Associative anaphora refers to a discourse operation that links a definite determiner phrase (DP) to an antecedent that acts as an indirect referent of the definite DP. For example, in the sequence 'I bought a laptop. The keyboard was black', the definite DP 'the keyboard' is linked to 'a laptop', meaning 'the keyboard of the laptop'. The…

This year's conference theme, "Be Seen, Be Heard," reflected not only our goal of celebrating our achievements but also represented our intent of making sure everyone's voices are heard, especially during 2017's difficult political climate. The conference opened with a motivating address from Dean Laura E. Lyons, followed by an…

In this study, 5-year-olds and adults described scenes that differed according to whether (a) the subject or object of a transitive verb represented an accessible or inaccessible referent, consistent or inconsistent with patterns of preferred argument structure, and (b) a simple noun was sufficient to uniquely identify an inaccessible referent.…

In the current study we investigate whether 2- and 3-year-old German children use intonation productively to mark the informational status of referents. Using a story-telling task, we compared children's and adults' intonational realization via pitch accent (H*, L* and de-accentuation) of New, Given, and Contrastive referents. Both children and…

The study examines strategies multilingual children use to interpret grammatical relations, focusing on their two primary languages, Lajamanu Warlpiri and Light Warlpiri. Both languages use mixed systems for indicating grammatical relations. In both languages ergative-absolutive case-marking indicates core arguments, but to different extents in…

Two-year-olds assign appropriate interpretations to verbs presented in two English transitivity alternations, the causal and unspecified-object alternations (Naigles, 1996). Here we explored how they might do so. Causal and unspecified-object verbs are syntactically similar. They can be either transitive or intransitive, but differ in the semantic…

This study addressed four questions raised in syntactic acquisition studies conducted by Carol Chomsky and others. Specifically, questions concerned the nature of syntactic structures in children's language repertoires, the uniformity and rate of acquisition of particular structures, the generalizability of the minimal-distance principle, and the…

Type of discourse and syntax are related; speech researchers will have to specify type of discourse for their results to be comparable with other studies. (JH)

Developmental data from the acquisition of English by a German child, aged 5, are analyzed with a view to identifying structural conditions that give rise to interference, and to determine which L2 structures are affected and which structures govern developmental changes. Word order in German and English sentences ahve reflexes in different…

Research indicates that first (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition involve some of the same processes, yet L2 learners apparently acquire the structures of the target language in a systematic way by passing through a sequence of developmental stages. This study shows that in the earliest stages of syntactic development the L2 learner's…

The project described in this report examines the development of Swedish-speaking children's syntax from the appearance of the first two-work sentences until all the basic syntactical rules are mastered. The procedures and techniques for the experiment are described and preliminary findings are discussed. Children practice language by repeating an…

This paper summarizes the results of a longitudinal study of a child native speaker of French acquiring English. The observation period covered the child's progress from age 4 years, 9 months to age 5 years, 8 months. An analysis was made of the acquisition of the interrogative and negative structures and of nine grammatical morphemes. In…

This paper investigates the development of negative Wh-questions in a four year old subject acquiring English as her L1. Spontaneous and elicited speech samples were collected over a period of 6 months. During the course of the study, the subject began to invert subject and auxiliary, and by the end of the study she was inverting correctly in 38%…