LINGUIST List 18.2783
Tue Sep 25 2007
Diss: Lang Acq/Psycholing/Syntax: Viau: 'Possession and Spatial Mot...'
Editor for this issue: Luiza Newlin Lukowicz
<luizalinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Luiza
Newlin Lukowicz,
Possession and Spatial Motion in the Acquisition of Ditransitives
Message 1: Possession and Spatial Motion in the Acquisition of Ditransitives
Date: 25-Sep-2007
From: Luiza Newlin Lukowicz <luizalinguistlist.org>
Subject: Possession and Spatial Motion in the Acquisition of Ditransitives
E-mail this message to a friend
Institution: Northwestern University
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2007
Author: Joshua Viau
Dissertation Title: Possession and Spatial Motion in the Acquisition of Ditransitives
Dissertation URL: http://www.ling.northwestern.edu/~viau/Viau_dissertation.pdf
Linguistic Field(s):
Language Acquisition
Psycholinguistics
Syntax
Subject Language(s): English (eng)
Kannada (kan)
Dissertation Director:
Stefan Kaufmann
Jeffrey L. Lidz
Sandra R. Waxman
Dissertation Abstract:
What is the nature of the relation between a verb and its arguments? Inthis dissertation, I look to evidence from language acquisition for answers.
Any theory of ditransitives must explain certain structural asymmetriesnoted for both double-object (DO) datives (e.g. Alfonso gave Derrek the bat)and prepositional datives (Alfonso gave the bat to Derrek) (e.g. Barss &Lasnik 1986) as well as subtle but persistent meaning differencesdistinguishing the two dative constructions in many languages. A particularapproach to argument realization, Harley (2002), does both. In Harley'sapproach, structural asymmetries arise from the hierarchical nature of thedative verb phrase, in which the first dative object asymmetricallyc-commands the second in both constructions. In addition, the semanticfacts fall out from the presence of primitives encoding possession inDO-datives (HAVE) and location in prepositional datives (GO) that areembedded in these syntactic representations. I show that the structuralasymmetries and meaning differences that have been observed for adultsobtain for children as well, confirming Harley's general approach.
Concerning the structural asymmetries, a series of experiments using theTruth Value Judgment task reveal that four-year-olds already havehierarchical representations within the dative verb phrase, much as adultsdo. This finding is based on converging evidence from Principle C andquantifier-variable binding in English and quantifier-variable binding inKannada. The Kannada data in particular suggest that c-command (not linearorder) guides children's interpretive preferences. Moreover, concerningmeaning differences, a large-scale corpus study reveals that two-year-oldEnglish-speaking children demonstrate awareness of distinct possessionaland spatial meaning in DO-datives and prepositional datives, respectively,in their earliest productions.
These results add to the considerable body of work illustrating theabstractness of children's early linguistic knowledge. I argue that thedative representations that children evidently have are not learnable iflearning is construed inductively as the building up of rules andstructures based solely on cues present in the input. Rather, the availableevidence appears to favor deductive learning, whereby children are led todiscover innately specified syntactico-semantic structures as a result ofcareful observation of what datives mean.
|