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Lidz, Jeffrey; Musolino, Julien – Language Acquisition, 2006
Theories of indefinites vary with respect to whether these noun phrases can be treated as quantificational. Although everyone seems to be in agreement that indefinites do not always introduce their own quantificational force, there is widespread disagreement as to whether they ever do. In this article, we present experimental evidence from…
Descriptors: Child Language, Children, Dravidian Languages, English
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Thornton, Rosalind – Language Acquisition, 2002
Reanalyzes what the literature has taken to be children's productions of Gen subjects and argues that Gen subjects do not exist in child English. Suggests that what look like Gen subjects appear only in specific discourse contexts: contexts of contrastive focus or contexts of emphatic focus. (Author/VWL)
Descriptors: Child Language, English, Grammar, Language Acquisition
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Guasti, Maria Teresa; Chierchia, Gennaro – Language Acquisition, 2000
Examines whether certain reconstruction effects are present in child language. Points out an unexpected restriction on forward anaphora that is argued to be a case in which Principle C of the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981; 1986) operates at the reconstructed level. Results suggest that the ability to judge instances of forward anaphora and of…
Descriptors: Child Language, Grammar, Italian, Language Acquisition
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Labelle, Marie – Language Acquisition, 1996
Argues that French-speaking children age 3;0 to 6;0 (and older) produce relative clauses without moving lexical relative phrases to a clause-initial position. This article contrasts three accounts of this fact and concludes that the account stating that relative clauses are produced without syntactic "wh"-movement provides the best…
Descriptors: Adults, Child Language, Elementary School Students, French
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Clahsen, Harald – Language Acquisition, 1991
Argues that to improve the parameter model as a theory of language acquisition it has to be constrained in several ways. Results on the acquisition of subject-verb agreement, verb placement, empty subjects, and negation in German child language are presented. (55 references) (JL)
Descriptors: Child Language, German, Grammar, Language Acquisition
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Matsuoka, Kazumi – Language Acquisition, 1997
Extends the study of children's knowledge of Binding Condition B to a construction containing pronouns embedded in conjoined noun phrases. The study included pronouns bound by a quantifier. Results support the argument that anaphoric relations are constrained by more than one module of grammar. (12 references) (Author/CK)
Descriptors: Child Language, Grammar, Language Acquisition, Linguistic Theory
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Clahsen, Harald; And Others – Language Acquisition, 1994
Examined the representation of phrase structure in early child German through the investigation of longitudinal data from seven German-speaking toddlers with respect to verb placement, verb inflection, negation, /wh/ pronouns, and complementizers. It is argued that children construct phrase-structure trees in a gradual fashion, on the basis of…
Descriptors: Child Language, German, Grammar, Language Acquisition
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Crain, Stephen; And Others – Language Acquisition, 1996
Argues against the linguistic account of children's responses to sentences with universal quantification and reports on investigations of their comprehension and production of quantificational sentences. The article concludes that young children have full grammatical competence with universal quantification. (58 references) (Author/CK)
Descriptors: Adults, American Sign Language, Child Language, Deafness
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O'Day, Paula A. – Language Acquisition, 1994
This study investigated four- and six-year-olds' support pursuing the role of positive evidence in the acquisition of the knowledge of lexical features such as the control status of individual verbs. Findings seem to be compatible with a claim that grammatical knowledge is instantaneous. (Contains 24 references.) (Author/LB)
Descriptors: Child Language, Grammar, Language Acquisition, Language Processing
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Ingham, Richard – Language Acquisition, 1998
Reports a case study of a British 2-year old that shows a stage in syntactic development without a subject agreement protection but with a tense phrase. A sharp contrast in use of verb forms suggests that the child had left the Optional Infinitive stage and entered a transitional stage, where the major development is that the status of the bare…
Descriptors: Case Studies, Child Language, English, Grammar
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Muller, Natascha – Language Acquisition, 1996
Analyzes the speech of a German-French bilingual boy and observes two major developmental phases: (1) one characterized by object drop similar to that seen in Chinese; and (2) one characterized by the acquisition of the object clitic paradigm and a shift to an adult-like morphological licensing mechanism. (84 references) (Author/CK)
Descriptors: Bilingualism, Child Language, Chinese, Developmental Stages
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Bottari, Piero; Cipriani, Paola; Chilosi, Anna Maria; Pfanner, Lucia – Language Acquisition, 1998
Presents data that challenge the view that the omission of functional categories by children with specific language impairment is a manifestation of the same immaturity characterizing the grammar of young children without impairment. Data include atypically high omissions or even almost total absence of determiners in the speech productions of a…
Descriptors: Child Language, Determiners (Languages), Expressive Language, Grammar
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Salidis, Joanna; Johnson, Jacqueline S. – Language Acquisition, 1997
Evaluates two developmental models incorporating innovations in prosodic theory using the phonological forms of one child's vocabulary documented for the first nine months of language production. Results indicate the relevance of the prosodic hierarchy in the early grammar as well as considerable early knowledge of prosodic structure below the…
Descriptors: Case Studies, Child Language, Developmental Stages, Grammar
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Bohnacker, Ute – Language Acquisition, 1997
Addresses phenomena exhibited by young children such as suffixed and free articles, double definiteness, genitives, pronouns, and "nominal style." Shows that analysis of these early data must invoke at least one functional projection above the noun phrase. Findings argue against any claim about the universal absence of functional…
Descriptors: Child Language, Data Analysis, Foreign Countries, Form Classes (Languages)
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Pierce, Amy E. – Language Acquisition, 1992
Empirical evidence is presented in favor of a theory that attributes the delay in the acquisition of the passive to young children's ability to accomplish nonlocal assignment of features. Two experiments testing monolingual Spanish-speaking children's knowledge of the passive are discussed and analyzed in light of the theory of Argument-chain…
Descriptors: Child Development, Child Language, Grammar, Language Acquisition
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