Young Children and A-Chains: The Acquisition of Hebrew Unaccusatives

Autor/in	Friedmann, Na'ama
Titel	Young Children and A-Chains: The Acquisition of Hebrew Unaccusatives
Quelle	In: Language Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, 14 (2007) 4, S.377-422 (46 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1048-9223
Schlagwörter	Semitic Languages; Sentence Structure; Speech; Grammar; Young Children; Foreign Countries; Language Acquisition; Verbs; Language Research; Toddlers; Task Analysis + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Arabisch; Hebräisch; Satzbau; Satzstruktur; Speaking; Sprechen; Grammatik; Frühe Kindheit; Ausland; Sprachaneignung; Spracherwerb; Sprachforschung; Infant; Infants; Toddler; Kleinkind; Aufgabenanalyse
Abstract	SV sentences with unaccusative verbs like "The leaf fell" involve movement from object to subject position. This line of studies tested whether young children can produce this movement and whether they represent SV sentences with unaccusatives as derived by movement. In Hebrew, unaccusatives appear in both SV and VS orders. This optionality allows for the testing of the acquisition of object-to-subject movement. If it is not yet acquired, children are expected to produce unaccusatives in their base-generated VS order, and refrain from the SV order, or, if they assign unaccusatives an analysis of unergatives, they are expected to produce unaccusatives only in SV order, as they do with unergatives, and without possessive datives. Seven experiments assessed the production of unaccusatives and unergatives in 136 1;9-4;0-year-old Hebrew speakers, using tasks of sentence repetition, story retelling, and analysis of spontaneous speech. The results indicated that children younger than 2 years already produce SV sentences with unaccusatives. They distinguish between unaccusatives and unergatives, as they use both VS and SV orders for unaccusatives, but only SV for unergatives. They use possessive datives with unaccusatives, indicating that they analyze the argument of the unaccusative as an internal argument. Thus, children younger than 2 years can already move the argument of unaccusatives from object to subject position, namely, they can construct A-chains. (Contains 3 tables, 4 figures and 14 footnotes. The list of all sentences in Experiments 2-7 is appended.) [Research for this article was supported by the Israel Science Foundation.] (Author).
Anmerkungen	Lawrence Erlbaum. Available from: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 325 Chestnut Street Suite 800, Philadelphia, PA 19106. Tel: 800-354-1420; Fax: 215-625-2940; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/default.html
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10