The Acquisition of the DP in Modern Greek

276 Pages·2003·1.81 MB·English

by  Theodoros Marinis

<DOCINFOAUTHOR""TITLE"TheAcquisitionoftheDPinModernGreek"SUBJECT"LanguageAcquisition&LanguageDisorders,Volume31"KEYWORDS""SIZEHEIGHT"220"WIDTH"150"VOFFSET"4">
TheAcquisitionoftheDPinModernGreek
Language Acquisition & Language Disorders
Volumesinthisseriesprovideaforumforresearchcontributingtotheoriesof
languageacquistion(firstandsecond,childandadult),languagelearnability,
languageattritionandlanguagedisorders.
SeriesEditors
HaraldClahsen LydiaWhite
UniversityofEssex McGillUniversity
EditorialBoard
MelissaF.Bowerman LuigiRizzi
MaxPlanckInstitutfürPsycholinguistik,Nijmegen UniversityofSiena
KatherineDemuth BonnieD.Schwartz
BrownUniversity UniversityofHawaiiatManao
WolfgangU.Dressler AntonellaSorace
UniversitätWien UniversityofEdinburgh
NinaHyams KarinStromswold
UniversityofCaliforniaatLosAngeles RutgersUniversity
JürgenM.Meisel JürgenWeissenborn
UniversitätHamburg UniversitätPotsdam
WilliamO’Grady FrankWijnen
UniversityofHawaii UtrechtUniversity
MabelRice
UniversityofKansas
Volume31
TheAcquisitionoftheDPinModernGreek
byTheodorosMarinis
The Acquisition of the DP in
Modern Greek
Theodoros Marinis
UniversityCollegeLondon
JohnBenjaminsPublishingCompany
Amsterdam(cid:1)/(cid:1)Philadelphia
TM Thepaperusedinthispublicationmeetstheminimumrequirements
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ofAmericanNationalStandardforInformationSciences–Permanence
ofPaperforPrintedLibraryMaterials,ansiz39.48-1984.
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Marinis,Theodoros
TheacquisitionoftheDPinmodernGreek / TheodorosMarinis.
p. cm.(LanguageAcquisition&LanguageDisorders,issn
0925–0123;v.31)
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
1.Greeklanguage,Modern--Determiners.2.Greeklanguage,
Modern--Nounphrase.I.Title.II.Series.
PA1082.M37 2003
489’.3’019-dc22 2003062782
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Table of contents
Acknowledgements ix
Preface xi
Abbreviations xiii
Chapter1
AcquisitiontheoriesandtheacquisitionoftheDP 1
1.1 UniversalGrammar 2
1.1.1 UGandparameterisationwithinthePPT 3
1.1.2 UGwithintheMP 7
1.2 TheacquisitionprocesswithinthePPT 9
1.2.1 TheMaturationHypothesis 10
1.2.2 TheContinuityHypothesis 14
1.3 LanguageacquisitionwithintheMP 26
1.4 Summary 32
Notes 32
Chapter2
Methodology 35
2.1 Thedata 37
2.2 Datacollection 38
2.3 Transcription 39
2.4 Coding 40
2.4.1 Morphologicaltier 40
2.4.2 Syntaxtier 44
2.4.3 Imitations,self-repetitions 44
2.5 Theuseofformulaicexpressions 45
2.6 Dataanalysis 47
2.6.1 Quantitativeanalysis 47
2.6.2 Qualitativeanalysis 52
 Tableofcontents
2.7 Summary 53
Notes 54
Chapter3
TheDPinModernGreek 55
3.1 Thedistributionofarticles 56
3.2 ThesyntacticstructureoftheDPinMG 57
3.2.1 Horrocks&Stavrou(1986;1987) 58
3.2.2 Karanassios(1990;1992),Stavrou(1996) 60
3.2.3 Theanalysisadoptedinthisbook 66
3.3 Thesyntax-semanticsmapping 68
3.3.1 Chierchia’sNominalMappingParameter 68
3.3.2 ModernGreekwithintheNominalMapping
Parametermodel 70
3.4 MorphologicalmarkingintheGreekDP 76
3.4.1 Morphologicalmarkingondefinitearticles 76
3.4.2 Morphologicalmarkingonnouns 77
3.5 Summary 80
Notes 81
Chapter4
AcquiringtheDPinMG 85
4.1 EvidencefortheDPandtheFPlayer 85
4.1.1 Acquiringthedefiniteandindefinitearticle 86
4.1.2 Theuseofarticlesasimpostors 90
4.1.3 AcquiringtheDPandtheFPlayer 98
4.2 Thesyntax-semanticsmapping 100
4.2.1 TestingtheNominalMappingParametermodel 100
4.2.2 Acquiringthelicensingconditionsforbarearguments 104
4.3 TheacquisitionofmorphologicalmarkingintheMGDP 112
4.3.1 Previousstudiesinmorphologicalmarking
oftheGreekDP 113
4.3.2 Quantitativeanalysesontheacquisitionofnumber
andcase 118
4.3.3 AcquiringtheNumPandtheFPlayer 130
4.4 Implicationsforacquisitionandlinguistictheory 132
4.5 Summary 135
Notes 137
Tableofcontents 
