LINGUIST List 15.281

Sun Jan 25 2004

Qs: L1 Acquisition/Metaphor; Quotation Morphosyntax

Editor for this issue: Naomi Fox <foxlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Ana, METAPHORS AND METONYMIES IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
2. Philippe De Brabanter, Quotation/Mention: Morphology and Syntax

Dear linguist.

I am searching information for my thesis on children first language 
acquisition and I would like to know whether there are any studies or
publications on the early acquisition of metaphors and metonymies in
children that are starting to talk (metaphors and metomymies not as
literary resources but from a cognitive point of view). I am also 
interested in the acquisition of spatial categories. 

I hope you can help me. Thank you very much indeed. ANA.

Dear linguists,

There exist very detailed semantic and pragmatic theories of
quotation/mention/autonymy. Good examples are Cappelen & Lepore (Mind,
1997), Saka (Mind, 1998) and Recanati (Mind, 2001). However, these
theories are based almost exclusively on English data (marginally on
French). It may well be that data from other languages, especially
case languages, is relevant to that kind of theorising. Let me give
one example: about the sentence 'Asinus est hominis' ('a donkey
belongs to (a) man), a Latin writer might say something like: [In that
sentence] 'Homo praedicatur de asino, whereas an English one would
write 'Hominis' is predicated of 'asinus', or possibly, using the
unmarked citation-forms, ''Homo' is predicated of 'asinus'. This means
that Latin usually treats the quoted sequence just like any other
noun. Another example that confirms this: whereas an English speker
would say 'Horses' is a noun, a Latin speaker might say 'Equi' sunt
nomen (literally 'Equi' are a noun). What I am interested in is how
other languages (whatever the family they belong to) treat quoted
sequences from a morphosyntactic view. If you wish to help me, I would
appreciate it if you could translate the following sentences into the
relevant language and inform me of whatever interesting morphological
or syntactic processes are involved. Additional 'general explanations'
are welcome too, as are your own theoretical proposals.

(I suggest you translate the quotations too, as if you were talking
about words in your language rather than in English, except in 3))

1) 'Tables' is a plural noun.
2) 'Miriam' is nice, short and musical.
3) 'Belles' is a French adjective and it is feminine plural.
4) She's written 'tables' instead of 'table'
5) She's written 'were' instead of 'was'.
6) In 'This car is Mary's, 'Mary' stands for the possessor and 'this
car' for the thing possessed.
7) In 'This car is Mary's, 'Mary's' is predicated of 'this car'.
8) I prefer 'big' to 'large'.
9) Her 'brother' turned out to be her second husband!
10) She said she didn't want to 'spend the rest of my life in prison.

Thanks in advance for your replies and for the time and effort you've put in.

Philippe De Brabanter
Institut Jean Nicod '94 Paris