Minimal Answers: Ellipsis, syntax and discourse in the acquisition of European Portuguese

315 Pages·2009·3.02 MB·English

by  Ana Lúcia Santos

Minimal Answers
Language Acquisition and Language Disorders
(LALD)
Volumes in this series provide a forum for research contributing to theories of
language acquisition (first and second, child and adult), language learnability,
language attrition and language disorders.
Series Editors
Harald Clahsen Lydia White
University of Essex McGill University
Editorial Board
Melissa F. Bowerman Luigi Rizzi
Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik, University of Siena
Nijmegen
Bonnie D. Schwartz
Katherine Demuth University of Hawaii at Manoa
Brown University
Antonella Sorace
Wolfgang U. Dressler University of Edinburgh
Universität Wien
Karin Stromswold
Nina Hyams Rutgers University
University of California at Los Angeles
Jürgen Weissenborn
Jürgen M. Meisel Universität Potsdam
Universität Hamburg
Frank Wijnen
William O’Grady Utrecht University
University of Hawaii
Mabel Rice
University of Kansas
Volume 48
Minimal Answers. Ellipsis, syntax and discourse in the acquisition
of European Portuguese
by Ana Lúcia Santos
Minimal Answers
Ellipsis, syntax and discourse
in the acquisition of European Portuguese
Ana Lúcia Santos
University of Lisbon
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
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
Santos, Ana Lúcia.
Minimal answers : ellipsis, syntax and discourse in the acquisition of European
Portuguese / Ana Lúcia Santos.
p. cm. (Language Acquisition and Language Disorders, issn 0925-0123 ; v. 48)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Portuguese language--Acquisition. 2. Language acquisition. 3. Portuguese
language--Portugal. 4. Children--Language. I. Title.
PC5044.85.S26 2009
469--dc22 2008050227
isbn 978 90 272 5309 5 (Hb; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 8976 6 (eb)
© 2009 – 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 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
To my grandfather, Henrique Dias Júnior
In memory of a dear friend

Table of contents
List of tables xi
List of figures xii
Preface xiii
Abbreviations used in glosses xv
chapter 1
Introduction 1
1.1 The general topic 1
1.2 The theoretical framework 2
1.3 VP ellipsis: particular answers to general questions
in acquisition research 11
1.3.1 Ellipsis as anaphora: ellipsis at the syntax
and discourse interface 11
1.3.2 Syntactic constraints on VP ellipsis: acquisition
of V-to-I movement 16
1.3.3 Interpretation of focus and presuppositions 18
1.4 Overview of the book 19
chapter 2
VPE and the structural and anaphoric properties of minimal
answers in EP adult grammar 21
2.1 VPE in EP: a preliminary diagnosis 21
2.2 VPE and null object 33
2.3 VPE and null complement anaphora in EP 39
2.3.1 The distribution of VPE and NCA 40
2.3.2 The distributional overlap of VPE and NCA in EP:
a case of structural ambiguity 42
2.3.3 On the distinction between VPE and NCA in EP:
extraction and parallelism 50
2.3.4 Against strict morpho-syntactic parallelism 55
2.4 Ellipsis and deep anaphora in minimal answers 59
2.4.1 A brief overview of minimal answers to yes-no questions 59
2.4.2 Structural and anaphoric properties of minimal
answers to yes-no questions 61
viii Table of contents
2.4.2.1 Verbal answers 61
2.4.2.2 Propositional anaphora: SIM and SER 70
2.4.3 Verb reduplication and emphatic affirmation 84
2.5 Ellipsis: licensing and identification 97
2.5.1 Licensing conditions on VPE 98
2.5.2 Identification conditions: Givenness and Focus 100
2.5.2.1 Givenness and VPE 100
2.5.2.2 Givenness and focus 111
2.6 Conclusion 91
chapter 3
Learnability issues in VPE and focus 113
3.1 The syntax/discourse/prosody interface in the resolution
of VPE and focus: problems for acquisition 113
3.2 Previous research on the acquisition of VPE 122
3.3 Previous research on the acquisition of focus 126
3.4 Research questions 130
3.5 Methodology 132
3.5.1 EP corpus of spontaneous production 133
3.5.2 Experiment 136
chapter 4
How early can VPE be found? 137
4.1 Early production of verbal answers 137
4.2 Are early verbal answers mere repetition? 140
4.2.1 Some arguments against a repetition explanation 140
4.2.2 The (apparent) problem of “echo” answers 152
4.3 The structure of early verbal answers 157
4.3.1 Verbal answers as evidence for early production of VPE 158
4.3.2 (Apparent) Problems for a VPE as deletion approach
(or a problem for the analysis of early verbal answers as VPE) 165
4.3.2.1 A mismatch between first phonologically
full and first deleted VPs 165
4.3.2.2 Non-adult knowledge of the distribution
of verbal answers 170
4.3.3 Grammatical and extra-grammatical alternative
accounts and a solution 174
4.3.3.1 A grammatical account: early VPE as pro 176
4.3.3.2 Extra-grammatical accounts 178
Table of contents ix
4.3.3.3 Cross-linguistic evidence 179
4.3.3.4 A solution: a processing and grammatical account 189
4.4 Other VPE structures in early production 191
4.4.1 Confirmation of preceding utterances 192
4.4.2 Emphatic affirmation as a VPE context 194
4.5 VPE is early evidence for V-to-I raising 207
4.6 The emergence of sim and SER: why are sim and SER answers later? 211
4.7 Early verbal answers in EP: synthesis of the account
and consequences for the syntax – discourse interface 222
chapter 5
Answers as a window into the interpretation of questions 225
5.1 Children’s errors concerning the distribution of verbal answers 225
5.2 The experimental setting 227
5.3 Truth value results: two major response patterns 236
5.4 Pattern 1 – The default focus reading 239
5.4.1 The NSR and the default focus reading 239
5.4.2 Why don’t other explanations account for the data? 241
5.4.2.1 The Semantic Subset Principle 241
5.4.2.2 Reference Set Computation 244
5. 5 Pattern 2 246
5.5.1 Children’s problems interpreting presuppositions 248
5.5.2 Patterson et al.’s explanation 248
5.6 The co-existence of “default focus” and “presupposition difficulty” 250
5.7 Type of answer results 251
5.8 Additional evidence: a small follow-up study 253
5.9 Back to the spontaneous production data 257
5.9.1 Spontaneous production of só 257
5.9.2 Spontaneous production and an adverb analysis of só 260
5.9.3 Spontaneous production of clefts 262
5.10 Summary and concluding remarks 269
chapter 6
Conclusions 271
6.1 Summary of main results 271
6.2 Questions for future research 277
6.2.1 Crosslinguistic comparisons 277
6.2.2 Comprehension of VPE 278
6.2.3 P roduction/comprehension of other types
of silent anaphora (e.g., Stripping, Pseudo-stripping, Sluicing) 278