Library Catalog
Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Functional Categories in Learner Language / ed. by Peter Jordens, Christine Dimroth.

Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextSeries: Studies on Language Acquisition [SOLA] ; 37Publisher: Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter Mouton, [2009]Copyright date: ©2009Description: 1 online resource (347 p.) : Num. figs. and tabsContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9783110216165
  • 9783110216172
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 401/.93 22
LOC classification:
  • P118 .F86 2009eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Convergence on finite V2 clauses in L1, bilingual L1 and early L2 acquisition -- The acquisition of functional categories in child L1 and adult L2 Dutch -- The acquisition of syntactic finiteness in L1 German. A structure-building approach. -- Stepping stones and stumbling blocks. Why negation accelerates and additive particles delay the acquisition of finiteness in German -- Does finiteness mark assertion? A picture selection study with native speakers and adult learners of German -- Light verbs and the acquisition of finiteness and negation in Dutch as a second language -- Finiteness in children with SLI – a functional approach -- Functional and modal elements in child and adult Russian -- How much (morpho-)syntax is needed to express finiteness? -- Relating Italian articles and clitic object pronouns in bilingual children acquiring Italian and German -- Backmatter
Summary: Language acquisition is a developmental process. Research on spontaneous processes of both children learning their mother tongue and adults learning a second language has shown that particular stages of acquisition can be discriminated. Initially, learner utterances can be accounted for in terms of a language system that is relatively simple. In studies on second language acquisition this learner system is called the Basic Variety (Klein and Perdue 1997). Utterance structure of the Basic Variety is determined by a grammar which consists of lexical structures that are constrained, for example, by semantic principles such as "The NP-referent with highest control comes first" and a pragmatic principle such as "Focus expression last". At some point in acquisition this lexical-semantic system is given up in favour of a target-like system with morpho-syntactic features to express the functional properties of finiteness, topicality, the determiner system, etc. Insights into how this process evolves may also provide an answer to the question of why it takes place. Within this functional perspective on language acquisition research focuses on questions such as the following.1. What is the driving force behind the process that causes learners to give up a simple lexical-semantic system in favour of a morpho-syntactic functional category system?2. What is the added value of morpho-syntactic properties of inflection, word-order variation, definiteness and agreement?3. Why is it that in cases of specific language impairment it is mainly morpho-syntactic properties of the target language that are affected?
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9783110216172

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Convergence on finite V2 clauses in L1, bilingual L1 and early L2 acquisition -- The acquisition of functional categories in child L1 and adult L2 Dutch -- The acquisition of syntactic finiteness in L1 German. A structure-building approach. -- Stepping stones and stumbling blocks. Why negation accelerates and additive particles delay the acquisition of finiteness in German -- Does finiteness mark assertion? A picture selection study with native speakers and adult learners of German -- Light verbs and the acquisition of finiteness and negation in Dutch as a second language -- Finiteness in children with SLI – a functional approach -- Functional and modal elements in child and adult Russian -- How much (morpho-)syntax is needed to express finiteness? -- Relating Italian articles and clitic object pronouns in bilingual children acquiring Italian and German -- Backmatter

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Language acquisition is a developmental process. Research on spontaneous processes of both children learning their mother tongue and adults learning a second language has shown that particular stages of acquisition can be discriminated. Initially, learner utterances can be accounted for in terms of a language system that is relatively simple. In studies on second language acquisition this learner system is called the Basic Variety (Klein and Perdue 1997). Utterance structure of the Basic Variety is determined by a grammar which consists of lexical structures that are constrained, for example, by semantic principles such as "The NP-referent with highest control comes first" and a pragmatic principle such as "Focus expression last". At some point in acquisition this lexical-semantic system is given up in favour of a target-like system with morpho-syntactic features to express the functional properties of finiteness, topicality, the determiner system, etc. Insights into how this process evolves may also provide an answer to the question of why it takes place. Within this functional perspective on language acquisition research focuses on questions such as the following.1. What is the driving force behind the process that causes learners to give up a simple lexical-semantic system in favour of a morpho-syntactic functional category system?2. What is the added value of morpho-syntactic properties of inflection, word-order variation, definiteness and agreement?3. Why is it that in cases of specific language impairment it is mainly morpho-syntactic properties of the target language that are affected?

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Feb 2023)