Minimal Answers
Ellipsis, syntax and discourse in the acquisition of European Portuguese
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
Published online on 20 February 2009
Published online on 20 February 2009
© 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
Cited by (31)
Cited by 31 other publications
Agostinho, Celina, Anna Gavarró & Ana Lúcia Santos
Gutiérrez Maté, Miguel
Nel, Joanine
Lipták, Anikó
Agostinho, Celina & Anna Gavarró Algueró
2021. The acquisition of verbal passives by Portuguese-speaking children. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2017 [Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 355], ► pp. 10 ff.
Arregi, Karlos & Asia Pietraszko
Cadime, Irene, Ana Lúcia Santos, Iolanda Ribeiro & Fernanda Leopoldina Viana
D’Ortenzio, Silvia & Francesca Volpato
2021. Chapter 6. Assessing children’s syntactic proficiency through a sentence repetition task. In L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, 65], ► pp. 134 ff.
Hein, Johannes
Polinsky, Maria & Gregory Scontras
Costa, Ana Luísa
Agostinho, Celina, Ana Lúcia Santos & Inês Duarte
2018. The acquisition of control in European Portuguese. In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17], ► pp. 261 ff.
Gonçalves, Anabela & Ana Lúcia Santos
2018. Complement clauses in Portuguese. In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17], ► pp. 1 ff.
Landau, Idan
Landau, Idan
Landau, Idan
Martins, Ana Maria
2018. Infinitival complements of causative/perception verbs in a diachronic perspective. In Complement Clauses in Portuguese [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 17], ► pp. 101 ff.
Gribanova, Vera
Gribanova, Vera
Silva, Carla, Irene Cadime, Iolanda Ribeiro, Sandra Santos, Ana Lúcia Santos & Fernanda Leopoldina Viana
van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen
Cyrino, Sonia & Gabriela Matos
Haznedar, Belma & F. Nihan Ketrez
2016. Introduction. In The Acquisition of Turkish in Childhood [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 20], ► pp. 1 ff.
Lobo, Maria, Ana Lúcia Santos & Carla Soares-Jesel
Madeira, Ana
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
Hengeveld, Kees & J. Lachlan Mackenzie
2015. Grammar and context in Functional Discourse Grammar. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 203 ff.
Lipták, Anikó & Andrés Saab
Rothman, Jason, David Giancaspro & Becky Halloran
2014. On the structural basis of non-redundant acquisition. In Portuguese-Spanish Interfaces [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 1], ► pp. 317 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 october 2024. 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
Main BIC Subject
CFDC: Language acquisition
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General