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The Structural Design of Language

By Thomas S. Stroik, Michael T. Putnam

In this book, Stroik and Putnam take on Turing's challenge. They argue that the narrow syntax – the lexicon, the Numeration, and the computational system – must reside, for reasons of conceptual necessity, within the performance systems.


Book Information

   

Title: Minimal Answers
Subtitle: Ellipsis, syntax and discourse in the acquisition of European Portuguese
Written By: Ana Lúcia Santos
URL: http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=LALD%2048
Series Title: Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 48
Description:

This book offers a new contribution to the debate concerning the acquisition of the syntax-discourse interface. It provides evidence that children acquiring European Portuguese have a very early ability to spontaneously produce VP ellipsis as answers to yes-no questions. It is also argued that the distribution of VP ellipsis in European Portuguese (including its co-existence with Null Complement Anaphora) supports the hypothesis that the identification condition on ellipsis is derivable from some innate knowledge of the syntax-discourse interface. Answers to yes-no questions also provide evidence concerning children’s interpretation of questions containing a cleft or the operator só ‘only’. The analysis of spontaneous production is complemented by a comprehension experiment, showing that children have two problems in the interpretation of these questions: (i) they do not understand that the cleft and só introduce a presupposition and (ii) they start with a default focus assignment strategy and may not access other focus interpretations.

Publication Year: 2009
Publisher: John Benjamins
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BibTex: View BibTex record
Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis
Linguistic Theories
Syntax
Language Acquisition
Subject Language(s): Portuguese

Versions:
Format: Hardback
ISBN-13: 9789027253095
Prices: Europe EURO 105.00
U.S. $ 158.00
 
Format: Electronic
ISBN-13: 9789027289766
Prices: Europe EURO 105.00
U.S. $ 158.00