This paper presents new experimental data on the acquisition of structures involving ditransitive... more This paper presents new experimental data on the acquisition of structures involving ditransitive verbs in two East Slavic languages: Russian and Ukrainian. The results of an elicited production task with adults and 3--6-year-old children show that the ordering of the two object arguments (DP DAT and DP ACC ) is conditioned by the givenness of one of them. Similarly to adults, children place given recipients before themes, preferring the DP DAT --DP ACC word order in recipient-given contexts. However, unlike adults, they prefer this order in theme-given contexts as well. We propose that these findings might be indicative of a preference for the underlying syntactic structure in child grammars and/or for the use of prosodic means to express the same meaning, rather than a lack of knowledge of the pragmatic principle Given-before-New at this developmental stage.
The Given-before-New principle has been identified as one of the strongest pragmatic principles g... more The Given-before-New principle has been identified as one of the strongest pragmatic principles governing how information is organised in adult grammar (Clark & Clark 1977, Gundel 1988). The question of whether child grammars organise information in the same way is as yet unresolved. We address this question by considering the Dative Alternation in Norwegian. In an experimental study, we investigate to what extent Norwegian children and adults’ sentence production is governed by givenness when the speaker chooses one word order over another. Our results suggest that givenness influences the word order choices of both children and adults. However, children more often than adults tend to omit given recipients and have a tendency to produce prepositional datives even when the recipient represents given information. The results are discussed in light of previous acquisition findings and syntactic accounts of the phenomenon. We argue that children’s behaviour is not a result of a pragmat...
This study investigates cross-linguistic influence in multilingual (Ln) acquisition of two Englis... more This study investigates cross-linguistic influence in multilingual (Ln) acquisition of two English structures (i.e., Adv-V word order and Subject-Auxiliary inversion (residual Verb-Second, V2) by bilingual Norwegian-Russian adolescents. We propose the Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM) that explains the Ln learning: transfer occurs when a certain linguistic property receives strong supporting input from the involved languages, regardless of the order of acquisition (L1 or L2) or their general typological grouping. This predicts that Russian syntactic properties will help children learn English Adv-V word order and overcome Norwegian V2 influence. In order to verify these predictions, we tested three groups of 12-14-year-old English learners: L1 Norwegian, L1 Russian, and 2L1 Norwegian-Russian, matched for general English proficiency. The data suggest that while L1 Norwegian children over-accept ungrammatical sentences in English with Norwegian word order (V-Adv), the bilingual children notice these errors more often due to the facilitating influence of Russian.
The Given-before-New principle has been identified as one of the strongest pragmatic principles g... more The Given-before-New principle has been identified as one of the strongest pragmatic principles governing how information is organized in adult grammar . The question of whether child grammars organize information in the same way is as yet unresolved. We address this question by considering the Dative Alternation in Norwegian. In an experimental study, we investigate to what extent Norwegian children's and adults' sentence production is governed by givenness when the speaker chooses one word order over another. Our results suggest that givenness influences the word-order choices of both children and adults. However, children more often than adults tend to omit given recipients and have a tendency to produce prepositional datives even when the recipient represents given information. The results are discussed in light of previous acquisition findings and syntactic accounts of the phenomenon. We argue that children's behavior is not a result of a pragmatic deficit or an immature syntactic component per se but rather a failure to consistently integrate the two.
This paper presents new experimental data on the acquisition of structures involving ditransitive... more This paper presents new experimental data on the acquisition of structures involving ditransitive verbs in two East Slavic languages: Russian and Ukrainian. The results of an elicited production task with adults and 3--6-year-old children show that the ordering of the two object arguments (DP DAT and DP ACC ) is conditioned by the givenness of one of them. Similarly to adults, children place given recipients before themes, preferring the DP DAT --DP ACC word order in recipient-given contexts. However, unlike adults, they prefer this order in theme-given contexts as well. We propose that these findings might be indicative of a preference for the underlying syntactic structure in child grammars and/or for the use of prosodic means to express the same meaning, rather than a lack of knowledge of the pragmatic principle Given-before-New at this developmental stage.
This paper examines the course of acquisition of the semantic gender criterion by studying childr... more This paper examines the course of acquisition of the semantic gender criterion by studying children's overregularization rates with two subtypes of Russian nouns: male kinship terms and male names in -a. These nouns are semantically masculine, while their morphology indicates feminine gender. Twenty-five Russian children aged 2;6-4;0 participated in this empirical study. The asymmetry found in their agreement production for the individual male kinship terms is explained along the lines of the Words and Rules model . That is, the asymmetry between the high-and low-frequency nouns is attributed to the input frequencies of individual nouns. Yet, frequency is not the only factor which responsible for the asymmetries in children's production. In addition, differences in the semantic representation of proper names vs. common nouns are argued to play a role.
