Eintrag

Titel

Early functions of definite determiners and DPs in German first language acquisition

Personen

Dagmar Bittner

Jahr

2007

Typ

Aufsatz

Verlag

John Benjamins Publishing Co.

Ort

Amsterdam, Philadelphia

Seiten

215 - 240

In

Nominal Determination. Typology, context constraints, and historical emergence

Schlagwörter

Artikel
Spracherwerb

Abstract

The paper discusses the functional load of definite DPs in early child German regarding sentence-internal (argument structure) and sentence-external relations (text coherence). The data consist of adult-child dialogues of two children in the period 1;11-2;11. It is argued that DPs exhibit functional load on both levels from the onset of production. Contradicting recent assumptions, (i) case-related distinctions are acquired prior to gender distinction, and (ii) children establish a functional distinction between pronominal DPs (continued or directly accessible reference) and noun-including DPs (disrupted or especially emphasized reference). The results allow the hypotheses that the noun-including DP is a functionally motivated extension of the pronominal DP and that properties relating the DP to other elements of sentence/text are the first to be acquired.

https://grammis.ids-mannheim.de/bdg/33757