LINGUIST List 28.4519
Mon Oct 30 2017
Diss: Language Acquisition; Hebrew: Rachel Margot Eitan: ''On the Interface of Information Structure and Word Order in Hebrew 'Give' Constructions: Evidence from Adult and Child Language''
Editor for this issue: Sarah Robinson <srobinsonlinguistlist.org>
Date: 29-Oct-2017
From: Rachel Eitan <amirgu
gmail.com>
Subject: On the Interface of Information Structure and Word Order in Hebrew 'Give' Constructions: Evidence from Adult and Child Language
E-mail this message to a friend Institution: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Program: Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics: Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2013
Author: Rachel Margot Eitan
Dissertation Title: On the Interface of Information Structure and Word Order in Hebrew 'Give' Constructions: Evidence from Adult and Child Language
Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
Subject Language(s):
Hebrew (heb) Dissertation Director:
Jeannette Schaeffer
Nomi Erteschik-Shir
Dissertation Abstract:
This study investigates the order of the verbal complements of the Hebrew ditransitive verb latet ('give') in adult and child language and examines how Information Structure affects the speaker’s choice between the two alternate orders. In particular, we investigate how this construction is affected by Information Structure considerations, namely the interpretation of the verbal complements as either topic or focus, and the application of the relevant strategies to encode them.
In an elicited production study, we systematically manipulated the informational status of the post-verbal complements so that one is a topic and the other is a focus. Participants were presented with pictures and short stories depicting the action of giving. Then, they were asked to answer wh-questions eliciting focus either on the Direct Object (DO) or the Indirect Object (IO). We collected data from thirty Hebrew speaking adults and hundred and eighty Hebrew-acquiring children between the ages 2;6-7;0.
Our adult data demonstrate that the order of the complements and their overt realization in Hebrew latet constructions are not optional but are determined by the Information Structure of the utterance and obey the rules of Reinhart’s (1995) Interface Theory. More specifically, our data reveal that although the focused object could either precede the topical object or follow it, there is a striking preference for unmarked focus in final position (in which focus is assigned main stress by Cinque’s (1993) Nuclear Stress Rule) over the marked stress-shift derivation in non-final position. In addition, the adult data indicate that a topical object, but not a focused object, can be marked by reduced forms of reference: a pronoun or omission. Overall, the adult data provide the necessary basis for the investigation of the development of Information Structure and the dative alternation in Hebrew child language.
Our child data provide support for Erteschik-Shir's (1997) suggestion that Information Structure is a component provided by Universal Grammar and thus, children possess the required knowledge to identify and encode topic and focus from a very early age (and probably innately). Our findings confirm that at least from age 2;6 on, typically developing Hebrew-acquiring children are able to distinguish between the Information Structure notions topic and focus. Our data show that children abide by the adult rules of latet constructions in the application of the Information Structure mechanisms available in Hebrew to encode the topical and focused complements of latet. Furthermore, in contrast to previous comprehension studies, our production data reveal that children do not experience any difficulties in producing the marked order. This substantiates Reinhart's Interface Theory, according to which stress-shift operation is problematic for children only in comprehension, but not in production.
In sum, this study provides much needed psycholinguistic evidence from both adult and child Hebrew for the claim that the ordering and expression of the post-verbal complements in latet constructions are not optional but are determined by Information Structure constraints.
Page Updated: 30-Oct-2017