Syntax and discourse in the acquisition of adjunct control

(cont.) I suggest that the control principles are intact, and that a separate aspect of grammar is responsible for these non-adult interpretations. I argue that adjunct attachment height, which is crucial to determining what type of control will obtain in the adult grammar, must be learned from the input and exhibits gradual development. If the child has failed to embed an adjunct clause at a sufficiently low level (e.g., within the VP), the null subject will fall into the domain of discourse control rather than syntactic control. If these claims are correct, we expect children to show adult-like control in adjuncts, albeit contingent upon the adjunct type. Three experiments were conducted to test these predictions. We find correlations between non-adult control and non-adult pronoun interpretation, both argued to be due to the misattachment of the adjunct clause. Children's interpretations of PRO in misattached adjuncts are also similar to those in true discourse control contexts, as expected.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Adler, Allison Nicole

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Suzanne Flynn.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/37417

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/37417

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/37417