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
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
Costa, Ana Luísa
Gonçalves, Anabela & Ana Lúcia Santos
Gribanova, Vera
Haznedar, Belma & F. Nihan Ketrez
Hengeveld, Kees & J. Lachlan Mackenzie
Landau, Idan
Landau, Idan
Lipták, Anikó & Andrés Saab
Lobo, Maria, Ana Lúcia Santos & Carla Soares-Jesel
Martins, Ana Maria
Polinsky, Maria & Gregory Scontras
Rothman, Jason, David Giancaspro & Becky Halloran
Santos, Ana Lúcia & Cristina Flores
Sato, Yosuke & Simin Karimi
Silva, Carla, Irene Cadime, Iolanda Ribeiro, Sandra Santos, Ana Lúcia Santos & Fernanda Leopoldina Viana
van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 07 february 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Linguistics
BIC Subject: CFDC – Language acquisition
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General