Null arguments: the case of Japanese and Romance

Zushi, Mihoko

doi:10.1016/s0024-3841(02)00085-2

Cited by 23 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Therefore, pro is not allowed in languages like English' (Zushi, 2003, p. 586). 11 Turning to Italian, a (subject) pro-drop language, Zushi (2003) assumes that T is assigned an EPP feature that must be checked off before Spell-Out as well. The EPP feature of T is eliminated by agreement morphemes, which in turn makes Spec of TP unnecessary.…”

Section: Licensing Empty Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The null-subject parameter at the interface between syntax and pragmatics: Evidence from bilingual German–Italian, German–French and Italian–French children

2011

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This article investigates subject realizations and omissions in bilingual German-Italian, German-French and Italian-French children. The German-Italian children realize too many subjects in Italian, unlike the French-Italian child. The authors modify the criteria for cross-linguistic influence: this occurs if the vulnerable grammatical phenomenon is an interface property and if the surface strings of the two languages are analysable with the syntactic derivation of one language. All children produce target-deviant subject omissions in French and German. Odd omissions of subjects in French and German and odd realizations in Italian are all syntactically 3rd person. The authors argue for one explanation for all observations, namely the misinterpretation of the deictic nature of 1st and 2nd person as the anaphoric 3rd person. Odd realized and omitted subject pronouns are of the NP-type, independent from licensing via agreement and realized as default 3rd person.

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Section: Licensing Empty Subjectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The null-subject parameter at the interface between syntax and pragmatics: Evidence from bilingual German–Italian, German–French and Italian–French children

2011

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“…Barner, Libenson et al reported that number words are floated to a post-nominal position in Japanese child-directed speech 57% of the time. Moreover, Barner, Libenson et al note that Japanese is an argument-dropping language – i.e., it allows speakers to drop both the subjects and the objects of sentences, even if they have not been overtly mentioned in previous sentences (Zushi, 2003). This allows Japanese speakers to use number words without an overt noun.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical morphology supports early number word learning: Evidence from a comparison of young Mandarin and English learners

Corre

Huang

et al. 2016

Cognitive Psychology

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Previous studies showed that children learning a language with an obligatory singular/plural distinction (Russian and English) learn the meaning of the number word for one earlier than children learning Japanese, a language without obligatory number morphology (Barner, Libenson, Cheung, & Takasaki, 2009; Sarnecka, Kamenskaya, Yamana, Ogura, & Yudovina, 2007). This can be explained by differences in number morphology, but it can also be explained by many other differences between the languages and the environments of the children who were compared. The present study tests the hypothesis that the morphological singular/plural distinction supports the early acquisition of the meaning of the number word for one by comparing young English learners to age and SES matched young Mandarin Chinese learners. Mandarin does not have obligatory number morphology but is more similar to English than Japanese in many crucial respects. Corpus analyses show that, compared to English learners, Mandarin learners hear number words more frequently, are more likely to hear number words followed by a noun, and are more likely to hear number words in contexts where they denote a cardinal value. Two tasks show that, despite these advantages, Mandarin learners learn the meaning of the number word for one three to six months later than do English learners. These results provide the strongest evidence to date that prior knowledge of the numerical meaning of the distinction between singular and plural supports the acquisition of the meaning of the number word for one.

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“…In a recent study on monolingual French and Italian children, we have argued with Zushi (2003) and Shlonsky (1997) that the external syntax of pro differs in natural languages (cf. .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Strong and clitic pronouns in monolingual and bilingual acquisition of French and Italian

Schmitz

Müller

2008

Bilingualism

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Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1366728907003197How to cite this article: KATRIN SCHMITZ and NATASCHA MÜLLER (2008). Strong and clitic pronouns in monolingual and bilingual acquisition of French and Italian.The present article investigates the acquisition of the pronominal systems by French and Italian monolingual children and by bilingual German-French and German-Italian children, demonstrating a stable asymmetry: object and reflexive clitics are acquired later than nominative clitics and strong subject and object pronouns. We will widen the scope of former investigations to include the acquisition of strong pronouns and argue that the observed asymmetry can be accounted for if we combine the external (categorial status) and internal syntax of pronouns (internal structure). In particular, we argue for the relevance of the absence/presence of a nominal layer (N-layer) in the internal structure of a pronoun. This approach can account for the observation that pronouns containing an N-layer, i.e., strong subject pronouns, subject clitics and strong object pronouns, are acquired simultaneously and earlier than pronouns which lack the N-layer, i.e., object clitics and reflexive clitics.

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Null arguments: the case of Japanese and Romance

Cited by 23 publications

References 14 publications

The null-subject parameter at the interface between syntax and pragmatics: Evidence from bilingual German–Italian, German–French and Italian–French children

The null-subject parameter at the interface between syntax and pragmatics: Evidence from bilingual German–Italian, German–French and Italian–French children

Numerical morphology supports early number word learning: Evidence from a comparison of young Mandarin and English learners

Strong and clitic pronouns in monolingual and bilingual acquisition of French and Italian

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