(Pseudo-)Relatives and prepositional infinitival constructions in the acquisition of European Portuguese

João Costa; Bruno Fernandes; Stéphanie Vaz; Nino Grillo

doi:10.1515/probus-2016-0006

(Pseudo-)Relatives and prepositional infinitival constructions in the acquisition of European Portuguese

João Costa, Bruno Fernandes, Stéphanie Vaz, Nino Grillo

Language and Linguistic Science

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

The literature on attachment preferences in relative clauses discusses a crosslinguistic difference in attachment, which, as Fodor (1998a) remarks, poses problems for acquisition. Following previous claims on the universality of the parser, and attempts to explain crosslinguistic variation in attachment with properties of the languages, in particular the availability of pseudo-relatives, we analyzed children's performance in attaching preferences with relative clauses and prepositional infinitival constructions and found that their preferences in parsing are guided by independently needed and crosslinguistically robust principles.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	119-143
Number of pages	25
Journal	Probus
Volume	28
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1515/probus-2016-0006
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 3 Jan 2016

Bibliographical note

© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

Keywords

Language Acquisition
Sentence comprehension
Attachment
Portuguese
Prepositional Infinitival Constructions
Relative Clauses

Access to Document

10.1515/probus-2016-0006

Probus 2016
© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.
Accepted author manuscript, 930 KBLicence: Unspecified

Cite this

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KW - Sentence comprehension

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