09 Philosophisch-historische Fakultät

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://elib.uni-stuttgart.de/handle/11682/10

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    The interpretation of implicit arguments in Paraguayan Guaraní
    (2022) Tonhauser, Judith
    Paraguayan Guaraní allows for implicit arguments, that is, arguments that are neither cross-referenced on the verb nor realized by an independent noun phrase. Building on prior description of the distribution of implicit arguments in the language, this paper describes the interpretations such arguments can receive. Specifically, the paper shows that implicit arguments in Paraguayan Guaraní can receive elided and existential interpretations, in addition to the anaphoric interpretation described in prior work.
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    Optional structures in the acquisition of polish : a cross-linguistic perspective
    (2003) Klepper-Pang, Almut; Roberts, Ian (Prof., PhD)
    This thesis with the title "Optional structures in the Acquisition of Polish: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective" focuses on the phenomenon of optionality in early child grammar. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the cross-linguistic discussion on Optional Infinitives by providing empirical evidence from Polish, a rich-agreement language. The thesis is based on a longitudinal study of Polish child language data (naturalistic data matching the spontaneous speech criteria) which were collected in Gdansk / Poland over a period of three years. The data base consists of three corpora with a total of more than 11,500 utterances. The data were analysed according to the following research questions: 1. Do the Polish language data show any evidence for an Optional Infinitive Stage, and what does the distribution of finiteness look like? 2. What do the earliest stages of acquisition reveal about the clausal architecture of early child grammar? 3. How does the realization of subjects develop, and what does the distribution of null- vs. overt subjects look like? In addition to this, all three questions were analysed from a cross-linguistic point of view in order to shed light on the theoretical concept of optionality in children's early grammatical systems. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data led to the following results: The Polish child data show no evidence for an Optional Infinitive Stage in Polish. A context analysis of the few occurring main clause infinitives showed that these MCIs mainly occur in modal, volitional or elliptical contexts, i.e. they are contextually licensed. Instead, an investigation of the earliest stages of acquisition has revealed an unexpected finding: the use of imperatives in declarative contexts ("Descriptive Imperatives"). Regarding the distribution of overt- vs. null subjects, the Polish data show a high frequency of overt subjects, which is surprising given the status of Polish as a Null Subject language. The rate of nominal/lexical subjects is strikingly low compared to the abundance of pronominal subjects. These subject pronouns tend to correlate with the use of copular constructions. All phenomena analysed and interpreted from a cross-linguistic perspective seem to speak in favour of the presence of functional categories in the early child grammar, thereby supporting a Continuity View on language development.
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    Word order in heritage Russian : clause type and majority language matter
    (2021) Zuban, Yulia; Martynova, Maria; Zerbian, Sabine; Szucsich, Luka; Gagarina, Natalia
    Heritage speakers (HSs) are known to differ from monolingual speakers in various linguistic domains. The present study focuses on the syntactic properties of monolingual and heritage Russian. Using a corpus of semi-spontaneous spoken and written narratives produced by HSs of Russian residing in the US and Germany, we investigate HSs’ word order patterns and compare them to monolingual speakers of Russian from Saint Petersburg. Our results show that the majority language (ML) of HSs as well as the clause type contribute to observed differences in word order patterns between speaker groups. Specifically, HSs in Germany performed similarly to monolingual speakers of Russian while HSs in the US generally produced more SVO and less OVS orders than the speakers of the latter group. Furthermore, HSs in the US produced more SVO orders than both monolingual speakers and HSs in Germany in embedded clauses, but not in main clauses. The results of the study are discussed with the reference to the differences between main and embedded clauses as well as the differences between the MLs of the HSs.
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