Peter Coopmans
Biographic Data
| ID | 801049 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter Coopmans |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter |
| FAMILY NAME | Coopmans |
| SIGNATURE | COOPMANS P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Utrecht University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 13 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1983 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Development of Referential Dependency in Preschool Mandarin-Speaking Children
The productivity of Dutch diminutives
This study reports on an investigation of the productivity of the Dutch diminutive paradigm, which gives rise to five suffixal allomorphs, against the background of Yang’s (2016) Tolerance Principle. It shows how, by studying the frequency of the allomorphs and the environments in which they occur, we can use the Tolerance Principle to determine if a productive rule system can be found for the Dutch diminutives. In doing so, we also describe how …
Do children go for the nice guys? The influence of speaker benevolence and certainty on selective word learning
This study investigated how speaker certainty (a rational cue) and speaker benevolence (an emotional cue) influence children's willingness to learn words in a selective learning paradigm. In two experiments four- to six-year-olds learnt novel labels from two speakers and, after a week, their memory for these labels was reassessed. Results demonstrated that children retained the label–object pairings for at least a week. Furthermore, children pref…
On the acquisition of daar and er
Schafer & Roeper (2000) have traced the acquisition order of the various occurrences of there in English monolingual children. One of their claims is that expletive there triggers the emergence of there as a discourse anaphor. Taking their approach as a starting point, we report here on a similar search that we have carried out on files from Dutch corpora in CHILDES, focussing on the two Dutch counterparts daar and er . Dutch children face a part…
Children’s ability to use speaker certainty in learning novel words
One of the cues that children might use in learning words is the level of certainty that speakers demonstrate in their naming of a novel object. This study presented 52 4–5 year old Dutch children with a word-learning task in which two puppets each used the same label for a different novel object. In three conditions, puppets expressed their level of speaker certainty lexically (e.g. ‘I know this is a mit’ vs. ‘I think this is a mit’), they used …
Preposition stranding in development
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L2 Acquisition, Age, and Generativist Reasoning. Commentary on Birdsong
Birdsong's highly informative overview of the theoretical is-sues and facts on age and second language acquisition (L2A) has made me realize again how deceptively appealing it is to put two and two together in this overall discussion of age and acquisition. Let me explain what I mean by this temptation. If one takes the view that the goal of linguistic theory is to seek an explanation for the problem of language acquisition, for some linguists, m…
Subject–Object asymmetry in Dutch children’s comprehension of wie -questions
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Lexical Specification and Insertion
English Focus Constructions and the Theory of Grammar
A Government-Binding perspective on the imperative in English
Culicover (1976:152) states that ‘the imperative is an idiosyncratic construction in most languages’. One of the aims of this article is to show that as far as this construction in the English language is concerned, this is an overstatement if we give careful consideration to the structural properties of this construction in a restrictive framework such as Government-Binding theory. Given the proposals in current generative grammar concerning the…
Where Stylistic and Syntactic Processes Meet
In this paper I argue that there is no unique grammatical process called ‘stylistic locative inversion’ in English; its properties can be stated in purely syntactic terms if insights about similar constructions in Italian and Dutch are adapted to English. Stylistic locative inversion exemplifies what is sometimes referred to as ‘semi-pro-drop’, the existence in a language of an empty expletive subject. The language-particular trigger for this exc…
Surface Word-Order Typology and Universal Grammar
This paper criticizes the view of Hawkins (1979, 1980, 1982) that the theory of Universal Grammar must include implicational and distributional universals of word order. It shows that universals based on frequency counts of surface word order—as worked out, e.g., by Greenberg 1966—need to be reformulated in order to be relevant to the problem of language acquisition. More specifically, it discusses H's claim that the principle of Cross-Category H…
Language universals and linguistic typology
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
Where Stylistic and Syntactic Processes Meet
In this paper I argue that there is no unique grammatical process called ‘stylistic locative inversion’ in English; its properties can be stated in purely syntactic terms if insights about similar constructions in Italian and Dutch are adapted to English. Stylistic locative inversion exemplifies what is sometimes referred to as ‘semi-pro-drop’, the existence in a language of an empty expletive subject. The language-particular trigger for this exc…
A Government-Binding perspective on the imperative in English
Culicover (1976:152) states that ‘the imperative is an idiosyncratic construction in most languages’. One of the aims of this article is to show that as far as this construction in the English language is concerned, this is an overstatement if we give careful consideration to the structural properties of this construction in a restrictive framework such as Government-Binding theory. Given the proposals in current generative grammar concerning the…
