Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:15:43.558Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

A Grammer without Functional Categories: A Syntactic Study of Early Swedish Child Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

Christer Platzack
Affiliation:
Institutionen för nordiska språ;k, Helgonabacken 14, S-223 62 Lund, Sweden
Get access

Abstract

In this paper I give empirical evidence for the hypothesis that there are no functional categories in early Swedish child language (up to approximately 3 years of age). claiming that utterances with at least a subject and a verb at this early stage of language development can be described within the limits of VP. Several properties of early Swedish are shown to follow from this hypothesis, including the lack of subordinate clauses in early Swedish and the fact that early Swedish is not a verb second language.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bowerman, , Melissa, 1973. Early Syntactic Development. A Cross-Linguistic Study with Special Reference to Finnish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brown, , Roger, 1973. A First Language. The Early Stages. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Burzio, , Luigi, 1986. Italian Syntax. A Government-Binding Approach. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Chomsky, , Noam, 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, , Noam, 1989. Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation. In Laka, , Itziar, & Mahajan, A. (eds.), Functional Heads and Clause Structure. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 10, pp. 4374.Google Scholar
Clahsen, , Harald, 1988. Parametrized Grammatical Theory and Language Acquisition: A Study of the Acquisition of Verb Placement and Inflection by Children and Adults. In Flynn, , Suzanne, & O'Neil, , Wayne, (eds.), Linguistic Theory in Second Language Acquisition. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 4775.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clahsen, , Harald, 1989. Zur Analyse einiger Erscheinungen aus der Kindersprache im Rahmen der GB-Theorie. Internes Arbeitspapier, Düsseldorf.Google Scholar
Hansson, , Kristina, & Nettelbladt, , Urika, 1990. The verbal interaction of Swedish language- disordered pre-school children. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 4, 3948.Google Scholar
Henningsson, Lars-å;ke, & Hå;kansson, Gisela, 1989. Etablering av subjektspositionen. In Söderbergh, , Ragnhild, (ed.), Proceedings from the Second Scandinavian Child Language Symposium, pp. 6774.Google Scholar
Holmberg, , Anders, 1989. Why is “John a book bought” not well-formed? Unpublished ms., Department of General Linguistics, University of Stockholm.Google Scholar
Koopman, , Hilda, & Sportiche, , Dominique 1988. Subjects. Unpublished ms., UCLA.Google Scholar
Lange, , Sven, 1974. En preliminär grammatisk analys av språket hos Freja från 20 til 41 månaders ålder. Del 1. Freja 1–5, ålder 20–22 månader. Stockholms universitet: Institutionen für nordiska språk.Google Scholar
Lange, , Sven, 1975. En preliminär grammatisk analys av språket hos Freja från 20 till 41 månaders åider. Del 2. Freja 6–10, ålder 22–24 månader. Stockholms universitet: institutionen für nordiska språk.Google Scholar
Lange, , Sven, 1976. En preliminär grammatisk analys av språket hos Freja från 20 till 42 månaders ålder. Del 3. Freja Il–158, dlder 25–27 mo. Stockholnis universitet: Institutionen för nordiska språk.Google Scholar
Lange, , Sven, & Larsson, , Kenneth, 1972. Syntaxen i en 20-22 må;nader gammal flickas spontana tal. Folkmå;lsstudier 23, 117142.Google Scholar
Lange, , Sven, & Larsson, , Kenneth, 1973. Syntactic Development of a Swedish Girl Embla, Between 20 and 42 months of Age. Part I. Age 20–25 mo. Stockholms universitet: Institutionen für nordiska språ;k.Google Scholar
Larsson, , Kenneth, 1975, En preliminär grammatisk analys av språket hos Tor från 20 till 43 månaders ålder. Del 1. Tor 1–5, ålder 20–22 månader. Stockholms universitet: Institutionen för nordiska språk.Google Scholar
Larsson, , Kenneth, 1976. En prelirninär grammatisk analys av språker hos Tor från 20 till 43 månaders ålder. Del 2. Tor 6–10, ålder 23-26 månader. Stockholms universitet: Institutionen för nordiska språk.Google Scholar
Lebeaux, , David, 1989. Parameter-Setting, the Acquisition Sequence, and the Form of the Grammar: The Composition of Phrase Structure. Paper presented at GLOW, Utrecht.Google Scholar
Lundin, , Barbro, 1988. Bisatser i små; barns språ;k. En analys av fem barns första bisatser. 2nd ed. Lund: Lund University Press.Google Scholar
Lundin, Barbro, & Platzack, Christer, 1988. The Acquisition of Verb Inflection, Verb Second and Subordinate clauses in Swedish. WPSS 42. 4355.Google Scholar
Lødrup, , Helge, 1987. Uakkusativhypotesen og norsk syntax. Norskrift, Arbeidsskrift for nordisk språ;k og litteratur 54. Universitetet i Oslo, Institutt for nordisk språ;k og litteratur, pp. 4663.Google Scholar
Manzini, , Rita, 1988. Constituent Structure and Locality. In Cardinaletti, , Anna, , Cinque, G. & Guisti, G. (eds.), Constituent Structure. Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 157201.Google Scholar
Parodi, , Teresa, 1990. The Acquisition of Word Order Regularities and Case Morphology. In Meisel, , Jä;rgen, (ed), Two First Languages: Early Grammatical Development in Bilingual Children. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Platzack, , Christer, 1986. COMP, INFL, and Germanic Word Order. In Hellan, , Lars, & Christensen, , Kirsti, Koch (eds.), Topics in Scandinavian Syntax. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Platzack, , Christer, & Holmberg, , Anders, 1989. The Role of AGR and Finiteness in Germanic VO Languages. WPSS 43, 5176.Google Scholar
Pollock, , Jean-Yves, 1989. Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20, 365424.Google Scholar
Radford, , Andrew, 1986. Small Children's Small Clauses. Bangor Research Papers in Linguistics 1, 138.Google Scholar
Slobin, , Dan, (ed.) 1967. A Field Manual for Cross-Cultural Study of the Acquisition of Communicative Competence. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Stowell, , Tim, 1981. Origins of Phrase Structure. Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Söderbergh, , Ragnhild, 1973. Project Child Language Syntax and Project Early Reading. A Theoretical Investigation and its Practical Application. Stockholms universitet: Institutionen för nordiska språ;k.Google Scholar
Travis, , Lisa, 1984. Parameters and Effects of Word Order Variation. Ph.D. Dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar