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Verbs in Child Grammar

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Verbs in Child Grammar The Acquisition of the Primitive Elements of the VP at the Syntax-Semantics Interface Paolo Lorusso Doctoral Dissertation Supervisors: Prof. Jaume Mateu Fontanals Prof. Luigi Rizzi PhD. Program in Cognitive Science and Language Departament de Filologia Catalana Facultat de Filosofia i Lletres Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 2014 En memòria del meu pare de la meva àvia i de Maria Teresa Ynglès Una massa d’informazioni freddamente oggettive, incontrovertibili, rischierebbe di fornire un’immagine lontana dal vero, di falsare quel che è più specifico d’ogni situazione. Supponiamo che ci arrivi da un altro pianeta un messaggio di puri dati di fatto, d’una chiarezza addirittura ovvia: non gli presteremmo attenzione, non ce ne accorgeremmo nemmeno; solo un messaggio che contenesse qualcosa di inespresso, di dubbioso, di parzialmente indecifrabile forzerebbe la soglia della nostra coscienza, imporrebbe d’esser ricevuto e interpretato. da Quattro storie sul tempo e sullo spazio, in La memoria del mondo Italo Calvino Table of Contents Acknowledgements page i Abstract page iii Introduction page 1 1. Chapter 1. The atoms of VPs and their acquisition 1.0 Introduction page 5 1.1 The lexicon-syntax interface page 6 1.2 Lexicalist Approaches: Levin & Rappaport Hovav page 9 1.3 The Constructivist approach: Hale & Keyser page 16 1.3.1 The Functional version of the constructivist approach: Borer & Van Hout page 21 1.4 Structural meaning and acquisition page 26 1.5 Labeling the world through language page 27 1.6 Noun and Verbs: Gentner and the Natural Partition Hypothesis page 29 1.6.1 An overview of the timetable of lexicon in acquisition: nouns before verbs page 33 1.6.2 The appearance of verbs and the lexical spurt page 36 1.7 The bootstrapping of Argument Structure page 38 1.7.1 Semantic Bootstrapping (Pinker) page 39 1.7.2 Syntactic Bootstrapping (Gleitman) page 43 1.8 Acquisition at Interface page 47 2. Chapter 2. Early Subjects and Verb Classes 2.0 Introduction page 51 2.1 Background studies on overt subject distribution in no pro-drop languages page 52 2.1.1 Grammatical accounts page 52 2.1.2 Grammar External Accounts page 57 2.1.3 Informational Structure Accounts page 58 2.2 Background studies on overt subject distribution in Italian page 60 2.3 Null subjects in a corpus of spontaneous speech page 63 2.3.1 Corpus page 63 2.3.2 Coding page 65 2.3.3 General data page 65 2.3.4 Longitudinal data page 68 2.3.5 Null Objects page 71 2.3.6 Number of Arguments page 75 2.3.7 Discussion page 77 2.4 L-synatctic distribution of overt subjects page 79 3. Chapter 3. Linearization and Overt Subject Position 3.0 Introduction page 83 3.1 Subject position and Scope-Discourse Semaints page 84 3.2 Overt subject position in the corpus page 90 3.2.1 General data page 90 3.2.2 Longitudinal data page 92 3.2.3 Discussion page 95 3.3 A Comparative view of Spell Out domain and linearization page 99 3.3.1 Cross Linguistic evidence page 100 3.3.2 Clitic Doubling parameter page 103 3.3.3 Aphasic Data page 104 3.4 Postverbal subjects page 106 3.4.1 Postverbal subjects with Unergatives page 107 3.4.2 Postverbal subjects with Unaccusatives page 109 3.5 Preverbal Subjects page 115 3.5.1 Preverbal subjects with Unaccusatives page 117 3.5.2 A challenge to the Unique Phase Requirement page 119 3.6 Verbs at interface in acquisition page 122 4. Chapter 4. Few remarks on Auxiliaries and Structural Meaning 4.0 Introduction page 125 4.1. The Appearance of Aspect page 127 4.1.1. Few Notes on Aspectual Tense Interpretation in Italian page 132 4.2. Auxiliary Selection and Structural Meaning page 136 4.2.1. Syntactic account: the Unaccusative Hypothesis page 138 4.2.2. Lexical Features and Aspectual Meaning page 140 4.2.3. Children’s auxiliaries in the Italian Corpus page 141 4.3. Developmental Pattern in the Production of Aspectual Auxiliaries page 147 4.3.1. Acquisition of Aspect page 150 4.3.2. Production Task page 154 4.3.2.1 Subjects page 155 4.3.2.2 Stimuli and procedure page 155 4.3.3. Results page 157 4.3.4. Discussion page 162 4.4. Comprehension of Semantic Features in Compounds page 164 4.4.1. Experiment page 164 4.4.1.1 Subjects page 165 4.4.1.2 Stimuli and procedure page 165 4.4.2. Results page 166 4.4.3. Discussion page 169 4.5. Encyclopedic Semantic Features vs Compositional Lexical Aspect page 173 4.7. Concluding Remarks: Interface Effects in Developmental Pattern page 175 5. Chapter 5. Conclusion: Acquisition at Interface 5.0. Introduction page 177 5.1. Lexical – Syntactic Verb Classes page 178 5.2. Bootstrapping Verb Meaning page 182 5.3. Mapping the