How children's relatives solve a problem for minimalism

Abstract

Current work in syntax reexamines basic properties of movement. Under the minimalist assumptions of Chomsky (1995), movement is prohibited unless forced by grammatical considerations. From a set of comparable derivations, the one involving the least amount of moved material should therefore block other derivations. Within this framework, any cases of optional movement are problematic. We addressed this issue with experiments on stranding and pied-piping in relative clauses in 115 English learners, aged 3;5 to 11;11, and an adult control group. All subjects participated in an elicited production experiment and a grammaticality judgment experiment. Our findings suggest that pied-piping is possible in young children's grammars only when stranding is ruled out, as predicted by minimalism. We claim the children's responses represent the 'natural' grammar while the adults' responses reflect a prescriptive artifact. We also found a discrepancy in all subject groups between production and judgments of the genitive pied-piping construction. We account for this finding with Kayne's (1994) analysis of relative clauses.

Comparison of modalities in SLI syntax: A study on the comprehension and production of non-canonical sentences

“…Ambiguous ORs with post-verbal subjects were counted separately as occurrences of VS order (see section 4.2.1). 4 For child Italian also see: Guasti and Cardinaletti (2003); child English: McDaniel et al (1998);de Villiers (1988); child French: Guasti and Cardinaletti (2003); Guasti et al (1996); Labelle (1990);child Spanish: Ferreiro et al (1976). 5 We counted the utterances as correct relative clauses when the head of the relative was: (i) explicit, (ii) non-explicit, (iii) a demonstrative pronoun ''quello/a'' (that-one-masc/fem).…”

Uncertainty About the Rest of the Sentence

“…13. McDaniel, McKee, and Bernstein (1998) presented another psycholinguistic application of this analysis. 14.…”

Elicited production of relative clauses in children with Williams syndrome

“…Among those published reports that do provide this information, a consistent pattern has been observed. In studies with children as young as age 3 years ( BarShalom, Crain & Shankweiler, 1993;McDaniel, McKee, & Bernstein, 1998;McKee & McDaniel, 2001), rates of production of subject gap (SG) relative clauses (e.g., the elephant that is flying) are very high (75Á100%) in trials designed to elicit these structures. By comparison, rates of production of object gap (OG) relative clauses (e.g., the one who the boy is kissing) are consistently lower (no higher than 55%) in trials designed to elicit these structures, and some children fail to produce any OG relative clauses at all in a testing session.…”