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Object drop in the L1 acquisition of Dutch
Thrift, K.E.
Publication date
2003
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Thrift, K. E. (2003). Object drop in the L1 acquisition of Dutch. LOT.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements xi
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Statement of the Problem 1
1.2 Syntactic Development 2
1.2.1 Strong Continuity 3
1.2.2 Weak Continuity 4
1.3 Cognitive Development 6
1.4 Organization of Dissertation 9
2 Argument Drop from Topic Position in Adult Dutch 11
2.1 Introduction 11
2.2 Topicalization in Adult Dutch 11
2.2.1 The Syntax of Topicalization in Dutch 11 2.2.2 The Demonstrative Pro-Elements, or D-Words 14
2.2.3 Topic Drop 16
2.2.4 Corpus Data on Topic Drop 17
2.2.5 Summary 19
2.3 Informant Data on Topic Drop in Dutch 19
2.3.1 Subject Drop 21
2.3.2 Direct Object Drop 22
2.3.3 Indirect Object Drop 23
2.3.4 Complement Prepositional Phrase Drop 23 2.3.5 Dropping the Objects of Prepositions 24
2.3.6 Summary 24
2.4 The Identification and Licensing of Topic Drop 25
2.5 Remaining Issues 29
2.6 Conclusions and Implications for Language Acquisition 29
3 Theoretical Explanations: Contextualizing Object Drop
in Language Development 33
3.1 Introduction 33
3.2 Crosslinguistic Insights on the Data from Child Language 34
3.2.1 English 34
3.2.2 French 37
3.2.3 Japanese 39
3.2.4 Chinese 40
viii
3.2.6 Dutch 45
3.2.7 Summary of the Crosslinguistic Data 49 3.3 Proposed Explanations for Object Drop in Language
Acquisition 51
3.3.1 The Pro-Drop Hypothesis 51
3.3.2 The Processing Model 52
3.3.3 The Topic Drop Hypothesis 52
3.3.4 The PRO-Adjunction Hypothesis 55
3.3.5 The Perfectivity Hypothesis 57
3.3.6 Summary 61 3.4 Research Questions 61 4 Methodology 65 4.1 Introduction 65 4.2 Subjects 66 4.3 Analysis Procedure 72 4.3.1 Unanalyzeable Utterances 73 4.3.2 Unanalyzeable Clauses 74 4.3.3 Analyzeable Clauses 77
4.4 Addressing the Research Questions: Specific Criteria and
Analysis Procedure 78
4.4.1 Subject Drop in Child Dutch 78
4.4.2 Optionally versus Obligatorily Transitive
Verbs 79
4.4.3 Sentence-Initial Object Drop 79
4.4.4 Object Drop and Finiteness 83
4.4.5 Object Drop and Perfectivity 83
4.5 Reliability of Coding 89
4.6 Statistical Analysis 90
4.7 Summary 90
5 Object Drop, Sentential Position, Finiteness and
Perfectivity 93
5.1 Introduction 93
5.2 Subject Drop and Object Drop in Child Dutch 94 5.3 Object Drop in Optionally and Obligatorily Transitive Verbs 96
5.4 Sentence-Initial Object Drop 98
5.4.1 Group Results 99
5.4.2 Individual Results 100
ix
5.5.1 Group Results 106
5.5.2 Individual Results 108
5.5.3 Summary and Conclusions 114
5.6 Perfectivity and Object Drop 114
5.6.1 Group Results 115
5.6.2 Individual Results 117
5.6.3 Summary and Conclusions 123
5.7 Interaction between Perfectivity and Finiteness 123
5.7.1 Analysis 124
5.7.2 Group Results 125
5.7.3 Individual Results 129
5.7.4 Summary and Conclusions 134
5.8 Telicity versus Perfectivity 135
5.9 Conclusions 137
6 The Aspect Phrase Hypothesis: Explaining Object Drop in
Child Dutch 141
6.1 Introduction 141
6.2 Telicity and the Direct Object in Adult Dutch 142
6.2.1 The Definition of Telicity 145
6.2.2 Particle Verbs and Direct Objects in Adult
Dutch 145
6.2.3 Specificity in Adult Dutch 147
6.2.4 Conclusion 151
6.3 Telicity and Specificity in Child Dutch 152
6.3.1 The Acquisition of Telicity 152
6.3.2 The Acquisition of Specificity 154
6.3.3 Conclusion 155
6.4 The Syntactic Licensing of Object Drop in Child Dutch:
The AspP Hypothesis 156
6.5 Bringing the Elements Together: The Developmental
Sequence of Object Drop 163
6.5.1 Stage 1 (1;08 – 2;00) 163
6.5.2 Stages 2 and 3 (1;10 – 3;01) 163
6.5.3 Stages 4 and 5 (2;07 and older) 164
6.6 Further Empirical Evidence 164
6.6.1 Object Drop in Particle Verbs and Finiteness 165
6.6.2 Object Drop and Determiner Use 166
6.6.3 English Object Drop 168
6.7 Individual Variation 173
x
Appendices 179
Appendix 1 Informant Data: Topic Drop Questionnaire 179 Appendix 2 Informant Data: Summary of Informant Judgements 193
Appendix 3 Verb Classification System 197
Appendix 4 Subject Drop and Obligatory Object Drop, Child
Counts 201
Appendix 5 Object Drop with Optionally and Obligatorily
Transitive Verbs, Child Counts 205
Appendix 6 Sentence-Initial Object Drop, Transcript Counts 209 Appendix 7 Object Drop and Finiteness, Child Counts 213 Appendix 8 Object Drop and Perfectivity, Child Counts 217 Appendix 9 Object Drop with Perfective Verbs, Nonfinite Clauses, 221
Child Counts
Appendix 10 Object Drop with Perfective Verbs, Finite Clauses, 227
Child Counts
Appendix 11 Object Drop with Particle Verbs and Past Perfective
Verbs, Child Counts 231
Appendix 12 Rates of Infinitival Clauses (Transitive Verbs), Child
Counts 235
Appendix 13 Transitive Particle Verbs, Transitive Non-Particle
Verbs and Finiteness, Child Counts 239
Appendix 14 English Verb Adverbial Constructions, Adam 243
List of Tables and Figures 245
References 251
