The acquisition of SV order in unaccusatives

Manipulating the definiteness of the NP argument

Dados Bibliográficos

ID20366293
AutoresMirta Vernice (0000-0001-9911-2755, University of Milano-Bicocca, autor correspondente), Maria Teresa Guasti (0000-0002-4470-4187, University of Milano-Bicocca)
Ano2015
Volume42
Fascículo1
Páginas210-237
Data de publicação2015-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Child Language (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0305-0009 • E-ISSN: 1469-7602
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0305000913000536
PMID24460921
OpenAlexW2069278320
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas21

In two sentence repetition experiments, we investigated whether four- and five-year-olds master distinct representations for intransitive verb classes by testing two syntactic analyses of unaccusatives (Burzio, 1986; Belletti, 1988). Under the assumption that, with unaccusatives, the partitive case of the postverbal argument is realized only on indefinites (Belletti, 1988), we tested whether children used indefiniteness as a feature to assign the partitive case to the verb's argument. In the sentences, we manipulated whether the subject preceded or followed the (unaccusative or unergative) verb and whether the subject was expressed by means of a definite or indefinite NP. With unaccusatives, children tended to place the subject in the postverbal position when the subject NP was indefinite, whereas, when the sentence presented a definite postverbal subject, children preferred to place the definite subject in the preverbal position. Definiteness exerted an effect only with unaccusatives, suggesting that children treated unergatives and unaccusatives differently

Definiteness · Language acquisition · Linguistics · Chemistry · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation