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...
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| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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John Benjamins
2008
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| 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. |
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