Chapter5
Theacquisitionofthepossessiveconstruction 139
5.1 ThepropertiesoftheMGpossessiveconstruction 140
5.2 SyntacticanalysesoftheMGpossessiveconstruction 140
5.3 AcquiringthepossessiveconstructioninMG 145
5.3.1 Wordorderinthepossessiveconstruction 146
5.3.2 Wordorderandtheuseofdefinitearticlesinthe
possessiveconstruction 151
5.3.3 Quantitativeanalysisoftheuseofdefinitearticlesand
genitivemarkingonthepossessor 158
5.4 Implicationsforacquisitionandlinguistictheory 162
5.5 Summary 163
Notes 163
Chapter6
TheacquisitionofDeterminerSpreading 165
6.1 ThepropertiesofDeterminerSpreading 165
6.2 SyntacticanalysesofDS 169
6.2.1 Androutsopoulou(1994;1995) 169
6.2.2 Alexiadou&Wilder(1998) 174
6.2.3 Theanalysisadoptedinthisbook 177
6.3 AcquiringDeterminerSpreading 179
6.3.1 TheemergenceofDS 179
6.3.2 DScomparedtootherstructuresinvolvingtheCPandthe
DPlayer 181
6.3.3 DSinvolvingpronouns 185
6.4 Implicationsforacquisitionandlinguistictheory 187
6.5 Summary 189
Notes 189
Chapter7
Theacquisitionofappositiveconstructionsinvolvingkinshipterms
andpropernames 191
7.1 ThepropertiesofcloseappositionsinMG 192
7.2 SyntacticanalysesofCAsinMG 194
7.2.1 Stavrou(1994;1995) 194
7.2.2 Theanalysesadoptedinthisbook 196
 Tableofcontents
7.3 AcquiringCAswithKTsandPNs 200
7.3.1 ThedevelopmentalpatternintheacquisitionofCAswith
KTsandPNs 201
7.3.2 QuantitativeanalysisofwordorderinCAswith
KTsandPNs 207
7.3.3 QualitativeanalysisofwordorderinCAswithKTs
andPNs 208
7.4 Implicationsforacquisitionandlinguistictheory 211
7.5 Summary 212
Notes 213
Chapter8
Summaryandconclusion 215
8.1 Puttingthepiecestogether 216
8.2 ComparisontotheacquisitionoftheDPcross-linguistically 217
8.3 Maturationvs.continuity 219
8.4 Implicationsforlinguistictheory 222
8.5 Generalconclusions 223
Notes 224
References 227
Appendix1 239
Appendix2 247
Index 255
Acknowledgements
This book is a revision of my PhD dissertation at the Universityof Potsdam.
Firstofall,IwouldliketothankmyadvisorJürgenWeissenbornforhishelp,
support and encouragement. I am grateful to the members of my commit-
tee Susan Powers, Doug Saddy and Tom Roeper for guidance, stimulating
discussionsandcrucialsuggestionsthroughoutmywork.
HavinginmycommitteeproponentsoftheStrongContinuityHypothesis,
theStructureBuildingHypothesisandMergerTheoryforAcquisitionandhav-
ing taken my firstcourse on language acquisition with HaraldClahsen made
merealizethatitismoreinterestingtostudythedevelopmentofchildgram-
marinordertoderiveconclusionswhicharerelevantforthelinguistictheory
than to stick to a specific acquisition theory and try to prove that this is the
‘right’one.
MyapproachonthestructureoftheModernGreekDPhasbeenheavilyin-
fluencedbytheworkofArtemisAlexiadou,MelitaStavrouandIanthiTsimpli,
whomIwouldlike tothankfortheirinsightfulworkandtheirwillingnessto
discusstheirideaswithme.
I am grateful to Ursula Stephany for her suggestions at the beginning of
this study andforputting me in touch with Anastasia Christofidou.Without
the longitudinalcorpusof Christos this book would nothave beenwritten. I
amindebtedtoAnastasiaChristofidoufortrustingmewiththecorpusofher
sonandfordiscussionsaboutthedevelopmentofhisspeech.Iwishtothank
OlgaDougaliandDepyRizoufortranscribingthecorpusofChristos.Without
theirworkthisstudywouldhavelastedanotherthreeyears.
Furtherback,IwishtothankthepeopleoftheUniversityofAthensforgiv-
ingmethefirsttoolsinthefieldoflinguistics.Especially,Iwouldliketothank
Elisabeth Kotzia for convincing me to write a linguistics dissertation, Eleni
Efthimiou for giving me the first course in Generative Grammar, Friederike
Batsaliaforshowingmethatthereismoreinlinguisticsthantheoreticalsyntax
andDimitraTheofanopoulou-Kontouforpointingmeintherightdirection.
ThisworkhasbeensupportedthroughagrantfromtheGraduiertenkol-
leg ‘Economy and Complexity of Language’ which is funded by the DFG