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An optimality theory perspective on tense and agreement acquisition| old_uid | 1501 |
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| title | An optimality theory perspective on tense and agreement acquisition |
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| start_date | 2006/07/03 |
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| schedule | 11h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle 1022 |
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| summary | I report on spontaneous production and comprehension of verbal inflection (tense and person/number agreement) by 2-year-olds acquiring French as a native language. A formal analysis of the qualitative and quantitative results in production is developed using the unique resources of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004). I argue that acquisition of morphosyntax proceeds via overlapping grammars (rather than through abrupt changes) which OT formalizes in terms of partial rather than total constraint rankings. Initially, economy of structure constraints take priority over faithfulness constraints that demand faithful expression of a speaker’s intent, resulting in child production of tense that is comparable in level to that of child-directed speech. Using the independent PLU measure of syntactic development proposed in Vainikka et al. (1999), production of agreement in French is shown first to lag behind tense then to compete with tense at an intermediate stage of development. As the child’s development progresses, faithfulness constraints become more dominant and the overall production of tense and agreement becomes adult-like. I discuss the predictions made by the OT analysis of production for comprehension of agreement and present preliminary results from experiments conducted with Thierry Nazzi on 30-month olds. |
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| responsibles | Mamassian |
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