The ontogenesis of relative clauses in preschool children acquiring Norwegian PDF
Preview The ontogenesis of relative clauses in preschool children acquiring Norwegian
The ontogenesis of relative clauses in preschool children acquiring Norwegian Morten Aase Løver MA thesis, Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian studies, Faculty of Humanities UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Spring 2015 II «Da har du problemer, ifølge peanøtthjerneforbundet» - Joachim Nielsen (1964-2000) III IV © Morten Aase Løver 2015 The ontogenesis of relative clauses in preschool children acquiring Norwegian Morten Aase Løver http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo V Summary The current thesis addresses the acquisition of relative clauses in typically developing, monolingual Norwegian children through spontaneous speech sampling. Relative clauses are finite subordinate clauses that modify noun phrases. Relative clauses have heads, which can have several syntactic functions in both the matrix clause and the relative clause. Many possibilities of combinations can arise as a virtue of this, and the developmental trajectory of these properties, as well as several others, constitutes the object of study. The material consists of 56 one hour-long audio recordings of children between 1;0 and 5;6. The first relative clauses appeared in the age category 2;0-2;6. The purpose of the thesis is to unite applied and theoretical approaches in describing the object of study. The applied framework that was used was LARSP, a clinical tool of diagnosation for children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The theoretical framework that was used was the usage-based framework. The intended result of this is a diagnosation tool in the form of a micro-profile, and a contribution to the theoretical discourse on the acquisition of relative clauses. The micro-profile is a detailed model of acquisition for a specific property. A micro-profile for relative clauses was constructed based on the material. The results showed that relative clauses develop through chunks and verb-island constructions, from pragmatically useful and propositionally simple to more complex. Thus, relative clauses develop in a manner that is very compatible with the previous research that has been done within the usage-based framework, and similar to that of many other languages that have been studied, but with several important differences. The differences have been accounted for in terms of language-specific properties, for example center-embedding versus right-branching, the difference between relative pronoun and subjunction and the existence and absence of certain grammatical constructions. VI VII VIII Acknowledgements First and foremost, I want to thank the parents of the children whose utterances constitute the material of the thesis. Your cooperation, patience, enthusiasm made the data collection delightful, fun and unforgettable. This would never have been possible without you. Kristian Emil Kristoffersen introduced me to child language acquisition through the subject LING1107, took Bror and me to the LARSP workshop in Reading and helped us start the project. In addition, he gave my thesis an edge by reading and commenting on it in its final stage. Hans-Olav Enger, Helge Lødrup, Kjell Johan Sæbø, Magnus Hole Fjetland have offered views, comments, corrections and insights that the present study is heavily influenced by. A much-needed introduction to transcription was given us by Kristin Hagen and Anders Nøklestad. Kristin Hagen also offered helped me with corpora search. Pernille Hansen helped me give my thesis a statistical dimension by investing time in teaching me, and read parts of my thesis to make sure I did it right. Hanne Gram Simonsen invited us to the LARSP project and supervised my thesis, and did an excellent job at it. Her knowledge, expertise, and instinct for structure, scientific practice and language have been enormously important to this thesis. Hanne always showed me enthusiasm, interest and trust when I came to counseling. By giving me elaborate answers to my questions, be it day, evening, weekend, or holiday, she displayed genuine interest in my project. Everybody that have studied linguistics have offered the perfect climate to grow and learn. In particular, I want to thank the MA students, who I have spent many breaks with, and have supported me socially and academically in the writing process. They are Teodor Ekblad Aagard, André Nilsson Dannevig, Aïda Leistad Thomassen, Malene Bøyum Solveig Aspelund, Ragni Vik Johnsen, Daniel Zakkarias von Gertten, Sara Niday and Karen-Therese Ugelvik. Bror-Magnus Sviland Strand has planned the project, and collected and transcribed the data material together with me. We have spent the last 18 months doing this. It has been a pleasure IX all along, and he has helped me with important insights and views. In addition to being my closest collaborator, he has also been one of my closest friends in this period. Finally, I want to thank my lovely Kari, who always was patient and a harbor of relaxation after many hours of writing. I am looking forward to us spending more time with each other now. Morten Aase Løver May 2015 X
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