This article presents a corpus study of the acquisition of grammatical gender in Norwegian in two... more This article presents a corpus study of the acquisition of grammatical gender in Norwegian in two monolingual and two bilingual Norwegian-English children. Gender in Norwegian is expressed as agreement between the noun and other targets such as determiners and adjectives, while definiteness and plurality are expressed as suffixes on the noun itself, i.e. as part of the declension. Furthermore, the gender system is characterized by relatively opaque gender assignment, suggesting that there may be a delay in the acquisition process compared to languages with more transparent systems. Our results show that, while the acquisition of suffixed forms is unproblematic, the children experience considerable problems with gender agreement. Moreover, there is generally no qualitative difference between the monolingual and bilingual children. These findings are discussed in relation to a number of issues: gender vs. declension class, the role of frequency, knowledge of the concept of gender, and monolingual vs. bilingual acquisition.
This paper investigates gender agreement with two classes of Russian nouns, masculine profession ... more This paper investigates gender agreement with two classes of Russian nouns, masculine profession titles and female names that end in -ok/-ik. The focus of the paper is on how children and adults use semantic agreement with these nouns and how the variable forms are distributed in their production. In naturalistic production these nouns are virtually absent as evidenced by the corpus data of one monolingual Russian child and her mother. The results of a semi-spontaneous production task with 25 monolingual 2-3-year-olds and their primary caregivers reveal that children strongly prefer masculine agreement and the adults, feminine agreement. At the age of 5-6, however, semantic agreement becomes a preferred alternative, but only with female names. The results of the study are discussed with regard to the issues that were raised in previous research on the acquisition of language-internal variation, such as social awareness, input frequency, complexity, and child's age.
This chapter discusses the word order of object shift and so-called subject shift constructions i... more This chapter discusses the word order of object shift and so-called subject shift constructions in Norwegian child language. Corpus data from young children (up to the age of approximately 3) show that they produce non-target-consistent word order in these contexts, failing to move pronominal subjects and objects across negation or sentence adverbs. Furthermore, the findings show that target-like word order in subject shift constructions falls into place relatively early (around age 2;6–3;0), while the delay is more persistent in object shift constructions. The paper also provides results of experimental data from somewhat older children which confirm these findings. In order to explain these child data, various factors are considered, e.g. pragmatic principles, prosody, syntactic economy and effects of frequency in the input. The paper concludes that the delay in movement can best be explained by a principle of economy, while the difference between the two constructions is accounted for by reference to input frequency.
This paper considers the acquisition of word order in object shift and so-called 'subject shift' ... more This paper considers the acquisition of word order in object shift and so-called 'subject shift' constructions in Norwegian. In the adult grammar, both constructions require weak pronouns to move to a higher position than DP subjects and objects. Corpus data from three children (age 1;9-3;3) show that they initially produce non-target-consistent word order, failing to move pronominal subjects and objects across negation/sentence adverbs:
This article investigates the acquisition of object shift in Norwegian child language. We show th... more This article investigates the acquisition of object shift in Norwegian child language. We show that object shift is complex derivationally, distributionally, and referentially, and propose a new analysis in terms of IP-internal topicalization. The results of an elicited production study with 27 monolingual Norwegian-speaking children (ages 4;05–7;00) reveal a prolonged delay in the acquisition of object shift with topical individuated pronominal objects. At the same time, we observe target-like placement and prosodic marking of contrastive, possessive, and indefinite pronouns, which do not shift. In our account of the observed delay we refer to the complexity models proposed by Yang (2002, 2004, 2005, 2010) and Hudson Kam & Newport (2005, 2009). In light of Yang's productivity model we argue that not shifting object pronouns is the rule, and OS is the exception. In light of Hudson Kam & Newport's approach to complexity, we argue that the children perceive OS as an inconsistent operation.
