Minimal Answers
Ellipsis, syntax and discourse in the acquisition of European Portuguese
| University of Lisbon
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
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xi–xii
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List of figures
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xii
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Preface
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xiii–xiv
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Abbreviations used in glosses
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xv
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Chapter 1. Introduction
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1–20
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21–112
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113–136
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137–224
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225–270
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271–282
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References
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283–293
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Subject index
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295–296
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“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
Cited by
Cited by 20 other publications
Agostinho, Celina, Ana Lúcia Santos & Inês Duarte
2018.
In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17],
► pp. 261 ff. 
Costa, Ana Luísa
2019. A contribution to the implicit/explicit debate on grammar learning: the case of contrast connectors.
Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies :24(1) ► pp. 45 ff.
Cyrino, Sonia & Gabriela Matos
2016.
In The Handbook of Portuguese Linguistics,
► pp. 294 ff.
Gonçalves, Anabela & Ana Lúcia Santos
2018.
In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17],
► pp. 1 ff.
Gribanova, Vera
2017. Head movement and ellipsis in the expression of Russian polarity focus.
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 35:4 ► pp. 1079 ff.
Haznedar, Belma & F. Nihan Ketrez
2016.
In The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 20],
► pp. 1 ff.
Hengeveld, Kees & J. Lachlan Mackenzie
2014. Grammar and context in Functional Discourse Grammar.
Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 24:2 ► pp. 203 ff.
Landau, Idan
2020.
Ellipsis with a Coordinated Antecedent: An Alternative to V‐stranding
VP
‐ellipsis
.
Studia Linguistica
Landau, Idan
2020. Constraining Head-Stranding Ellipsis.
Linguistic Inquiry 51:2 ► pp. 281 ff.
Landau, Idan
2020. On the Nonexistence of Verb-Stranding VP-Ellipsis.
Linguistic Inquiry 51:2 ► pp. 341 ff.
Lipták, Anikó & Andrés Saab
2014. No N-raising out of NPs in Spanish: ellipsis as a diagnostic of head movement.
Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 32:4 ► pp. 1247 ff.
Lobo, Maria, Ana Lúcia Santos & Carla Soares-Jesel
2016. Syntactic structure and information structure: The acquisition of Portuguese clefts andBe-fragments.
Language Acquisition 23:2 ► pp. 142 ff.
Madeira, Ana
2016.
In The Handbook of Portuguese Linguistics,
► pp. 578 ff.
Martins, Ana Maria
2018.
In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17],
► pp. 101 ff.
Polinsky, Maria & Gregory Scontras
2020. Understanding heritage languages.
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 23:1 ► pp. 4 ff.
Rothman, Jason, David Giancaspro & Becky Halloran
2014.
In Portuguese-Spanish Interfaces [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 1],
► pp. 317 ff.
Santos, Ana Lúcia & Cristina Flores
2016. Comparing heritage speakers and late L2-learners of European Portuguese.
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 6:3 ► pp. 308 ff.
Sato, Yosuke & Simin Karimi
2016. Subject-object asymmetries in Persian argument ellipsis and the anti-agreement theory.
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 1:1
Silva, Carla, Irene Cadime, Iolanda Ribeiro, Sandra Santos, Ana Lúcia Santos & Fernanda Leopoldina Viana
2017. Parents’ reports of lexical and grammatical aspects of toddlers’ language in European Portuguese: Developmental trends, age and gender differences.
First Language 37:3 ► pp. 267 ff.
van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen
2017.
In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Syntax, Second Edition,
► pp. 1 ff.
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Subjects
Linguistics
BIC Subject: CFDC – Language acquisition
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General