complexity of the world at different stages page 183 5.4. Interface Relation Building page 185 5.5. Epilogue page 186 References page 187 Appendix 1 page 207 Appendix 2 page 227 Acknowledgements This work represents the last stage of a long route full of vicissitudes. During this intellectual and personal journey I met different persons who helped me in moving between the intermediate stops: without their help and inspiration I probably would have never been able to define the itinerary and to reach the destination. This is the moment to look back and to acknowledge all those people who, in various ways, have made this work possible. First of all I want to thank my supervisors Jaume Mateu and Luigi Rizzi: they have always offered help, support and incitement not only in the drafting process but also in my studies and in my personal development. They have constantly been a source of inspiration for me, since when I took my first linguistic course with Luigi Rizzi in the ‘Leocorno’ room or when I was introduced to l-syntax by Jaume Mateu in the evening conversation with Maria Teresa Ynglès in the Sala T. My immense gratitude goes to them also for patiently putting up with my irregular path of development. I also want to offer my thanks to Anna Bartra, Adriana Belletti and Maria Garraffa who have agreed to be members of my evaluation committee. I am in deep debt to all the people that in different conferences, summer schools, lectures and emails offered me their precious feedbacks, bibliographic material and priceless suggestions: Maria Teresa Guasti, Ludovica Serratrice, Naama Friedmann, Angeliek Van Hout, Fabrizio Arosio, Mirta Vernice, Claudia Caprin, Kenneth Wexler, Maria Luisa Zubizarreta and Olga Borik . I want to express my gratitude to the members of the Centre de Linguísticä Teòrica (CLT) at the UAB: they have adopted me in Barcelona eleven years ago. I am especially in debt to: Maria Teresa Espinal, who helped me from the very first moments of my PhD, Anna Bartra, who was my first teacher of ‘Catalan Syntax’, and Gemma Rigau, Mª Lluïsa Hernanz and Josep Maria Brucart who have always helped me in every circumstances with their advice and support and have made me feel always at home. I want also to thank all the linguists I have met in the CLT (ex GGT) for their intellectual and human empathy: Yurena María Gutiérrez, Meritxell Mata, Elías Gallardo, Silvia Martinez, Cristina Real, Ía Navarro, Sergi Garcia, Wojtek Lewandowski, Yolanda Rodríguez, Ángel Gallego, Marta Bosch, Sergio Balari, Pilar Prieto, Eulàlia Bonet, Teresa Cabré, Joan Mascaró and Rafèu Sichel. I am deeply grateful to all the people I have known at the Centro Interdipartimentale di Studi Cognitivi sul Linguaggio in Siena where I was introduced to linguistics (and where I spent three months as visiting student): I am particularly grateful to Adriana Belletti who has always provided me with ideas, references and extremely valuable insights. I cannot forget to thank also the colleagues and friends that I had the luck of to find in Siena: Maria Garraffa, Nino Grillo, Giuliano Bocci, Giulia Bianchi, Ida Ferrari, Michelangelo Falco, Marco Nicolis, Chiara Leonini, Cristiano Chesi, Enzo Moscati, Giuseppe Samo and Lucia Pozzan. Dea and Nino deserve a special mention: we shared the first experiences in linguistics that transformed our lives. I hope to be able to revive the intellectual excitement and the curiosity on language in one joint work soon. I would also like to thank all the people in the various Egg summer schools I attended (Cluj Napoca and Lublin): a special thank goes to Linda Badan with whom I have discovered the Palinka Linguistics. I am deeply in debt to Ía Navarro, Estela Puig and Marta Saceda who are the special guests of this dissertation: they collaborated in the make up of the materials of the experiments presented in the current work and are the actresses in the videos used in the experimental tasks. I want to express my gratitude to Anita Zappimbulso and her staff that allowed me to perform the experimental tasks on the acquisition of perfective morphology at the grade school ‘Giovanni Falcone’ in Conversano (BA), Italy. The Servei d’Estadística at the UAB also deserves some words of acknowledgment, and special thanks go to Anna Espinal for reviewing the statistical analysis cited throughout this volume. I can not forget the human and logistic help of my best friends who have supported me in all these years: Ainhoa Cañetana and Tato, Cinzia Cut, Jone Potxoloska, Andrea Zinz, Alessandra Minerva, Marita, Tano and Dario, Kicca, Alfredo Motel and Patxi. I would also like to thank all the people who told me: ‘you will never finish your dissertation’.
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