Inspired by Enger (2004) I propose that both hypotheses hold for Russian. Child data examined in ... more Inspired by Enger (2004) I propose that both hypotheses hold for Russian. Child data examined in this paper indicate that on the one hand the establishment of the nouns' gender makes children attribute them to particular declension class, on the other hand the gender itself is assigned in accordance with the nouns' morphological forms. The case of nouns ending in
This paper presents new experimental data on the acquisition of structures involving ditransitive... more This paper presents new experimental data on the acquisition of structures involving ditransitive verbs in two East Slavic languages: Russian and Ukrainian. The results of an elicited production task with adults and 3--6-year-old children show that the ordering of the two object arguments (DP DAT and DP ACC ) is conditioned by the givenness of one of them. Similarly to adults, children place given recipients before themes, preferring the DP DAT --DP ACC word order in recipient-given contexts. However, unlike adults, they prefer this order in theme-given contexts as well. We propose that these findings might be indicative of a preference for the underlying syntactic structure in child grammars and/or for the use of prosodic means to express the same meaning, rather than a lack of knowledge of the pragmatic principle Given-before-New at this developmental stage.
The Given-before-New principle has been identified as one of the strongest pragmatic principles g... more The Given-before-New principle has been identified as one of the strongest pragmatic principles governing how information is organised in adult grammar (Clark & Clark 1977, Gundel 1988). The question of whether child grammars organise information in the same way is as yet unresolved. We address this question by considering the Dative Alternation in Norwegian. In an experimental study, we investigate to what extent Norwegian children and adults’ sentence production is governed by givenness when the speaker chooses one word order over another. Our results suggest that givenness influences the word order choices of both children and adults. However, children more often than adults tend to omit given recipients and have a tendency to produce prepositional datives even when the recipient represents given information. The results are discussed in light of previous acquisition findings and syntactic accounts of the phenomenon. We argue that children’s behaviour is not a result of a pragmat...
This study investigates cross-linguistic influence in multilingual (Ln) acquisition of two Englis... more This study investigates cross-linguistic influence in multilingual (Ln) acquisition of two English structures (i.e., Adv-V word order and Subject-Auxiliary inversion (residual Verb-Second, V2) by bilingual Norwegian-Russian adolescents. We propose the Linguistic Proximity Model (LPM) that explains the Ln learning: transfer occurs when a certain linguistic property receives strong supporting input from the involved languages, regardless of the order of acquisition (L1 or L2) or their general typological grouping. This predicts that Russian syntactic properties will help children learn English Adv-V word order and overcome Norwegian V2 influence. In order to verify these predictions, we tested three groups of 12-14-year-old English learners: L1 Norwegian, L1 Russian, and 2L1 Norwegian-Russian, matched for general English proficiency. The data suggest that while L1 Norwegian children over-accept ungrammatical sentences in English with Norwegian word order (V-Adv), the bilingual children notice these errors more often due to the facilitating influence of Russian.
The Given-before-New principle has been identified as one of the strongest pragmatic principles g... more The Given-before-New principle has been identified as one of the strongest pragmatic principles governing how information is organized in adult grammar . The question of whether child grammars organize information in the same way is as yet unresolved. We address this question by considering the Dative Alternation in Norwegian. In an experimental study, we investigate to what extent Norwegian children's and adults' sentence production is governed by givenness when the speaker chooses one word order over another. Our results suggest that givenness influences the word-order choices of both children and adults. However, children more often than adults tend to omit given recipients and have a tendency to produce prepositional datives even when the recipient represents given information. The results are discussed in light of previous acquisition findings and syntactic accounts of the phenomenon. We argue that children's behavior is not a result of a pragmatic deficit or an immature syntactic component per se but rather a failure to consistently integrate the two.
This paper presents new experimental data on the acquisition of structures involving ditransitive... more This paper presents new experimental data on the acquisition of structures involving ditransitive verbs in two East Slavic languages: Russian and Ukrainian. The results of an elicited production task with adults and 3--6-year-old children show that the ordering of the two object arguments (DP DAT and DP ACC ) is conditioned by the givenness of one of them. Similarly to adults, children place given recipients before themes, preferring the DP DAT --DP ACC word order in recipient-given contexts. However, unlike adults, they prefer this order in theme-given contexts as well. We propose that these findings might be indicative of a preference for the underlying syntactic structure in child grammars and/or for the use of prosodic means to express the same meaning, rather than a lack of knowledge of the pragmatic principle Given-before-New at this developmental stage.
This paper examines the course of acquisition of the semantic gender criterion by studying childr... more This paper examines the course of acquisition of the semantic gender criterion by studying children's overregularization rates with two subtypes of Russian nouns: male kinship terms and male names in -a. These nouns are semantically masculine, while their morphology indicates feminine gender. Twenty-five Russian children aged 2;6-4;0 participated in this empirical study. The asymmetry found in their agreement production for the individual male kinship terms is explained along the lines of the Words and Rules model . That is, the asymmetry between the high-and low-frequency nouns is attributed to the input frequencies of individual nouns. Yet, frequency is not the only factor which responsible for the asymmetries in children's production. In addition, differences in the semantic representation of proper names vs. common nouns are argued to play a role.
