Language Acquisition and the Form of the Grammar

308 Pages·2000·1.064 MB·

by  David Lebeaux

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND THE FORM OF THE GRAMMAR
This book was originally selected and revised to be included in the World Theses Series
(Holland Academic Graphics, The Hague), edited by Lisa L.-S. Cheng.
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
AND THE FORM
OF THE GRAMMAR
DAVID LEBEAUX
NEC Research Institute
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
PHILADELPHIA/AMSTERDAM
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8 American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of
Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lebeaux, David.
Language acquisition and the form of the grammar / David Lebeaux
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Language acquisition. 2. Generative grammar. I. Title.
P118.L38995 2000
401’.93--dc21 00-039775
ISBN 90 272 2565 6 (Eur.) / 1 55619 858 2 (US)
© 2000 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
C 1
ARe-DefinitionoftheProblem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.1 The Pivot/Open Distinction and the Government Relation . . . . . . . . 7
1.1.1 Braine’s Distinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.1.2 The Government Relation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2 The Open/Closed Class Distinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.2.1 Finiteness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.2.2 The Question of Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.3 Triggers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3.1 A Constraint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3.2 Determining the base order of German . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.3.2.1 The Movement of NEG (syntax) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.3.2.2 The Placement of NEG (Acquisition) . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
C 2
Project-αα,Argument-Linking,
andTelegraphicSpeech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.1 Parametric variation in Phrase Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.1.1 Phrase Structure Articulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.1.2 Building Phrase Structure (Pinker 1984) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.2 Argument-linking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.2.1 An ergative subsystem: English nominals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.2.2 Argument-linking and Phrase Structure: Summary . . . . . . . . 45
vi TABLEOFCONTENTS
2.3 The Projection of Lexical Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.3.1 The Nature of Projection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
2.3.2 Pre-Project-α representations (acquisition) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3.3 Pre-Project-α representations and the Segmentation Problem . 60
2.3.4 The Initial Induction: Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
2.3.5 The Early Phrase Marker (continued) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
2.3.6 From the Lexical to the Phrasal Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
2.3.7 Licensing of Determiners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
2.3.8 Submaximal Projections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
C 3
Adjoin-ααandRelativeClauses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.2 Some general considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
3.3 The Argument/Adjunct Distinction, Derivationally Considered . . . . . 94
3.3.1 RCs and the Argument/Adjunct Distinction . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
3.3.2 Adjunctual Structure and the Structure of the Base . . . . . . . . 98
3.3.3 Anti-Reconstruction Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
3.3.4 In the Derivational Mode: Adjoin-α . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
3.3.5 A Conceptual Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
3.4 An Account of Parametric Variation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
3.5 Relative Clause Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
3.6 The Fine Structure of the Grammar, with Correspondences: The
General Congruence Principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
3.7 What the Relation of the Grammar to the Parser Might Be . . . . . . . 136
C 4
AgreementandMerger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
4.1 The Complement of Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
4.2 Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
4.3 Merger or Project-α . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
4.3.1 Relation to Psycholinguistic Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
4.3.2 Reduced Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
4.3.3 Merger, or Project-α . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
4.3.4 Idioms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
4.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
TABLEOFCONTENTS vii
C 5
TheAbrogationofDSFunctions:
DislocatedConstituentsandIndexingRelations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
5.1 “Shallow” Analyses vs. the Derivational Theory of Complexity . . . . 184
5.2 Computational Complexity and The Notion of Anchoring . . . . . . . . 188
5.3 Levels of Representation and Learnability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
5.4 Equipollence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
5.5 Case Study I: Tavakolian’s results and the Early Nature of Control . . 203
5.5.1 Tavakolian’s Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
5.5.2 Two Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
5.5.3 PRO as Pro, or as a Neutralized Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
5.5.4 The Control Rule, Syntactic Considerations: The Question of
C-command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
5.5.5 The Abrogation of DS functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
5.6 Case Study II: Condition C and Dislocated Constituents . . . . . . . . . 224
5.6.1 The Abrogation of DS Functions: Condition C . . . . . . . . . . . 226
5.6.2 The Application of Indexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
5.6.3 Distinguishing Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
5.7 Case Study III: Wh-Questions and Strong Crossover . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
5.7.1 Wh-questions: Barriers framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
5.7.2 Strong Crossover . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242
5.7.3 Acquisition Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
5.7.4 Two possibilities of explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
5.7.5 A Representational Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
5.7.6 A Derivational Account, and a Possible Compromise . . . . . . 251
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

There are two ways of painting two trees together. Draw
a large tree and add a small one; this is called fulao
(carrying the old on the back). Draw a small tree and add
a large one; this is called hsiehyu (leading the young by
the hand). Old trees should show a grave dignity and an
air of compassion. Young trees should appear modest and
retiring. They should stand together gazing at each other.
Mai-mai Sze
TheWayofChinesePainting