Signs of a developing grammar
Subject drop and inflection in early child Dutch
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10294849 |
|---|---|
| Authors | E Blom (0000-0001-8984-3650), Paul Van Geert (0000-0002-2504-1138) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2004-01-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/ling.2004.003 |
| OpenAlex | W2127297781 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 19 |
The objective of this article is to describe and explain changes in subject drop in early child language. The empirical basis of this study is provided by longitudinal spontaneous speech data from six monolingual children acquiring Dutch. The samples begin when the children enter the two-word stage, which is generally around their second birthday. The samples end when the children are able to make adult-like multiword sentences (around their third birthday). The results indicate that children learn the licensing conditions for subjects in this period, going through phases in which they overdrop subjects in finite sentences and overuse subjects in nonfinite clauses. The shape of the curves modeling subject drop indicates that, at a certain point of time, children reorganize their use of subjects. At the same time inflectional morphology comes in. This article defends the claim that this co-occurrence is not accidental, hut that knowledge of verbal inflection is a prerequisite for the acquisition of rule-governed subject use
Grammar · Inflection · Linguistics · Subject (documents) · Computer Science · History · Language Development and Disorders · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
The units of language acquisition
Knowledge of language
Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters
Issues in Italian Syntax
Verb Syntax in Italian Child Grammar
Some Notes on Linguistic Theory and Language Development
The Acquisition of Verb Placement
Lectures on Government and Binding
Continuity in lexical and morphological development
Pronominal case-errors
Functional Categories and Language Acquisition
Knowledge of language
Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint
The Full Competence Hypothesis of Clause Structure in Early German
| Citations per year | 0.11 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2007 - 2010 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |