Nina Hyams
Biographic Data
| ID | 1019111 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nina Hyams |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nina |
| FAMILY NAME | Hyams |
| SIGNATURE | HYAMS N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1984 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Number, shape, and intervention effects in child Mandarin passives
Children’s difficulties with long-distance dependencies have been ascribed to intervention effects that arise from moving a noun phrase (NP) argument over another. This study investigates intervention effects in the comprehension of bèi-passives by Mandarin-speaking children. Some syntactic evidence suggests that short bèi-passives do not have a syntactically projected external argument (unlike long bèi-passives) and also cannot be interpreted as…
A Root Infinitive Analogue in Malagasy
In this paper, we present evidence for a root infinitive (RI) stage in Malagasy, an Austronesian language typologically distinct from previously studied RI languages. Drawing on a longitudinal corpus of three Malagasy-speaking children, we show that children frequently produce bare verb forms in root contexts not attested in adult input. These bare forms pattern with null subjects, default pronouns (notably first person izaho instead of aho ), an…
On the Representation of Implicit Arguments in Child Grammar
In this paper, we investigate whether Mandarin short passives contain an implicit external argument (EA; such as an agent or experiencer). Syntactic tests yield inconclusive results in Mandarin. We employ intervention effects as a diagnostic tool and demonstrate that, unlike English, Mandarin short passives do not syntactically project an implicit EA. Our findings are based on spontaneous language data from the CHILDES corpora, encompassing 1182 …
Learning unaccusativity
We examine four features of unaccusativity in child-directed and child Spanish to determine what cues children might use to distinguish unaccusative and unergative verbs. Two are cross-linguistic lexico-semantic features: Subjects of unaccusatives are patients so we expect more inanimate subjects with unaccusatives; and unaccusatives tend to have an endpoint, hence may occur more frequently with perfective aspect. The other two are language-speci…
Structural intervention effects in the acquisition of sluicing
Experimental studies show that children have greater difficulty with wh-extraction from object position than subject position, arguably an intervention effect (e.g., Relativized Minimality). In this study we provide additional evidence of a S/O asymmetry in A’-dependencies from a novel source—sluicing. The results of our first comprehension study show that English-speaking 3–6-year-olds obey the “identity condition” on sluicing—that is, they disa…
The Acquisition of Syntactically Encoded Evidentiality
This article presents several empirical studies of syntactically encoded evidentiality in English. The first part of our study consists of an adult online experiment that confirms claims in Asudeh & Toivonen (2012) that raised Perception Verb Similatives (PVSs; e.g. John looks like he is sick) encode direct evidentiality. We then present the results of an acquisition study based on an exhaustive examination of the corpora of 45 American English-s…
Eventivity effects in early grammar
During the Root Infinitive (RI) stage children produce both stative and eventive finite verbs, but their non-finite verbs are restricted to eventive predicates (Hoekstra & Hyams, 1998; Wijnen, 1997). This Eventivity Constraint (EC) holds cross-linguistically – for RIs in Dutch, German, French, and Russian, ‘bare perfectives’ in Greek, bare participles (participles without an auxiliary) in Italian, French, and German – but not for English bare ver…
Children's Grammar of Null Subjects
The null subject (NS) stage is one of the best-described hallmarks of first language development. We present a series of experiments assessing children's interpretation of NS sentences, as a way of testing the two main competing analyses of the phenomenon: grammatical accounts, under which young children's grammars license NSs in declarative sentences; and performance accounts, which hold that children have an adult grammar, but omit subjects in …
The morphosyntax of mood in early grammar with special reference to Swahili
In this paper we explore the development of the morphosyntax-semantics interface by comparing development in 4 typologically diverse languages: Dutch (a Germanic V2 language), Greek, Italian (a Romance pro-drop language) and Swahili (a Bantu language), with particular emphasis on Swahili, a relatively understudied language whose morphosyntactic structure is particularly relevant to the questions we address. We show that children acquiring these d…
Acquisition of the Malagasy voicing system
Clausal Structure in Child Greek
Over the past few years the study of first language acquisition has profited enormously from the detailed investigation of different child languages. One important finding from this line of cross-linguistic research is that form the very earliest stages children are sensitive to morphosyntactic differences in the various input languages. Child languages manifest as much typological variation
Aspects of root infinitives
On the independence and interdependence of syntactic and morphological properties
Morphosyntactic development in Italian and its relevance to parameter-setting models
Pizzuto & Caselli (1992) claim that data from the morphosyntactic development of Italian-speaking children are inconsistent with nativist, parameter-setting models of language development. In the present Note it is argued that much of the data which Pizzuto & Caselli adduce is irrelevant to the specific hypotheses they are evaluating and that those data which are relevant fully support parameter-setting and linguistictheoretic models, contrary to…
Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters
The acquisition of infinitival complements
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Aspects of root infinitives
On the independence and interdependence of syntactic and morphological properties
Children's Grammar of Null Subjects
The null subject (NS) stage is one of the best-described hallmarks of first language development. We present a series of experiments assessing children's interpretation of NS sentences, as a way of testing the two main competing analyses of the phenomenon: grammatical accounts, under which young children's grammars license NSs in declarative sentences; and performance accounts, which hold that children have an adult grammar, but omit subjects in …
