Languages can differ in fundamental ways with respect to the syntax of sentences with a "missing" direct object. Whereas Japanese and Korean permit null direct objects that are licensed under general discourse conditions (the recoverability of the referent from context) without regard for choice of verb, object ellipsis in English obeys lexical…

Although most researchers recognise that the language repertoire of bilinguals can vary, few studies have tried to address variation in bilingual competence in any detail. This study aims to take a first step towards further understanding the way in which bilingual competencies can vary at the level of syntax by comparing the use of syntactic…

Examines a mixed pattern of subject omission in Hebrew. Longitudinal data is presented from three children whose first and only language is Hebrew. Findings show very early acquisition of the null subject system. (Author/VWL)

Suggests that children follow different paths into learning verbs, and that there are several forces guiding the learning process: cognitive as well as language specific matters, such as morphology, semantics, and discourse. Sketches the basic characteristics of verbs in Tzotzil and examines two children's productions at the end of their…

A study investigating the acquisition of empty categories (ECs) in Sinhala, a language of the Indo-Aryan family spoken in Sri Lanka, is reported in part. The results examined here concern ECs occurring in a subset of adverbial clause types differing with regard to the kinds of null subjects they permit, including those obligatorily coindexed,…

Reports the findings of a case study of bilingual first language acquisition in Catalan and English. Presents a general overview of a child's syntactic development from the age of 1 year 3 months to 4 years and 2 months. Focuses on the question of subject realization in the two contrasting languages the child is acquiring simultaneously. Data…

Explores the acquisition process of relative clauses in Japanese and Korean. Examines the issue of whether Korean "kes" and Japanese "no" found in Korean and Japanese relative clauses are each a complementizer or a head noun.(Author/VWL)

Argues that functional categories instantiated in the learners' first language (L1) transfer to the initial state of second language syntactic development. On the basis of Zulu interlanguage data on acquisition of the obligatory declarative complementizer "ukuthi" (that) by English native speakers, argues that Comp contains a null…

Addresses the morphosyntactic development of two bilingual children and the issues raised by the controversy between the single system and the separate development hypotheses. Set within a generative grammar framework, evidence on German/English and Latvian/English is presented from the earliest stages of language development. (Author/VWL)

The results of ongoing research on the acquisition of Irish as a first language are presented in this collection of four papers from a 1991 seminar and a fifth paper specially commissioned for this volume. The study of Irish syntax is of particular interest because of its contribution to the ongoing search for a Universal Grammar. The papers and…

An analysis of one theory of the acquisition of head movement by children is presented, using longitudinal data from the Mayan language, K'iche'. This theory assumes that children would just require positive evidence of head movement in the input language to instantiate the constructions of their own grammar. The Incorporation Theory addresses the…

Examined the distribution of two Hebrew nominal structures in spoken and written texts of two genres produced by 90 native-speaking participants. Written texts were found to be denser than spoken texts lexically and syntactically as measured by a number of novel N-N compounds and denominal adjectives per clause; in older age groups this difference…

Investigates the factors that constrain and promote the selection of noun compound types in spoken and written Hebrew. Three types of data were examined, one spoken and two written. Lexical, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic analyses revealed that construct-state compounds are the default form for expressing relations. (55 references) (Author)

A proposal that further generalizes a rule in Government and Binding theory (Chomsky, 1981) is examined for its implications for acquisition of verb movement. Mark Baker's proposal extends the Move-alpha rule to posit that the head of any phrase may be moved to become incorporated into the head of any phrase that properly governs the phrase where…

Presents evidence for a theory that children learning Russian at a certain age know a syntactic principle that governs the distribution of pronouns, but that they do not know a pragmatic or semantic principle that restricts the situations in which noun phrases may be contraindexed. (Contains 48 references.) (JP)