NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Showing all 9 results Save | Export
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
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
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Matsuo, Ayumi; Duffield, Nigel – Language Acquisition, 2001
Reports on experiments investigating children's knowledge of the constraints on ellipsis constructions in English, focusing on subtle contrasts between verb phrase ellipsis (VPE) and VP-anaphora (VPA). Results from parallel experiments employing the same stimuli but with different methodologies show that young children can correctly distinguish…
Descriptors: Child Language, English, Language Acquisition, Phrase Structure
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Gavruseva, Elena; Thornton, Rosalind – Language Acquisition, 2001
Investigated children's acquisition of short- and long-distance "whose"-questions to see whether children know that, in English, the entire "whose"-phrase must pied-pipe to the specifier of complementizer. Subjects were English-speaking children, ages 4-6. phrase. (Author/VWL)
Descriptors: Child Language, English, Language Acquisition, Linguistic Theory
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
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
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
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
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
de Hoop, Helen; Kramer, Irene – Language Acquisition, 2006
We find a general, language-independent pattern in child language acquisition in which there is a clear difference between subject and object noun phrases. On one hand, indefinite objects tend to be interpreted nonreferentially, independently of word order and across experiments and languages. On the other hand, indefinite subjects tend to be…
Descriptors: Word Order, Nouns, Child Language, Language Acquisition
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Demuth, Katherine – Language Acquisition, 1995
This article examines the acquisition of wh-questions and relative clauses in Sesotho, a language with no wh-movement in either questions or relatives, and in which wh-questions must be clefted. (10 references) (JL)
Descriptors: Child Language, Language Acquisition, Language Research, Language Usage
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
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)
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Grondin, Nathalie; White, Lydia – Language Acquisition, 1996
Investigates the functional projections in second-language (L2) acquisition by examining the emergence of functional categories in the L2 acquisition of French by children. Data include the productive use of determiners, inflection, case marking, subject clitics, wh-questions, and correct negative placement. (57 references) (Author/CK)
Descriptors: Case (Grammar), Child Language, Determiners (Languages), Foreign Countries