Download or read book The Acquisition of Verb Placement written by J. Meisel and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: other aspects of developing grammars. And this is, indeed, what the contributions to this volume do. Parameterization of functional categories may, however, be understood in different ways, even if one shares the dual assumptions that substantive elements (verbs, nouns, etc. ) are present in all grammars and that X-bar principles are part of the grammatical knowledge available to the child prior to language-specific learning processes. From these assumptions it follows that the child should, from early on, be able to construct projections on the basis of these elements. The role of functional categories, however, may still be interpreted differently. One possibility, first suggested by Radford (1986, 1990) and by Guilfoyle and Noonan (1988), is that children must discover which functional categories (FC) need to be implemented in the grammar of the language they are acquiring. Another possibility, first explored by Hyams (1986), is that a specific category is present in developing grammars but that parameter values are set in a way deviating from the target adult grammar, corresponding, however, to options realized in other adult systems. A third option would be that these categories might be specified differently in developing as opposed to mature grammars. All three are explored in the papers collected in this volume. Before outlining the various hypotheses in more detail, however, I would like briefly to sketch the grammatical context in which the following debate is situated. 2.
Download or read book The Function of Function Words and Functional Categories written by Marcel den Dikken and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LC number: 2005048395
Download or read book Functional Categories written by Pieter Muysken and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-05-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In every language there are descriptive lexical elements, such as evening and whisper, as well as grammatical elements, such as the and -ing. The distinction between these two elements has proven useful in a number of domains, but what is covered by the terms, lexical and grammatical, and the basis on which the distinction is made, appear to vary according to the domain involved. This book analyses the grammatical elements ('functional categories') in language, a topic that has drawn considerable attention in linguistics, but has never been approached from an integrated, cross-disciplinary perspective. Muysken considers functional categories from the perspective of grammar, language history, language contact and psychology (including child language and aphasia). Empirically based, the book examines the available converging evidence from these various disciplines, and draws on comparative data from a wide range of different languages.
Download or read book A Feature Based Syntax of Functional Categories written by Michael Hegarty and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops ideas of Minimalist syntax to derive functional categories from the partially-ordered features expressed by functional elements, thereby dispensing with functional categories as primitives of the theory. It generalizes attempts to do this in the literature, while drawing significant empirical consequences from general constraints formulated to block overgeneration. The resulting theory of the construction of functional categories is applied to various problems in syntactic analysis and comparative and historical syntax, including variation across Germanic languages in patterns of verb-second and in the occurrence of expletive subjects in existential constructions, verb positions in Old and Middle English, problems regarding the placement of clitic pronouns in Romance languages and Modern Greek, and some previously unexamined structures of reduced clause coordination in colloquial English. Facts from early stages of the acquisition of syntax are shown to follow from the mechanisms for the projection of functional features as functional categories, exercised before all of the features for a language, along with their ordering and feature co-occurrence restrictions, have been acquired. It is observed that child acquisition of functional elements exhibits successive developmental stages, each characterized by the number of clausal functional elements which can be represented together within a clause. This, and facts regarding the lag in development of functional categories by children with specific language impairment, are shown to be not entirely reducible to limitations in working memory or processing capacity, but to depend in part on the growth of representational resources for the projection of functional categories.
Download or read book Language Acquisition and the Functional Category System written by Peter Jordens and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research on spontaneous language acquisition both in children learning their mother tongue and in adults learning a second language has shown that language development proceeds in a stagewise manner. Learner utterances are accounted for in terms of so-called 'learner languages'. Learner languages of both children and adults are language systems that are initially rather simple. The present monograph shows how these learner languages develop both in child L1 and in adult L2 Dutch. At the initial stage of both L1 and L2 Dutch, learner systems are lexical systems. This means that utterance structure is determined by the lexical projection of a predicate-argument structure, while the functional properties of the target language are absent. At some point in acquisition, this lexical-semantic system develops into a target-like system. With this target-like system, learners have reached a stage at which their language system has the morpho-syntactic features to express the functional properties of finiteness and topicality. Evidence of this is word order variation and the use of linguistic elements such as auxiliaries, tense, and agreement markers and determiners. Looking at this process of language acquisition from a functional point of view, the author focuses on questions such as the following. What is the driving force behind the process that causes learners to give up a simple lexical-semantic system in favour of a functional-pragmatic one? What is the added value of linguistic features such as the morpho-syntactic properties of inflection, word order variation, and definiteness?
Download or read book Functional Categories in Language Acquisition written by Annette Hohenberger and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-04-20 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates the acquisition of Functional Categories (e.g., INFL (AGR, TNS), DET, COMP) from the perspective of self-organization in generative grammar. Language is conceived of as a dynamical system which evolves in time and bifurcates when critical thresholds are reached. The emergence of syntax as evidenced by the acquisition of Functional Categories is the major bifurcation in child language acquisition. Target values of syntactic parameters are attractors which children approach on individual trajectories. A proposed tripartite scenario of change - from a simple stable state A, via symmetry-breaking in a liminal phase B characterized by variation, to a new complex stable state C - accounts for the dynamics in early grammatical development. Traditional generative issues, such as the acquisition of case-marking, finiteness, V2, and wh-questions, are discussed as well as new issues, such as functional neologisms, and sentential blends. Dynamical notions like precursor, oscillation, symmetry-breaking, and trigger are important explanatory tools. The growing child phrase marker is a fractal mental object which represents syntactic information by way of self-similar extended projections. The book addresses researchers in language acquisition from various theoretical camps: generative, functional, connectionist, by giving new answers to old questions in the light of a novel challenging theory: self-organization.