The Acquisition of Syntactically Encoded Evidentiality
This article presents several empirical studies of syntactically encoded evidentiality in English. The first part of our study consists of an adult online experiment that confirms claims in Asudeh & Toivonen (2012) that raised Perception Verb Similatives (PVSs; e.g. John looks like he is sick) encode direct evidentiality. We then present the results of an acquisition study based on an exhaustive examination of the corpora of 45 American English-s…
Acquisition of the Malagasy voicing system
The acquisition of infinitival complements
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters
Morphosyntactic development in Italian and its relevance to parameter-setting models
Pizzuto & Caselli (1992) claim that data from the morphosyntactic development of Italian-speaking children are inconsistent with nativist, parameter-setting models of language development. In the present Note it is argued that much of the data which Pizzuto & Caselli adduce is irrelevant to the specific hypotheses they are evaluating and that those data which are relevant fully support parameter-setting and linguistictheoretic models, contrary to…
On the independence and interdependence of syntactic and morphological properties
Aspects of root infinitives
Clausal Structure in Child Greek
Over the past few years the study of first language acquisition has profited enormously from the detailed investigation of different child languages. One important finding from this line of cross-linguistic research is that form the very earliest stages children are sensitive to morphosyntactic differences in the various input languages. Child languages manifest as much typological variation
The morphosyntax of mood in early grammar with special reference to Swahili
In this paper we explore the development of the morphosyntax-semantics interface by comparing development in 4 typologically diverse languages: Dutch (a Germanic V2 language), Greek, Italian (a Romance pro-drop language) and Swahili (a Bantu language), with particular emphasis on Swahili, a relatively understudied language whose morphosyntactic structure is particularly relevant to the questions we address. We show that children acquiring these d…
Acquisition of the Malagasy voicing system
Eventivity effects in early grammar
During the Root Infinitive (RI) stage children produce both stative and eventive finite verbs, but their non-finite verbs are restricted to eventive predicates (Hoekstra & Hyams, 1998; Wijnen, 1997). This Eventivity Constraint (EC) holds cross-linguistically – for RIs in Dutch, German, French, and Russian, ‘bare perfectives’ in Greek, bare participles (participles without an auxiliary) in Italian, French, and German – but not for English bare ver…
Children's Grammar of Null Subjects
The null subject (NS) stage is one of the best-described hallmarks of first language development. We present a series of experiments assessing children's interpretation of NS sentences, as a way of testing the two main competing analyses of the phenomenon: grammatical accounts, under which young children's grammars license NSs in declarative sentences; and performance accounts, which hold that children have an adult grammar, but omit subjects in …
The Acquisition of Syntactically Encoded Evidentiality
This article presents several empirical studies of syntactically encoded evidentiality in English. The first part of our study consists of an adult online experiment that confirms claims in Asudeh & Toivonen (2012) that raised Perception Verb Similatives (PVSs; e.g. John looks like he is sick) encode direct evidentiality. We then present the results of an acquisition study based on an exhaustive examination of the corpora of 45 American English-s…
Structural intervention effects in the acquisition of sluicing
Experimental studies show that children have greater difficulty with wh-extraction from object position than subject position, arguably an intervention effect (e.g., Relativized Minimality). In this study we provide additional evidence of a S/O asymmetry in A’-dependencies from a novel source—sluicing. The results of our first comprehension study show that English-speaking 3–6-year-olds obey the “identity condition” on sluicing—that is, they disa…
Learning unaccusativity
We examine four features of unaccusativity in child-directed and child Spanish to determine what cues children might use to distinguish unaccusative and unergative verbs. Two are cross-linguistic lexico-semantic features: Subjects of unaccusatives are patients so we expect more inanimate subjects with unaccusatives; and unaccusatives tend to have an endpoint, hence may occur more frequently with perfective aspect. The other two are language-speci…
On the Representation of Implicit Arguments in Child Grammar
In this paper, we investigate whether Mandarin short passives contain an implicit external argument (EA; such as an agent or experiencer). Syntactic tests yield inconclusive results in Mandarin. We employ intervention effects as a diagnostic tool and demonstrate that, unlike English, Mandarin short passives do not syntactically project an implicit EA. Our findings are based on spontaneous language data from the CHILDES corpora, encompassing 1182 …
A Root Infinitive Analogue in Malagasy
In this paper, we present evidence for a root infinitive (RI) stage in Malagasy, an Austronesian language typologically distinct from previously studied RI languages. Drawing on a longitudinal corpus of three Malagasy-speaking children, we show that children frequently produce bare verb forms in root contexts not attested in adult input. These bare forms pattern with null subjects, default pronouns (notably first person izaho instead of aho ), an…
Number, shape, and intervention effects in child Mandarin passives
Children’s difficulties with long-distance dependencies have been ascribed to intervention effects that arise from moving a noun phrase (NP) argument over another. This study investigates intervention effects in the comprehension of bèi-passives by Mandarin-speaking children. Some syntactic evidence suggests that short bèi-passives do not have a syntactically projected external argument (unlike long bèi-passives) and also cannot be interpreted as…
Linguistics (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Language Development and Disorders (12 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (10 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (6 works) · Grammar (5 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (5 works)