The Theory of Parameters and Syntactic Development

Hyams, Nina

doi:10.1007/978-94-009-3727-7_1

Cited by 34 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Hyams (1983) claimed, in essence, that English children initially speak Italian (i.e., can license and recover the content of pro--or PRO as she argued-as described previously). Only when they discover the expletives it and there in the target, they conclude that in English the subject position has to be lexically filled, and at that time they reset the pro-drop parameter (see also Hyams (1987)). The original setting of the parameter to the Italian value must therefore be the default case.…”

Section: Outline Of the Articlementioning

confidence: 97%

Null Arguments in German Child Language

Hamann¹

1996

Language Acquisition

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Acquisition research has shown that, in German, the use of null subjects does not drop from about 50% to 5% in a very short space of time, but there is a drop from about 45% to between 10% and 20%. In the present article, I investigate this 10% to 20% Null Subject stage in 3-year-olds and show that this stage, though surprisingly long, is not final. Moreover, the children under investigation use structures in this phase that are found neither in the state of Early Null Subjects nor in adult German, namely postverbal referential null subjects. The latter result, the fact that this stage is not final, and differences to object-drop at the same time strongly suggest that the phenomenon cannot only be topic-drop. An analysis is proposed admitting competing strategies for a certain time, a topic-drop strategy (i.e., a strategy of identification via discourse), and a strategy of licensing and identifying null subjects through feature transfer under Government.

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Section: Outline Of the Articlementioning

confidence: 97%

Null Arguments in German Child Language

Hamann¹

1996

Language Acquisition

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“…Syntactic function refers to whether the missing element is a subject, direct object, or indirect object. Here, ''subject/object asymmetry'' specifies that missing subjects are more readily licensed than missing objects (Hyams 1983(Hyams , 1986Hyams and Wexler 1993;Wang et al 1992). The contexts in which subject and object ellipsis are permissible in Hebrew are specified in Tables 1-3 by type of licensing -grammatical, semantic, or pragmatic -as illustrated by examples from our database.…”

Section: Licensing Conditions For Missing Argumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hyams (1983Hyams ( , 1986 originally proposed that the default universal setting for the prodrop parameter is [+Null ] and that, as a result, children start with a setting that allows the empty category pro in subject position. With time, children acquiring a language like English learn that their language is a non-prodrop language, which leads them to start using overt subjects.…”

Section: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Where's ellipsis? Whether and why there are missing arguments in Hebrew child language

Uziel-Karl¹,

Berman²

2000

Linguistics

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This paper concerns subject and object ellipsis in Hebrew child language from two perspectives: the conditions that govern subject versus object ellipsis and the distinction between early and late omissions. We propose that in Hebrew child language (and possibly in early child language in general), subject ellipsis is initially motivated mainly by pragmatic factors, which are subsequently supplemented by morphosyntactic rules of the grammar. Object ellipsis, in contrast, is motivated only by pragmatic or semantic factors, not grammatically. It is a robust phenomenon, but far less widespread than subject ellipsis in both child and adult Hebrew.To demonstrate these claims, longitudinal data are analyzed for four Hebrew-speaking children between the ages 1;5 and 2;4, from their first word combinations to partial command of simple clause structure, supplemented by less systematic data from four other children. The analysis focuses on simple clause structure as the stage when verb argument structure (VAS) first emerges. Also, this period in children's language development allows for comparison with other studies on acquisition of null subjects and of VAS.

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“…This phenomenon is described by Hyams (1987: 3) as "well-known properties of early language, notably the optionality of lexical subjects and the absence of modals and auxiliaries." Hyams (1987) tries to explain this phenomenon as the setting of a pro-drop parameter to a positive value at this stage, regardless of the target grammar, and the later resetting to a negative value. On my hypothesis, child grammars have no T-system, and, assuming that the subject requirement is due to the functional category T, the absence of the subject requirements in child grammars is easily explained.…”

Section: Parallels Between First Language Acquisition and Language Chmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Emergence of Functional Categories in the History of English: Ontogeny and Phylogeny in Language

Osawa

2009

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This paper claims that the drastic change in the English language can be better explained in terms of the emergence of functional categories, assuming that language shifts from a lexical-thematic stage to a functional stage over time. The process of first language acquisition of English children also embodies this shift. Old English is supposed to have lacked functional categories such as DP, TP and CP. Many syntactic phenomena related to these functional categories were absent in Old English. They were made possible later after these functional categories emerged. First language acquisition is also described as the process of acquiring functional categories. This parallelism between ontogeny and phylogeny is attested in the relation between aspect and tense.*

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The Theory of Parameters and Syntactic Development

Cited by 34 publications

References 4 publications

Null Arguments in German Child Language

Null Arguments in German Child Language

Where's ellipsis? Whether and why there are missing arguments in Hebrew child language

The Emergence of Functional Categories in the History of English: Ontogeny and Phylogeny in Language

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