Cover not available
Part of
L1 Acquisition and L2 Learning: The view from Romance
Edited by Larisa Avram, Anca Sevcenco and Veronica Tomescu
[Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 65] 2021
► pp. 83–108

Chapter 4
Some thoughts on (the acquisition of) control

| CLUL, School of Arts and HumanitiesUniversity of Lisbon

This paper discusses the subject / object control asymmetry in child language acquisition. Based on data reflecting the acquisition of European Portuguese, I argue that children do not have an initial absolute preference for object control and that not only subject control but also object control structures show developmental effects. This argues against analyses which assume that children are initially guided only by syntactic principles that preclude a non-local controller. Even though not excluding a syntactic bias that may favour object control, the acquisition data reviewed in this paper show that lexical acquisition has a larger role in the acquisition of control structures than is often assumed.

Keywords: object control, subject control, inflected infinitive, European Portuguese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction and general goals
  • 2.The classic acquisition problem, control as movement and intervention effects
    • 2.1Control as a case of A-movement
    • 2.2Problems for an account of children’s difficulties with control as a result of intervention
  • 3.An alternative analysis: Subject control and smuggling
    • 3.1A smuggling analysis of promise structures
    • 3.2The difficulties with object control
  • 4.Assessing the object control bias and the effects of the inflected infinitive
  • 5.General conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 November 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.65.04san
References
Agostinho, C.
(2014) The acquisition of control in European Portuguese complement clauses. (Unpublished Master’s thesis). University of Lisbon.
Agostinho, C., Santos, A. L., & Duarte, I.
(2018) The acquisition of control in European Portuguese. In A. L. Santos & A. Gonçalves (Eds.), Complement clauses in European Portuguese (pp. 263–293). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Belletti, A., & Rizzi, L.
(2012) Ways of avoiding intervention: Some thoughts on the development of object relatives, passive and control. In M. Piattelli-Palmarini & R. C. Berwick (Eds.), Rich languages from poor inputs (pp. 115–126). Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013) Intervention in grammar and processing. In I. Caponigro & C. Cecchetto (Eds.), From grammar to meaning. The spontaneous logicality of language (pp. 294–311). Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Betancort, M., Carreiras, M., & Acuña-Fariña, C.
(2006) Processing controlled PROs in Spanish. Cognition, 100, 217–282. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boeckx, C., Hornstein, N., & Nunes, J.
(2010) Control as movement. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Boland, J. E., Tanenhaus, M. K., & Garnsey, S. M.
(1990) Evidence for the immediate use of verb control information in sentence processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 413–432. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Chomsky, C.
(1969) The acquisition of syntax in children from 5 to 10. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N.
(1965) Aspects of the theory of syntax. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
(1995) The minimalist program. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Collins, C.
(2005) A smuggling approach to the passive in English. Syntax, 8(2), 81–120. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Delgado, J. P., Raposo, A., & Santos, A. L.
(2021) Assessing intervention effects in sentence processing: Object relatives vs. subject control. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 1–19. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Farkas, D.
(1988) On obligatory control. Linguistics and Philosophy, 11, 27–58. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Friedmann, N., Belletti, A., & Rizzi, L.
(2009) Relativized relatives: Types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies. Lingua, 119(1), 67–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gonçalves, A., Santos, A. L., & Duarte, I.
(2014) (Pseudo-)inflected infinitives and control as Agree . In K. Lahousse & S. Marzo (Eds.), Romance languages and linguistic theory 2012. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ Leuven 2012 (pp. 161–180). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gonçalves, R.
(2015) Romance languages do not have double objects: evidence from European Portuguese and Spanish. Estudos de Lingüistica Galega, 7, 53–67. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hornstein, N.
(1999) Movement and control. Linguistic Inquiry, 30(1), 69–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hornstein, N., & Polinsky, M.
(2010) Control as movement. Across languages and constructions. In N. Hornstein & M. Polinsky (Eds.), Movement theory of control (pp. 1–41). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Landau, I.
(2000) Elements of control: Structure and meaning in infinitival constructions. Dordrecht: Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2013) Control in generative grammar. A research companion. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Larson, R.
(1988) On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry, 19, 335–391.Google Scholar
Madeira, A. M.
(1994) On the Portuguese inflected infinitive. In J. Harris (Ed.), UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, 6, 179–203.Google Scholar
Martins, A., Santos, A. L., & Duarte, I.
(2018) Comprehension of relative clauses vs. control structures in SLI and ASD children. In A. B. Bertolini & M. J. Kaplan (Eds.), BUCLD 42: Proceedings of the 42nd annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 493–506). Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Mateu, V.
(2016) Intervention effects in the acquisition of raising and control: Evidence from English and Spanish. (Unpublished PhD dissertation). UCLA.
Modesto, M.
(2010) What Brazilian Portuguese has to say about control: Remarks on Boeckx & Hornstein. Syntax, 13(1), 78–96. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Orfitelli, R.
(2012) Argument intervention in the acquisition of A-movement (Unpublished PhD dissertation). UCLA.
Raposo, E. P.
(1989) Preposition infinitival constructions in European Portuguese. In O. Jaeggli & K. Safir (Eds.), The null subject parameter (pp. 277–305). Kluwer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosenbaum, P. S.
(1967) The grammar of English predicate complement constructions. The MIT Press.Google Scholar
(1970) A principle governing deletion in English. In R. Jacobs & P. Rosenbaum (Eds.), Readings in transformational grammar (pp. 220–229). Ginn & Co.Google Scholar
Sag, I., & Pollard, C.
(1991) An integrated theory of complement control. Language, 67(1), 63–113. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Santos, A. L., Gonçalves, A., & Hyams, N.
(2016) Aspects of the acquisition of object control and ECM-type verbs in European Portuguese. Language Acquisition, 23(3), 199–233. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Santos, A. L., Jesus, A., & Abalada, S.
(2019) How do children interpret novel control verbs? In M. Brown & B. Dailey (Eds.), BUCLD 43: BUCLD 43: Proceedings of the 43rd annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (pp. 585–598). Cascadilla Press.Google Scholar
Sheehan, M.
(2018) Control of inflected infinitives in European Portuguese. In A. L. Santos & A. Gonçalves (Eds.), Complement clauses in European Portuguese (pp. 29–58). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Snyder, W. & Hyams, N.
(2015) Minimality effects in children’s passives. In E. Di Domenico, C. Hamann, & S. Matteini (Eds.), Structures, strategies and beyond. Studies in honour of Adriana Belletti (pp. 343–368). John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stiebels, B.
(2007) Towards a typology of complement control. In B. Stiebels (Ed.), Studies in complement control. Special issue of ZAS Papers in Linguistics, 47, 1–80.Google Scholar