|
|
 E-mail this message to a friend
|
|
Title:
|
Negative Polarity Items and Negation: Tandem acquisition
|
|
Author:
|
Sjoukje van der Wal
|
|
Email:
|
click here to access email
|
|
Homepage:
|
http://web.mit.edu/sjoukje/www/contents.htm
|
|
Degree Awarded:
|
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
, Department of Dutch
|
|
Degree Date:
|
1996
|
|
Linguistic Subfield(s):
|
Psycholinguistics
Language Acquisition
|
|
Subject Language(s):
|
Dutch
|
|
Director(s):
|
Frans Zwarts
Jack Hoeksema
|
|
|
Abstract:
|
|
This dissertation addresses the question as to how the restrictions on the distribution of Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) are acquired by children. The focus in this investigation is on Dutch, with a few short excursions into other languages. The data come from corpus studies of spontaneous speech and two experiments.
First, in Chapter 1, the multi-facet phenomenon of polarity sensitivity is presented. This chapter discusses the broad range of NPIs, the clustering of these expressions in specific semantic domains, as well as the different theories which have attempted to capture the restrictions governing their distribution. A point of specific relevance for acquisition matters is that NPIs are negative exceptions to the rules of grammar. This poses the 'no negative evidence problem': how do children, in the absence of evidence about what is NOT grammatical in the language they are acquiring, deal with the hazards of making too broad generalizations? The most advantageous acquisition strategy would seem to be a conservative one, in which children start off with a very narrow generalization which in time is to be widened on the basis of positive evidence available in the adult input.
Chapter 2 discusses spontaneous speech data about the onset of Dutch NPIs, at the end of the first year. The first-appearing NPIs, the verb 'hoeven' (have to/need) and the adverb 'meer' (anymore), occur in very simple sentences. Nevertheless, already at this young age, the crucial condition for grammaticality is met: these expressions occur only in combination with negation. The spontaneous speech data presented in Chapter 3 show that this pattern of usage continues at a later age. At the same time, however, the licensed utterances are now accompanied by utterances which from an adult point of view are ungrammatical, as they contain no correct licenser. The question then arises as to whether such errors might result from overgeneralizing. In order to investigate this matter, an experiment with children is carried out which elicits indirect grammaticality judgments of both correct and incorrect utterances with the NPI 'hoeven'. The response patterns make it clear that young children are sensitive to the restrictions on the distribution of `hoeven'; in general, they do not accept utterances in which `hoeven' is not accompanied by a licenser.
In the light of this finding, the patterns found in spontaneous speech are reconsidered in Chapter 4, in order to clear up the apparent incongruity between the experimental results and the naturalistic data. A close investigation of the spontaneous speech data shows that the acquisition of NPI licensing is indissolubly connected with the acquisition of negation, in such a way that children's developing knowledge of ways to express negative meaning functions as the forerunner for environments in which they use NPIs.
Chapter 5 pursues the developmental line further and investigates the question how children's early sensitivity to the restrictions on NPIs is adjusted and unfolded until it results in a licensing pattern which is in complete accordance with adult usage. Data from a written corpus and the results from a second grammaticality judgment experiment show that this is a protracted process which continues until the teenage years.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page Updated: 29-Nov-2009
Please report any bad links or misclassified data
LINGUIST Homepage | Read
LINGUIST | Contact us
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed
on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.
|
|