Language universals and linguistic typology
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
Surface Word-Order Typology and Universal Grammar
This paper criticizes the view of Hawkins (1979, 1980, 1982) that the theory of Universal Grammar must include implicational and distributional universals of word order. It shows that universals based on frequency counts of surface word order—as worked out, e.g., by Greenberg 1966—need to be reformulated in order to be relevant to the problem of language acquisition. More specifically, it discusses H's claim that the principle of Cross-Category H…
Language universals and linguistic typology
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
Surface Word-Order Typology and Universal Grammar
This paper criticizes the view of Hawkins (1979, 1980, 1982) that the theory of Universal Grammar must include implicational and distributional universals of word order. It shows that universals based on frequency counts of surface word order—as worked out, e.g., by Greenberg 1966—need to be reformulated in order to be relevant to the problem of language acquisition. More specifically, it discusses H's claim that the principle of Cross-Category H…
A Government-Binding perspective on the imperative in English
Culicover (1976:152) states that ‘the imperative is an idiosyncratic construction in most languages’. One of the aims of this article is to show that as far as this construction in the English language is concerned, this is an overstatement if we give careful consideration to the structural properties of this construction in a restrictive framework such as Government-Binding theory. Given the proposals in current generative grammar concerning the…
Where Stylistic and Syntactic Processes Meet
In this paper I argue that there is no unique grammatical process called ‘stylistic locative inversion’ in English; its properties can be stated in purely syntactic terms if insights about similar constructions in Italian and Dutch are adapted to English. Stylistic locative inversion exemplifies what is sometimes referred to as ‘semi-pro-drop’, the existence in a language of an empty expletive subject. The language-particular trigger for this exc…
English Focus Constructions and the Theory of Grammar
Lexical Specification and Insertion
Subject–Object asymmetry in Dutch children’s comprehension of wie -questions
Preview this article: Subject–Object asymmetry in Dutch children’s comprehension of wie-questions, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/avt.18.18van-1.gif
L2 Acquisition, Age, and Generativist Reasoning. Commentary on Birdsong
Birdsong's highly informative overview of the theoretical is-sues and facts on age and second language acquisition (L2A) has made me realize again how deceptively appealing it is to put two and two together in this overall discussion of age and acquisition. Let me explain what I mean by this temptation. If one takes the view that the goal of linguistic theory is to seek an explanation for the problem of language acquisition, for some linguists, m…
Preposition stranding in development
Preview this article: Preposition stranding in development, Page 1 of 1 /docserver/preview/fulltext/avt.25.10coo-1.gif
On the acquisition of daar and er
Schafer & Roeper (2000) have traced the acquisition order of the various occurrences of there in English monolingual children. One of their claims is that expletive there triggers the emergence of there as a discourse anaphor. Taking their approach as a starting point, we report here on a similar search that we have carried out on files from Dutch corpora in CHILDES, focussing on the two Dutch counterparts daar and er . Dutch children face a part…
Children’s ability to use speaker certainty in learning novel words
One of the cues that children might use in learning words is the level of certainty that speakers demonstrate in their naming of a novel object. This study presented 52 4–5 year old Dutch children with a word-learning task in which two puppets each used the same label for a different novel object. In three conditions, puppets expressed their level of speaker certainty lexically (e.g. ‘I know this is a mit’ vs. ‘I think this is a mit’), they used …
Do children go for the nice guys? The influence of speaker benevolence and certainty on selective word learning
This study investigated how speaker certainty (a rational cue) and speaker benevolence (an emotional cue) influence children's willingness to learn words in a selective learning paradigm. In two experiments four- to six-year-olds learnt novel labels from two speakers and, after a week, their memory for these labels was reassessed. Results demonstrated that children retained the label–object pairings for at least a week. Furthermore, children pref…
The productivity of Dutch diminutives
This study reports on an investigation of the productivity of the Dutch diminutive paradigm, which gives rise to five suffixal allomorphs, against the background of Yang’s (2016) Tolerance Principle. It shows how, by studying the frequency of the allomorphs and the environments in which they occur, we can use the Tolerance Principle to determine if a productive rule system can be found for the Dutch diminutives. In doing so, we also describe how …
Development of Referential Dependency in Preschool Mandarin-Speaking Children
Linguistics (13 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation (8 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (5 works) · History (4 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (4 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (4 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works)