Root infinitives in child second language English
An aspectual features account
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11655647 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Elena Gavruseva (0009-0008-2756-3491, University of Iowa, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 335-371 |
| Publication date | 2004-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Second language Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0267-6583 • E-ISSN: 1477-0326 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1191/0267658304sr244oa |
| OpenAlex | W2122230684 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 19 |
This article examines the emergence of finiteness in early second language (L2) English of five consecutive bilinguals (ages 6 to 9). The departure point is Gavruseva’s (2002; 2003) proposal that nonfinite root predicates result from the underspecification of syntactic aspectual heads at the initial state S 0 . Gavruseva’s ‘underspecification of AspP’ account is developed further by examining the feature contents of aspectual projections in English from a crosslinguistic perspective. It is argued that English, in contrast to Russian and French, lacks the genuine imperfective and perfective morphemes and so makes use of a greater variety of aspectual features (e.g., intrinsic and compositional telicity features, inter alia). It is also proposed that an English verb’s telicity semantics defines its aspectual class and predicts its finiteness status in children’s early grammar. An advantage of the ‘aspectual features account’ is that it explains why statives (inherent atelics) and punctual eventives (inherent telics) show much higher finiteness rates than nonpunctual eventives (an aspectual class defined by a compositional telicity feature) in the child L2 data. Other approaches to the root infinitive phenomenon such as the Truncation Hypothesis (Rizzi 1993=94) and the Morphological Deficit Hypothesis (Haznedar and Schwartz, 1997; Lardiere, 1998; Prévost and White, 2000) cannot explain these finiteness patterns
Allomorph · Contrast (vision · Feature (linguistics · Grammar · Infinitive · Linguistics · Morpheme · Participle · Resultative · Root (linguistics · Underspecification · Variety (cybernetics · Verb · Computer Science · Language Development and Disorders · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence
On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects
Word Meaning and Montague Grammar
Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics
Some Notes on Linguistic Theory and Language Development
Sentential Negation, Relativised Minimality and the Aspectual Status of Auxiliaries
The emergence of tense and agreement in child L2 French
Dissociating syntax from morphology in a divergent L2 end-state grammar
Why is ‘is’ easier than ‘-s’
Aspect Shift and Coercion
Aktionsart, aspect, and the aquisition of finiteness in early child grammar
The aspect hypothesis and the emergence of tense distinctions in naturalistic L2 acquisition
Semantics of Verbs and the Development of Verb Inflection in Child Language
The Acquisition of Tense-Aspect Morphology
Lexical Categories
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,16 |
| Citation span | 2007 - 2013 (7) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |