies and issues in contemporary research. The text presents original research from several different perspectives, and provides a basis for dialogue between researchers working on diverse projects with the aim of furthering our understanding of how languages are acquired. The book proposes and refines new theoretical constructs, e.g. regarding the complexity of linguistic features as a relevant factor forming children’s, adults’ and bilingual individuals’ acquisition of morphological, syntactic, discursive, pragmatic, lexical and phonological structures. It appeals to students, researchers, and professionals in the field.

Author: Sauermann, Antje
Publisher: Universitätsverlag Potsdam
ISBN: 3869563303
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
This dissertation examines the impact of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation in German-speaking preschoolers. A puzzle in the area of language acquisition concerns the production-comprehension asymmetry for non-canonical sentences like "Den Affen fängt die Kuh." (“The monkey, the cow chases.”), that is, preschoolers usually have difficulties in accurately understanding non-canonical sentences approximately until age six (e.g., Dittmar et al., 2008) although they produce non-canonical sentences already around age three (e.g., Poeppel & Wexler, 1993; Weissenborn, 1990). This dissertation investigated the production and comprehension of non-canonical sentences to address this issue. Three corpus analyses were conducted to investigate the impact of givenness, topic status and the type of referring expression on word order in the spontaneous speech of two- to four-year-olds and the child-directed speech produced by their mothers. The positioning of the direct object in ditransitive sentences was examined; in particular, sentences in which the direct object occurred before or after the indirect object in the sentence-medial positions and sentences in which it occurred in the sentence-initial position. The results reveal similar ordering patterns for children and adults. Word order variation was to a large extent predictable from the type of referring expression, especially with respect to the word order involving the sentence-medial positions. Information structure (e.g., topic status) had an additional impact only on word order variation that involved the sentence-initial position. Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether the type of referring expression and topic status influences the comprehension of non-canonical transitive sentences in four- and five-year-olds. In the first experiment, the topic status of the one of the sentential arguments was established via a preceding context sentence, and in the second experiment, the type of referring expression for the sentential arguments was additionally manipulated by using either a full lexical noun phrase (NP) or a personal pronoun. The results demonstrate that children’s comprehension of non-canonical sentences improved when the topic argument was realized as a personal pronoun and this improvement was independent of the grammatical role of the arguments. However, children’s comprehension was not improved when the topic argument was realized as a lexical NP. In sum, the results of both production and comprehension studies support the view that referring expressions may be seen as a sentence-level cue to word order and to the information status of the sentential arguments. The results highlight the important role of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation and indicate that the production-comprehension asymmetry is reduced when the type of referring expression is considered. --- Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Dissertation wurde der Einfluss des referierenden Ausdrucks auf den Erwerb von Wortstellungsvariationen bei deutschsprachigen Vorschulkindern untersucht. Eine zentrale Fragestellung im Spracherwerb betrifft die Asymmetrie zwischen Produktion und Verständnis. Diese Asymmetrie ist dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass sechsjährige Kinder oft Schwierigkeiten haben, Sätze in der nicht-kanonischen Wortstellung, z.B. „Den Affen fängt die Kuh.“, zu verstehen (z.B., Dittmar et al., 2008), obwohl bereits Dreijährige nicht-kanonische Sätze produzieren können (z.B., Poeppel & Wexler, 1993; Weissenborn, 1990). Um diese Asymmetrie zu untersuchen wurde in der Dissertation die Produktion und das Verständnis von nicht-kanonischen Sätzen betrachtet. In drei Korpusstudien wurde der Einfluss von Vorerwähntheit, Topikstatus und Wahl des referierenden Ausdrucks auf die Wortstellung in der Spontansprache von Zwei- bis Vierjährigen und in der kind-gerichteten Sprache ihre Mütter analysiert. Es wurde die Position des direkten Objektes in ditransitiven Sätzen untersucht, d.h., Sätze in denen das direkte Objekt vor oder nach dem indirekten Objekt in den satzmedialen Positionen stand, und Sätze in denen es in der satzinitialen Position stand. Die Ergebnisse zeigen ähnlich Abfolgemuster in der Satzproduktion der Kindern und Erwachsenen. Die Position des direkten Objektes, vor allem in den satzmedialen Positionen, war zu einem großen Teil durch die Wahl des referierenden Ausdrucks vorhersagbar. Informationsstrukturelle Faktoren (z.B. Topikstatus) hingegen beeinflussten - unabhängig vom Einfluss des referierenden Ausdrucks - nur die Wortstellung in der satzinitialen Position. Zwei Verständnisexperimente wurden durchgeführt um den Einfluss des referierenden Ausdrucks und des Topikstatuses auf das Verständnis von nicht-kanonischen transitiven Sätzen zu untersuchen. Im ersten Experiment wurde der Topikstatus eines der beiden Satzargumente durch einen vorherigen Kontext modifiziert. Im zweiten Experiment wurde zusätzlich der referierende Ausdruck modifiziert, d.h. das Topik wurde entweder durch eine lexikalische Nominalphrase (NP) oder ein Personalpronomen realisiert. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass vier- und fünfjährige Kinder Sätze in der nichtkanonischen Wortstellung besser verstehen konnten, wenn das Topik als Personalpronomen realisiert wurde, unabhängig von der grammatischen Rolle des Topiks. Das Satzverständnis war jedoch nicht verbessert, wenn das Topik als lexikalische NP realisiert wurde. Zusammengefasst zeigen die Ergebnisse der Produktions- und Verständnisstudien, dass der referierende Ausdruck als Hinweis auf die Wortstellung und auf den Informationsstatus der Argumente des Satzes von den Kindern genutzt werden kann. Sie unterstreichen somit die Bedeutung der Wahl des referierenden Ausdrucks auf den Erwerb von Wortstellungsvariation und zeigen, dass die Asymmetrie zwischen Produktion und Verständnis an Bedeutung verliert, wenn der referierende Ausdruck einbezogen wird.

Author: Larisa Avram
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027258899
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
This volume includes fourteen papers on the acquisition of Romance languages, eleven of which were presented at the Romance Turn 9, held in Bucharest in September 2018. The studies offer new insights into central issues in the literature, such as syntactic complexity in both typical and impaired language settings, intervention effects, the acquisition of phenomena which involve both syntactic parameters and an external interface, as well as cross-linguistic interference effects. They present novel longitudinal and experimental data on the first language acquisition and second language learning of French, Italian, European and Brazilian Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish. A unique feature of this volume is the focus on the interaction of language specific properties and of factors which are not specific to the faculty of language in the narrow sense, such as data processing, the nature of the input, discourse structure, computational load, sociolinguistic properties, and the development of Theory of Mind.

Author: Luigi Rizzi
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN: 9780262680615
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
This monograph presents an important extension of government-binding theory in syntax. This monograph presents an important extension of government-binding theory in syntax. It offers a new characterization of locality in the theory of government through a relativization of the Minimality Principle, and it explores the consequences of this approach for the Empty Category Principle and the analysis of a variety of empirical domains, including intervention effects, That-trace phenomena, and argument/adjunct asymmetries. The final part of the book is devoted to a new interpretation of the argument/adjunct asymmetries that arise in various extraction processes. Referential indices, a fundamental ingredient of the binding relation, are restricted to occur on referential arguments, as in Chomsky's original proposal. This natural restriction has the surprising effect of capturing the major argument-adjunct asymmetries in a straightforward manner while permitting a radical simplification of the Empty Category Principle.

Author: Pamela M. Greenwood
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889634892
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description

Author: Ruth H. Bahr
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136737561
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 463

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Communication Disorders provides an update on key issues and research in the clinical application of the speech, language and hearing sciences in both children and adults. Focusing on areas of cutting-edge research, this handbook showcases what we know about communication disorders, and their assessment and treatment. It emphasizes the application of theory to clinical practice throughout, and is arranged by the four key bases of communication impairments: Neural/Genetic Bases Perceptual-Motor Bases Cognitive-Linguistic Bases Socio-Cultural Bases. The handbook ends with an integrative section, which looks at innovative ways of working across domains to arrive at novel assessment and treatment ideas. It is an important reference work for researchers, students and practitioners working in communication science and speech and language therapy.

Author: Anna Cardinaletti
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527556786
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Bringing together selected papers from the conference “The Romance Turn VII” held in Venice in October 2015, this volume focuses on a broad range of topics at the heart of the current debate on language acquisition, including clitic pronouns, left-dislocations, passives, relative clauses, and wh-questions. It explores these topics within a range of different acquisition settings, such as L1 and L2 acquisition, bilingualism, typical and atypical development. In addition to syntax, the volume covers other modules of grammar, namely, semantics, pragmatics, and phonology, and adds a perspective on language processing to current discussions on the acquisition of Romance languages. This book also includes contributions on atypical language acquisition in cases of deafness and on language intervention based on formal linguistics. It will appeal not only to scholars and students interested in the nature and processes behind first, second and bilingual language acquisition, and impaired language acquisition, but also to language educators and clinicians.