Minimal Answers
Ellipsis, syntax and discourse in the acquisition of European Portuguese
Author
This book offers a new contribution to the debate concerning the acquisition of the syntax-discourse interface. It provides evidence that children acquiring European Portuguese have a very early ability to spontaneously produce VP ellipsis as answers to yes-no questions. It is also argued that the distribution of VP ellipsis in European Portuguese (including its co-existence with Null Complement Anaphora) supports the hypothesis that the identification condition on ellipsis is derivable from some innate knowledge of the syntax-discourse interface. Answers to yes-no questions also provide evidence concerning children’s interpretation of questions containing a cleft or the operator só ‘only’. The analysis of spontaneous production is complemented by a comprehension experiment, showing that children have two problems in the interpretation of these questions: (i) they do not understand that the cleft and só introduce a presupposition and (ii) they start with a default focus assignment strategy and may not access other focus interpretations.
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 48] 2009. xv, 296 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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List of tables | pp. xi–xii
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List of figures | p. xii
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Preface | pp. xiii–xiv
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Abbreviations used in glosses | p. xv
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Chapter 1. Introduction | pp. 1–20
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Chapter 2. VPE and the structural and anaphoric properties of minimal answers in EP adult grammar | pp. 21–112
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Chapter 3. Learnability issues in VPE and focus | pp. 113–136
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Chapter 4. How early can VPE be found? | pp. 137–224
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Chapter 5. Answers as a window into the interpretation of questions | pp. 225–270
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Chapter 6. Conclusions | pp. 271–282
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Subject index | pp. 295–296
“This book overall is an impressive and major contribution to the field of language acquisition. It is a model dissertation for students of language acquisition, and sets the stage for further exploration of the syntax/discourse interface in young children’s grammars.”
Rosalind Thornton, Macquarie University, in Project Muse, 2011
“Santos is to be commended for the scope of the study presented, from its impeccable methodology that combines spontaneous production with experiments that more directly tap competence, to the insightful analysis, which reflects a keen understanding of all the relevant issues in acquisition theory and most impressively of the theoretical syntactic ones.[...]. We highly recommend this book. It will be a useful resource for graduate students and academics interested in interface acquisition issues, particularly so for those with an interest in the acquisition of Romance languages.”
Gonzalo Campos, University of Iowa & Jason Rothman, University of Florida, in First Language XX(X): 1-3, 2010
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFDC: Language acquisition
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number: 2008050227