Minimality effects in children’s passives

Abstract

Many studies find true verbal passives in English acquired only after age four, but some find three-year-olds fully adultlike. We explain this discrepancy using Relativized Minimality (RM, Rizzi 2004). Collins (2005a) argues the passive involves movement of the logical object across the logical subject (either PRO, or a lexical DP with 'by'), and normally this requires smuggling. We propose smuggling is maturationally unavailable until age four. Three-year-olds succeed only if the intervener is eliminated, as in certain Romance reflexive-clitic constructions; or if +Topic/+WH on the logical object can prevent an RM violation, as in certain studies of the English passive. Following Grillo (2008), we explain the still-later acquisition of non-actional passives by their need for both smuggling and semantic coercion.

The comprehension of passives in Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…It has been proposed that these structures involve argument movement (A-movement) giving rise to a chain between the gap in post-verbal position (where the internal argument was initially merged and its thematic role assigned) and the pre-verbal subject position, and children's difficulties have thus been attributed to a delayed acquisition of A-chains (Borer & Wexler 1987, 1992. Other authors have rather focussed on the intervention of the logical subject (John/PRO in (7)) on the chain created by passive movement, and explained selective delays with these structures rather than with A-movement across the board (in line with Hyams & Snyder 2005Snyder & Hyams 2015).…”

“…As such, Spec,IP becomes attainable for the internal argument thanks to smuggling via Spec,VoiceP (the escape hatch). For the purpose of the acquisition of passivization, the complexity of chunk-movement would imply it being difficult for children under 4 years old, either because the operation itself is maturationally unavailable before that age (Snyder & Hyams 2015), or because of the limited computational capacity of younger children (Belletti & Guasti 2015). The various analyses thus all converge to suggest that passives are challenging to acquire.…”

“…The corresponding actives of (6) and (10) do not show this difference (Gordon & Chafetz 1990;Fox & Grodzinsky 1998;Hirsch & Wexler 2006;Perovic et al 2014 3 A non-movement analysis of psychological passives is thus impossible, and in light of the view that smuggling is only consolidated after the age of 4 (Snyder & Hyams 2015), younger children are expected to struggle with psychological passives.…”

“…According to this view, difficulties with passives would be amenable to the locality principle of Relativized Minimality (RM) (Rizzi 1990(Rizzi , 2004Starke 2001), which states that 1 See Snyder & Hyams (2015) who recapitulate literature attesting to the fact that young children are successful with other A-movement constructions, such as reflexive clitics in Romance and certain raising constructions, where intervention does not arise. 2 It is important to note that a syntactically represented external argument would intervene on the chain formed by the internal argument in passives, whether explicitly realized or implicit, and thus this applies also in instances of short passives (see e.g.…”

“…2 It is important to note that a syntactically represented external argument would intervene on the chain formed by the internal argument in passives, whether explicitly realized or implicit, and thus this applies also in instances of short passives (see e.g. Collins 2005;Ortifelli 2012a, b;Snyder & Hyams 2015).…”