This article presents a corpus study of the acquisition of grammatical gender in Norwegian in two... more This article presents a corpus study of the acquisition of grammatical gender in Norwegian in two monolingual and two bilingual Norwegian-English children. Gender in Norwegian is expressed as agreement between the noun and other targets such as determiners and adjectives, while definiteness and plurality are expressed as suffixes on the noun itself, i.e. as part of the declension. Furthermore, the gender system is characterized by relatively opaque gender assignment, suggesting that there may be a delay in the acquisition process compared to languages with more transparent systems. Our results show that, while the acquisition of suffixed forms is unproblematic, the children experience considerable problems with gender agreement. Moreover, there is generally no qualitative difference between the monolingual and bilingual children. These findings are discussed in relation to a number of issues: gender vs. declension class, the role of frequency, knowledge of the concept of gender, and monolingual vs. bilingual acquisition.
This paper investigates gender agreement with two classes of Russian nouns, masculine profession ... more This paper investigates gender agreement with two classes of Russian nouns, masculine profession titles and female names that end in -ok/-ik. The focus of the paper is on how children and adults use semantic agreement with these nouns and how the variable forms are distributed in their production. In naturalistic production these nouns are virtually absent as evidenced by the corpus data of one monolingual Russian child and her mother. The results of a semi-spontaneous production task with 25 monolingual 2-3-year-olds and their primary caregivers reveal that children strongly prefer masculine agreement and the adults, feminine agreement. At the age of 5-6, however, semantic agreement becomes a preferred alternative, but only with female names. The results of the study are discussed with regard to the issues that were raised in previous research on the acquisition of language-internal variation, such as social awareness, input frequency, complexity, and child's age.
This chapter discusses the word order of object shift and so-called subject shift constructions i... more This chapter discusses the word order of object shift and so-called subject shift constructions in Norwegian child language. Corpus data from young children (up to the age of approximately 3) show that they produce non-target-consistent word order in these contexts, failing to move pronominal subjects and objects across negation or sentence adverbs. Furthermore, the findings show that target-like word order in subject shift constructions falls into place relatively early (around age 2;6–3;0), while the delay is more persistent in object shift constructions. The paper also provides results of experimental data from somewhat older children which confirm these findings. In order to explain these child data, various factors are considered, e.g. pragmatic principles, prosody, syntactic economy and effects of frequency in the input. The paper concludes that the delay in movement can best be explained by a principle of economy, while the difference between the two constructions is accounted for by reference to input frequency.
This paper considers the acquisition of word order in object shift and so-called 'subject shift' ... more This paper considers the acquisition of word order in object shift and so-called 'subject shift' constructions in Norwegian. In the adult grammar, both constructions require weak pronouns to move to a higher position than DP subjects and objects. Corpus data from three children (age 1;9-3;3) show that they initially produce non-target-consistent word order, failing to move pronominal subjects and objects across negation/sentence adverbs:
This article investigates the acquisition of object shift in Norwegian child language. We show th... more This article investigates the acquisition of object shift in Norwegian child language. We show that object shift is complex derivationally, distributionally, and referentially, and propose a new analysis in terms of IP-internal topicalization. The results of an elicited production study with 27 monolingual Norwegian-speaking children (ages 4;05–7;00) reveal a prolonged delay in the acquisition of object shift with topical individuated pronominal objects. At the same time, we observe target-like placement and prosodic marking of contrastive, possessive, and indefinite pronouns, which do not shift. In our account of the observed delay we refer to the complexity models proposed by Yang (2002, 2004, 2005, 2010) and Hudson Kam & Newport (2005, 2009). In light of Yang's productivity model we argue that not shifting object pronouns is the rule, and OS is the exception. In light of Hudson Kam & Newport's approach to complexity, we argue that the children perceive OS as an inconsistent operation.
Inspired by Enger (2004) I propose that both hypotheses hold for Russian. Child data examined in ... more Inspired by Enger (2004) I propose that both hypotheses hold for Russian. Child data examined in this paper indicate that on the one hand the establishment of the nouns' gender makes children attribute them to particular declension class, on the other hand the gender itself is assigned in accordance with the nouns' morphological forms. The case of nouns ending in
Uploads
Papers by Yulia Rodina