Morphological transparency and the Delay of Principle B Effect

Abstract

In L1 acquisition of English, Dutch, Russian, and Icelandic, children do not acquire Principle B until age 7--8, while in L1 acquisition of Italian, French, and German children no such delay is observed. This is the Delay of Principle B Effect (DPBE). Existing accounts of this contrast in terms of the clitic status of the relevant pronouns or their referential properties are unable to account for the dividing line between the languages with and without the DPBE. We relate the DPBE in language acquisition to the Absence of Principle B Effect (APBE) in the adult language. The APBE is the fact that cross-linguistically pronouns express reflexive meanings when dedicated reflexive pronouns are not available. The reason for this is that Principle B effects result from the competition between pronouns and dedicated reflexives. The delay in the acquisition of Principle B is accounted for by a delay in this competition taking effect. This delay is in turn caused by the morphological makeup of dedicated reflexive pronouns. Principle B will be acquired sooner, i.e. there will be no DPBE, when the internal morphological makeup of dedicated reflexives is more transparent. Only if dedicated reflexives are easily recognised as such in the course of acquisition will they compete with pronouns from the start. In such a case, there will be no developmental delay in the acquisition of Principle B. This approach allows us to correctly predict which languages do and which do not show the effect.

The pronoun interpretation problem in child Hungarian

“…One concerns the innateness of the rules of binding and coreference that children may or may not utilize in these tasks. It has been claimed recently that Principle B may have to be acquired and thus its acquisition is delayed in the true sense of the word in languages that have the PIP (see Elbourne 2005 andVanden Wyngaerd 2015). The results of our two experiments, taken together, support an analysis which assumes that Principle B is innate (see, among others, Grimshaw & Rosen 1990;Chien & Wexler 1990; Thornton & Wexler 1999;Grodzinsky & Reinhart 1993;Reinhart 2004;.…”

“…If they are lexically deficient to license coreferential readings (at least in the usual case), then Reinhart's (2006) Rule I (5) cannot apply and no PIP arises. As Rooryck and Vanden Wyngaerd (2015) point out, this does not explain why the PIP has been found to be absent in Norwegian and German, too, since these languages do not have clitics in the Romance sense. We cannot discuss this issue here in more detail, but make the following remarks in the context of our Hungarian experiments.…”

“…First, it is not universal. While the DPBE has been reported in English, Icelandic, Russian or Dutch, experimental evidence is available that it is absent in French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Norwegian and German (see Rooryck & Vanden Wyngaerd 2015 for a recent overview). Second, the problem only manifests itself in full in comprehension, but not in production (see Bloom et al 1994;de Villiers et al 2006;Spenader et al 2009).…”

Magát és esetleg őt is?

“…Ezt a jelenséget a szintaktikai orientáltságú szakirodalomban a B kötéselv késleltetett elsajátításából fakadó hatásnak nevezték el (the Delay of Principle B Effect, a téma áttekintését lásd Rooryck-Vanden Wyngaerd (2015) cikkében). A referenciális függőségek nyelvtanát szabályozó Kötéselveket Chomsky (1981) alapján így fogalmazza meg É.…”

“…Az angolon kívül ugyanezt a hatást mutatták ki az orosz, az izlandi vagy a holland nyelv elsajátítása során, viszont a névmásértelmezési probléma alapvetően nem jelentkezik tárgyas szerkezetekben az olaszban, a spanyolban, a franciában, a katalánban, a németben vagy a norvégban. A nyelvek közti különbségek a névmási rendszerek eltéréseire vezethetők vissza (lásd Rooryck-Vanden Wyngaerd (2015), valamint a gyenge névmások tárgyalását lentebb), és a legújabb kutatások szerint megfelelő körülmények között akkor is jelentkezhet a névmásértelmezési probléma bizonyos szerkezetekben, ha egyébként az adott nyelvre alapesetben nem jellemző ez (lásd Brunetto (2015) olasz nyelvi kutatásait).…”