Full Description
The papers comprising this volume focus on a broad range of acquisition phenomena (subject dislocation, structural case, word order, determiners, pronouns, quantifiers and logical words) from different languages and language combinations. These include languages with large numbers of speakers (French, German, Spanish) and less frequently spoken ones (Norwegian, Russian, Swiss-German, Hebrew, Basque and Serbo-Croatian) within different language acquisition scenarios and a wide range of populations. Most contributions adopt a common theoretical background within the generative approach with the aim to advance, discuss and critically analyse other research on first, bilingual and language impaired acquisition. The various sections of this stimulating volume reflect different theoretical and methodological perspectives of current research investigating morphology and syntax and offer diverging interpretations.
Contents
1. Introduction; 2. 1. Left-dislocated subjects: A construction typical of young French-speaking children? (by Parisse, Christophe); 3. 2. The development and interaction of Case and Number in early Russian (by Gordishevsky, Galina); 4. 3. Verb movement and subject placement in the acquisition of word order: Pragmatics or structural economy? (by Westergaard, Marit); 5. 4. Three acquisition puzzles and the relation between input and output (by Schonenberger, Manuela); 6. 5. The acquisition of universal quantifiers in Spanish (by Escobar, Linda); 7. 6. Subject-object asymmetry in children's comprehension of sentences containing logical words (by Armon-Lotem, Sharon); 8. 7. On the "vulnerability" of the left periphery in French/German balanced bilingual language acquisition (by Bonnesen, Matthias); 9. 8. The subjects of unaccusative verbs in bilingual Basque/Spanish children (by Larranaga, Maria Pilar); 10. 9. Dominance, mixing and cross-linguistic influence: On their relation in bilingual development (by Kupisch, Tanja); 11. 10. A cross-linguistic analysis of binding in Down syndrome (by Perovic, Alexandra); 12. 11. Balanced bilingual children with two weak languages: A French/German case study (by Muller, Natascha); 13. Afterword (by Smith, Neil); 14. Index of subjects
