Studies in the Acquisition of Anaphora: Applying the Constraints

ISBN-13: 9781556080227 / Angielski / Twarda / 1987 / 374 str.

B. Lust; Barbara Lust

Opis

Today, one fundamental set of issues confronts both the linguistic theory of 'Universal Grammar' and the psychological study of human cognition. These issues concern the question of to what degree and how the human mind is "programmed," presumably biologically, to acquire the complex knowiedge of human language. As discussed in Volume I, anaphora has been critical to this study because, while a critical property of language knowledge, it is largely underdetermined by available evidence. While most previous research projects have generally addressed these issues through either linguistic analyses or psychological analyses of language data, and have concerned themselves with either the role of innateness or the role of experience in language knowledge, this volume, with its predecessor, attempts to combine these approaches; in fact to develop a research paradigm for their joint study. While Volume I emphasized study of the content and nature of the initial state, i. e., of the language faculty, this second volume emphasizes study of the way in which experience does or does not interact with this language faculty to determine language acquisition. We argue in the introduction that the issues addressed in Volume II are appreciable, if not necessary, com plements to those addressed in Volume I. This is not only because a more comprehensive model of language acquisition requires so, but because valid definition of the content of 'the initial state' may require so."

Spis treści

A Learn Ability Theory and Anaphora.- On the Nonconcrete Relation between Evidence and Acquired Language.- B Is the parser constrained?.- Parsing Efficiency, Binding, C-command and Learnability.- Some Evidence for and Against a “Proximity Strategy” in the Acquisition of Subject Control Sentences.- Evidence against a Minimal Distance Principal in First Language Acquisition of Anaphora.- C Do the Constraints Emerge under Variable Experience?.- Underlying Redundancy and Its Reduction in a Language Developed Without a Language Model: Constraints Imposed by Conventional Linguistic Input.- Coreference Relations in American Sign Language.- The Acquisition of Pronominal Anaphora in American Sign Language by Deaf Children.- Principles of Pronoun Anaphora in the Acquisition of Oral Language by the Hearing-Impaired.- D Do Constraints Emerge in Acquisition of a Second Language?.- Second Language Acquisition of Pronoun Anaphora: Resetting the Parameter.- E Evidencing Grammatical Competence: Methodological Issues.- Children’s Interpretation of Pronouns and Null NPs: An Alternative View.- What Children Know: Methods for the Study of First Language Acquisition.- List of Contributors.- Table of Contents for Volume I.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.