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Syntactic styles in emerging language*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Andrya L. H. Ramer
Andrya L. H. Ramer
Affiliation:
The William Paterson College of New Jersey
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Abstract

In this longitudinal investigation of the emerging grammar of seven children, differences in linguistic acquisition were observed. The syntactic analyses applied to the corpora included examination of emerging complexity, observance of word order constraints and subject-predicate specification among others. These analyses revealed two distinct styles of syntactic acquisition. These linguistic styles appeared to be sex- and speed-related with specific ties to particular utterance types and grammatical-relational specification. The observed styles of syntactic acquisition were differentiated by these differences so that the differences themselves constituted the style characteristics.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , February 1976 , pp. 49 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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Footnotes

[*]

This report is based on a portion of a doctoral dissertation completed by the author at City University of New York with the considerable support of Norma S. Rees, chairman of the dissertation committee.

References

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