Some Notes on Linguistic Theory and Language Development: The Case of Root Infinitives

Rizzi, Luigi

doi:10.1207/s15327817la0304_2

Cited by 329 publications

(215 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…For example, Hyams (1996) argues that children can leave functional heads such as I (Inflection) and D (Determiner) underspecified in the underlying representation of the sentence, which results in a lack of finiteness in the verbal domain and a lack of specificity in the nominal domain; and Rizzi (1994) argues that, rather than projecting a full CP (Complementizer Phrase) structure, children have the option of truncating lower down the clause, with a structure truncated below TP (Tense Phrase) resulting in a nonfinite clause. However, the most influential account of OI errors is probably that of Wexler (1994Wexler ( , 1998Schütze & Wexler, 1996).…”

Section: The Optional Infinitive Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating the cross-linguistic pattern of Optional Infinitive errors in children’s declaratives and Wh- questions

et al. 2015

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Section: The Optional Infinitive Phenomenonmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulating the cross-linguistic pattern of Optional Infinitive errors in children’s declaratives and Wh- questions

et al. 2015

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“…Some researchers both in theoretical linguistics (Grimshaw, 1991) and in language acquisition (Rizzi, 1994) assert that ''If any higher projection is present, all those which intervene between the higher projection and the lowest projection must be present also'' (Grimshaw, 1991). This raises the question of whether the nodes higher than the impaired Tense node are present or are they defective as well.…”

Section: Sentence Structure Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6). Agrammatics, on this account, have pruned structures (somewhat reminiscent of Rizzi's (1994) idea for children in the ''root infinitive'' stage having truncated structures). This is the reason why tense, as well as copula, complementizers, and Wh-words, are impaired in RS's production.…”

Section: The Syntactic Locus Of the Impairmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tense and Agreement in Agrammatic Production: Pruning the Syntactic Tree

1997

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This paper discusses the description of agrammatic production focusing on the verbal inflectional morphology. Agrammatism in Hebrew is investigated through an experiment with a patient who displays a highly selective impairment: agreement inflection is completely intact, but tense inflection, use of copula, and embedded structures are severely impaired. A retrospective examination of the literature shows that our findings are corroborated by others. A selective account of the agrammatic production deficiency is proposed, according to which only a subclass of the functional syntactic categories is impaired in this syndrome. The consequence of this deficit is the pruning of the syntactic phrase marker of agrammatic patients, which impairs performance from the impaired node and higher. These findings also bear upon central issues in linguistic theories, particularly that of Pollock (1989), regarding split inflection.

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“…the Root/Optional Infinitive (OI) phenomenon (Rizzi 1994, Wexler 1994. In particular, the observation that there is a stage of development when both finite be forms and inflection on main verbs are apparently optional has led to the suggestion that these two phenomena should be attributed to the same underlying cause.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Non-omission of Nonfinite Be

Schütze

2004

NLY

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It has long been known that children learning English optionally omit finite forms of the verb be (both copula and auxiliary). What makes be omissions possible? A classic answer is that be is semantically empty, hence a good choice to omit under performance-related pressures. What would this hypothesis lead us to expect about the infinitive form of be? In terms of semantic vacuity, nonfinite be is an even better choice for omission than finite be , since it does not carry tense or agreement information—most such deletions would be completely recoverable. Thus, the semantic vacuity hypothesis would lead us to expect omission of nonfinite be to be at least as frequent as omission of finite be . This is contrasted with the suggestion that be omission be incorporated into the Root/Optional Infinitive phenomenon. The latter finiteness hypothesis makes different predictions from the semantic vacuity hypothesis with respect to the relative rate of nonfinite be omission. The finding is that, in each relevant transcript, omission of finite be is attested, use of nonfinite be is attested, but there are no instances of omission of nonfinite be , contra the prediction of the semantic vacuity hypothesis. I develop an analysis within the Agreement/Tense Omission Model of the underspecification of Infl (cf. Schütze 1997). I claim that finite forms of be in (adult and child) English are fused V+I heads, in the sense of Halle & Marantz’s (1993) Distributed Morphology. Their locus for vocabulary insertion has values for person/number, tense, and lexical category. The fused vocabulary items cannot be inserted in a syntactic structure in which INFL features have been underspecified. Overt be arises only when both AgrS and Tense are fully specified. Null be , i.e. Ø, the default member of the paradigm, arises from underspecification of Tense and/or underspecification of AgrS.

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Some Notes on Linguistic Theory and Language Development: The Case of Root Infinitives

Cited by 329 publications

References 11 publications

Simulating the cross-linguistic pattern of Optional Infinitive errors in children’s declaratives and Wh- questions

Simulating the cross-linguistic pattern of Optional Infinitive errors in children’s declaratives and Wh- questions

Tense and Agreement in Agrammatic Production: Pruning the Syntactic Tree

The Non-omission of Nonfinite Be

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