Verb Movement and Subject Placement in the Acquisition of Word Order: Pragmatics or Structural Economy
This paper reports on a study investigating three children acquiring a dialect of Norwegian (Tromsø). It is shown that, although verb second (V2) word order is attested early in non-subject-initial declaratives and questions, the children produce nontarget-consistent word order in these construction...
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Other Authors: | |
Format: | Text |
Language: | English |
Published: |
John Benjamins
2008
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.296.593 http://www.hum.uit.no/a/westergaard/PUBLICATIONS/WES-LALD06.pdf |
Summary: | This paper reports on a study investigating three children acquiring a dialect of Norwegian (Tromsø). It is shown that, although verb second (V2) word order is attested early in non-subject-initial declaratives and questions, the children produce nontarget-consistent word order in these constructions at an early stage, failing to move pronominal subjects past negation or an adverb. This is analyzed within a split-CP model which also assumes the existence of two subject positions in the IP domain, a high one for informationally given subjects and a lower one for subjects conveying new information. A pragmatic account of the child data is considered, but is rejected in favor of an economy-based analysis which includes factors such as input frequency and complexity. 1. |
---|