Download or read book Modern Syntax written by Andrew Carnie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-01-13 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This practical coursebook introduces all the basics of modern syntactic analysis in a simple step-by-step fashion. Each unit is constructed so that the reader discovers new ideas, formulates hypotheses and practises fundamentals. The reader is presented with short sections of explanation with examples, followed by practice exercises. Feedback and comment sections follow to enable students to monitor their progress. No previous background in syntax is assumed. Students move through all the key topics in the field including features, rules of combination and displacement, empty categories, and subcategorization. The theoretical perspective in this work is unique, drawing together the best ideas from three major syntactic frameworks (minimalism, HPSG and LFG). Students using this book will learn fundamentals in such a way that they can easily go on to pursue further study in any of these frameworks.
Download or read book The Rise of Functional Categories written by Elly van Gelderen and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993-10-28 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, word order has come to be seen, within a Government Binding/Minimalist framework, as determined by functional as well as lexical categories. Within this framework, functional categories are often seen as present in every language without evidence being available in that language. This book contains arguments that even though Universal Grammar makes functional categories available, the language learner must decide whether or not to incorporate them in his or her grammar. For instance, it is shown that English has one (not two as often assumed) functional category between the complementizer and the Negation, but that languages such as Dutch, Swedish, German and Old and Middle English have none. The title of the book can be seen in terms of the direction current research is taking; it can also be seen in terms of the changes that have taken place in English.
Download or read book The Development of Grammar written by Esther Rinke and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2011-05-25 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume focuses on different aspects of language development. The contributions are concerned with similarities and differences between first and second language acquisition, the acquisition of sentence structure and functional categories, cross-linguistic influence in bilingual first language acquisition as well as the relation between language acquisition, language contact and diachronic change. The recurrent topic of the volume is the link between linguistic variation and the limitation of structural variability in the framework of a well-defined theory of language. In this respect, the volume opens up new perspectives for future research.
Download or read book Semi lexical Categories written by Norbert Corver and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2013-05-22 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinction between functional categories and lexical categories is at the heart of present-day grammatical theory, in theories on language acquisition, code-switching and aphasia. At the same time, it has become clear, however, that there are many lexical items for which it is less easy to decide whether they side with the lexical categories or the functional ones. This book deals with the grammatical behavior of such in- between-categories, which are referred to here as "semi-lexical categories".
Download or read book The Syntax of American Sign Language written by Carol Jan Neidle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent research on the syntax of signed language has revealed that, apart from some modality-specific differences, signed languages are organized according to the same underlying principles as spoken languages. This book addresses the organization and distribution of functional categories in American Sign Language (ASL), focusing on tense, agreement and wh-constructions.
Download or read book The Prefunctional Stage of First Language Acquisition written by Ianthi-Maria Tsimpli and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1996 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Syntactic Development written by William O'Grady and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syntactic Development presents a broad critical survey of the research literature on child language development. Giving balanced coverage to both theoretical and empirical issues, William O'Grady constructs an up-to-date picture of how children acquire the syntax of English. Part 1 offers an overview of the developmental data pertaining to a range of syntactic phenomena, including word order, subject drop, embedded clauses, wh-questions, inversion, relative clauses, passives, and anaphora. Part 2 considers the various theories that have been advanced to explain the facts of development as well as the learnability problem, reporting on work in the mainstream formalist framework but also considering the results of alternative approaches. Covering a wide range of perspectives in the modern study of syntactic development, this book is an invaluable reference for specialists in the field of language acquisition and provides an excellent introduction to the acquisition of syntax for students and researchers in psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax written by Marcel den Dikken and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 1412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.
Download or read book Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar written by Lydia White and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-06 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian written by Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-16 with total page 691 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian offers a detailed overview of the field of Persian second language acquisition and pedagogy. The Handbook discusses its development and captures critical accounts of cutting edge research within the major subfields of Persian second language acquisition and pedagogy, as well as current debates and problems, and goes on to suggest productive lines of future research. The book is divided into the following four parts: I) Theory-driven research on second language acquisition of Persian, II) Language skills in second language acquisition of Persian, III) Classroom research in second language acquisition and pedagogy of Persian, and IV) Social aspects of second language acquisition and pedagogy of Persian. The Routledge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition and Pedagogy of Persian is an essential reference for scholars and students of Persian SLA and pedagogy as well as those researching in related areas.
Download or read book The Acquisition of Functional Categories written by Joseph Galasso and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
