23.2930, Diss: Language Acquisition/Spanish: Blume: 'Discourse-Morphosyntax Interface in Spanish non-finite Verbs...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-23-2930. Wed Jul 04 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.2930, Diss: Language Acquisition/Spanish: Blume: 'Discourse-Morphosyntax Interface in Spanish non-finite Verbs...'

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Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2012 14:22:08
From: María Blume [mblume at utep.edu]
Subject: Discourse-Morphosyntax Interface in Spanish non-finite Verbs: A comparison between adult and child grammars

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Institution: Cornell University 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2002 

Author: María Blume

Dissertation Title: Discourse-Morphosyntax Interface in Spanish non-finite
Verbs: A comparison between adult and child grammars 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition

Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa)


Dissertation Director(s):
Barbara C. Lust
Joan Sereno
Margarita Suñer

Dissertation Abstract:

This thesis combines an investigation of non-finite verbs in adult 
Spanish —Infinitives and Present Participles as answers to questions 
with hacer 'to do'— with a comparative study of their use and 
development in child Spanish. The existence of these non-finite forms 
in non-embedded declarative structures contradicts the widely-held 
assumption that non-finite forms should not exist in these contexts.

These forms were studied experimentally in two pragmatic contexts: in 
one set of experiments a discourse context involving questions was 
provided. In the other set the same discourse context was used along 
with a referential context (a storybook).

Spanish-speaking monolingual children in four age groups from 2 years 
1 month to 3 years 11 months were studied through two experiments 
which measured production (one spontaneous, one elicited). Results 
were compared to two experiments with adult subjects which tested 
acceptability and spontaneous production. Results are argued to 
provide evidence that:

i.	non-finite main verbs in non-embedded declarative clauses are 
acceptable in both adult and child Spanish.
ii.	the acceptability of these forms requires an interaction between 
morphosyntax and discourse, which allows the recoverability of the 
missing inflectional and agreement features of the answer's verb.
iii.	the relevant discourse factors for the acceptability of non-finite 
forms in adult Spanish are the ambiguity of the verb of the preceding 
question and the availability of an overt auxiliary in the discourse 
context that can act as an antecedent for a null auxiliary in the answer.
iv.	the referential context favored an ongoing activity interpretation 
which helped to resolve the ambiguity in the interpretation of Imperfect 
verb questions, allowing the use of null auxiliary forms in both adult and 
child grammars.

It is argued that child and adult grammars are essentially identical and 
that children know the effects of the referential context from the 
youngest age studied. Children develop in their knowledge of the 
principles of the morphosyntax-discourse interface and of language-
specific Spanish morphology, especially with respect to the estar 
auxiliary used in Progressive forms.
 






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