Glow workshop 2006 on the acquisition of the syntax and semantics of number marking

[Maria Teresa Guasti]

GLOW Workshops, Barcelona, 5th April 2006

Workshop 4: The acquisition of the syntax and semantics of number marking

Invited speaker: CARSON SCHÜTZE (UCLA)

Workshop organisers: Anna Gavarró (UAB) & Maria Teresa Guasti (U. 
Milano-Bicocca)

In recent years a clearer picture of language acquisition has been 
emerging: while some parameterised features of grammar are fixed early on 
(for example, those granting word order), other phenomena constitute 
systematic departures of child grammar from adult grammar (resulting, for 
example, in periods of apparent optionality).
In this workshop we will consider the expression of number. The values that 
the number feature may take is a source of variation across languages and 
number features materialise in structurally diverse configurations. Number 
may be involved in agreement between subject and verb, agreement between 
object and verb, number contrasts of clitic pronouns, agreement between Ns 
and As within NP, agreement between articles and Ns within DP, number 
contrasts of determiners (in languages without articles), and expression of 
quantificational determiners (e.g. ‘Three dogs are barking’). Recent 
accounts of the latter suggest that children distinguish between numbers 
and other quantificational determiners and that numbers elicit some kind of 
interpretation more easily than other quantificational determiners; in this 
respect it is interesting that certain languages do not have a full range 
of number words. In general, while the realisation and distribution of 
number varies cross-linguistically, it is a quite robust dimension of many 
languages, including creoles. If a number feature is universally available 
to the child, we may ask as to the way in which it appears in any given 
language.
In this workshop we set out to investigate if the development of number(s) 
is homogeneous across child languages or not, and, if it is not, which are 
the factors determining the variation: phonological factors, e.g. related 
to the possibly affixal character of number, syntactic-semantic factors, 
e.g. related to the (un)interpretable character of the feature, or factors 
strictly related to the computational system, e.g. whereby the maturation 
of certain principles may bring with them delay in the emergence of a 
feature. We aim also at exploring how children learn number words, amongst 
other quantification expressions, and their interpretative properties.
There will be 8 slots for presentations, which will be 30 minutes, followed 
by 10 minutes for discussion. Abstracts should be one page long, 12 point, 
with references (not data) on a second page, if necessary. Two copies of 
the abstract should be sent as attached PDF files: one should be anonymous 
(the name(s) and the title of the abstract should be clearly mentioned in 
the e-mail) and the other should have the authors’ name(s), affiliation(s) 
and email(s).
Abstracts must be sent to cg.acquisition at uab.es.
Deadline for submission of abstracts: November 1st, 2005.

For further information, see 
<http://seneca.uab.es/ggt/glow>http://seneca.uab.es/ggt/glow2006/workshops.htm

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