Pronouns as Elsewhere Elements: Implications for Language Acquisition

Grolla, Elaine

doi:10.1207/s15327817la1301_4

Cited by 11 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…In some studies that do not report a QA, children performed well with referential and quantificational antecedents alike (Kaufman 1988, Hestvik andPhilip 1999, current studies), whereas in others, children showed similarly high error rates for both types of antecedent (Lombardi and Sarma 1989, Boster 1991Exp. 2, Avrutin and Wexler 1992, Utakis 1995, Grolla 2005. Thus, the results of previous studies vary considerably (see also Kaufman 1994, Koster 1994, Elbourne 2005 for earlier reviews), and the finding of a QA is certainly not consistent.…”

Section: The Quantificational Asymmetrymentioning

confidence: 98%

Equal Treatment for All Antecedents: How Children Succeed with Principle B

et al. 2009

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Children have repeatedly been found to exhibit Principle B violations, with some reports that these violations occur only with nonquantified antecedents. This quantificational asymmetry (QA) in the delay of Principle B effect (DPBE) has been taken as support for a theory that restricts the scope of binding theory to bound variable anaphora (Reinhart 1983). However, the QA has been challenged, on the basis of discrepant findings and methodological concerns (Elbourne 2005). Here, we resolve the status of the QA with 3 studies and a review of over 30 previous studies. Using improved experimental materials, we show that children disallow local pronoun binding with both referential and quantificational antecedents when Principle B is at issue (Experiment 1), but not when Principle B is neutralized (Experiment 2). When methodological flaws are reintroduced, we replicate the QA (Experiment 3). Drawing on evidence from adult language processing, we suggest that the role of Principle B as a filter on representations during sentence understanding, in concert with pragmatic infelicities in the tasks used, accounts for the wide variability in the DPBE in the literature.

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Section: The Quantificational Asymmetrymentioning

confidence: 98%

Equal Treatment for All Antecedents: How Children Succeed with Principle B

et al. 2009

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“…The literature on the acquisition of overt pronouns shows that children, differently from adults, allow overt pronouns to be locally A-bound (CHIEN; WEXLER, 1999;GROLLA, 2010;COSTA;AMBULATE, 2010, among others).23 Our results suggest that adults also have problems in computing the antecedent of overt pronouns in structures involving c-command. One possible way of unifying our findings with observations about the acquisition of Principle B is through the Competing Computations theory (REINHART 1999(REINHART , 2006GROLLA, 2010). Reinhart proposes that every time the output of the syntactic component is not sufficient for the interfaces needs, a reference-set is generated.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 66%

Whose foot is it? Pronominal Possessives in Pro-drop Languages: An Experimental Study

Rodrigues

Pozzo

2017

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We present an experimental study (off-line acceptability rating task) conduced with native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish and Italian to verify syntactic constraints on the possessive pronoun-antecedence relation in full pro-drop languages (Italian) and partial pro-drop (Brazilian Portuguese and Finnish). The goal of the investigation was to examine the hypothesis that in full pro-drop languages, null pronouns, as well as overt pronouns, are subject to principle B, although they display a preference for local c-commanding antecedents, while in partial pro-drop languages, they respond to principle A, requiring a local c-commanding antecedent. Three factors were manipulated: type of possessive pronoun (overt vs. null), syntactic configuration regulating the intra-sentential relation between the pronoun and its antecedent (locality and c-command), the interpretation assigned to the pronoun (anaphoric, nonanaphoric and exophoric). The results suggest that the hypothesis is correct, although a significant difference between BP and Finnish was found, showing that Finns has less acceptance of non-anaphoric readings for null pronouns. As for overt pronouns, the picture is more complex, showing differences between languages and conditions. This might reflect interface issues related to recovering and evaluating antecedents.

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“…Entretanto, C&W não consideraram outra interpretação possível para as respostas infantis. Como discutido em Elbourne (2005) e Grolla (2005Grolla ( , 2008, as crianças podem ter tomado Cachinhos Dourados como antecedente para o pronome não por causa do princípio B, mas porque essa personagem estava excessivamente saliente no contexto. Essa possibilidade é bastante provável, como os fatores a seguir indicam.…”

Section: Estudos Sobre a Violação Do Princípio B Com Antecedentes Quaunclassified

“…Por conta de todos esses problemas metodológicos, Grolla (2005) discute a hipótese de que a proeminência de Cachinhos Dourados na figura de C&W pode ter chamado a atenção das crianças e feito com que elas tomassem tal personagem como antecedente para o pronome. Ou seja, as crianças teriam escolhido Cachinhos Dourados como antecedente para o pronome por causa de sua proeminência na figura e não porque elas obedeciam ao princípio B. Para testar essa hipótese, um experimento foi formulado a fim de se investigar o efeito que a proeminência do quarto personagem presente nos tipos de figuras no experimento de C&W teria em sentenças em que o princípio B não é relevante.…”

Section: Estudos Sobre a Violação Do Princípio B Com Antecedentes Quaunclassified

Metodologias experimentais em aquisição da linguagem (Experimental methods in language acquisition)

Grolla

2009

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Este artigo discute algumas metodologias experimentais amplamente utilizadas em estudos em aquisição de linguagem: a tarefa de produção eliciada, a de julgamento de gramaticalidade e a de julgamento de valor de verdade. Além de dar uma visão geral de como tais metodologias são empregadas, também são discutidos problemas que podem surgir quando tais métodos são aplicados sem se dar atenção especial a fatores extra-lingüísticos. Estudos que detectaram tais problemas e modificaram as metodologias corrigindo tais falhas são discutidos.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Aquisição de Sintaxe. Experimentos. Tarefa de Produção Eliciada. Tarefa de Julgamento de Gramaticalidade. Tarefa de Julgamento de Valor de Verdade. ABSTRACTThis article discusses some experimental methods widely employed in language acquisition studies: the elicited production task, the grammaticality judgment task and the truth-value judgment task. It provides an overview of how these methods work and discusses some problems that may arise when they are used without giving special attention to pragmatic factors. Studies that detected these problems and modified the methods fixing these flaws are discussed.KEYWORDS: Acquisition of Syntax. Experiments. Elicited Production Task. Grammaticality Judgment Task. Truth-Value Judgment Task.

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Pronouns as Elsewhere Elements: Implications for Language Acquisition

Cited by 11 publications

References 2 publications

Equal Treatment for All Antecedents: How Children Succeed with Principle B

Equal Treatment for All Antecedents: How Children Succeed with Principle B

Whose foot is it? Pronominal Possessives in Pro-drop Languages: An Experimental Study

Metodologias experimentais em aquisição da linguagem (Experimental methods in language acquisition)

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