Semantics in Acquisition

✍ Scribed by Greg Carlson Ph.D.Diss. (auth.), Veerle van Geenhoven (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 366
• Series: 35
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book is unique in that it relates two linguistic subfields: Semantics and Language Acquisition. The volume contains a collection of writings that focuses on semantic phenomena and their interpretation in the analysis of the language of a learner. The variety of phenomena that are addressed is substantial: temporal aspect and tense, specificity, quantification, scope, finiteness, focus structure, and focus particles. The number of languages in which these phenomena are investigated is very large as well: Dutch, English, German, Inuktitut, Italian, Japanese, and Polish, to name a few. The volume creates a theoretical as well as an empirical bridge between semantic research on the one hand and psycholinguistic acquisition studies on the other.

✦ Table of Contents

‘Mismatches’ of Form and Interpretation....Pages 19-36
Watching Noun Phrases Emerge: Seeking Compositionality....Pages 37-64
Cross-Linguistic Acquisition of Complement Tense....Pages 65-88
Everybody Knows....Pages 89-114
The Effect of Context on Children'S Interpretations of Universally Quantified Sentences....Pages 115-140
Structure and Meaning in the Acquisition of Scope....Pages 141-166
Time for Children: An Integrated Stage Model of Aspect and Tense....Pages 167-192
State Change and Temporal Reference in Inuktitut Child Language....Pages 193-218
Temporal Adverbials and Early Tense and Aspect Markers in the Acquisition of Dutch....Pages 219-244
On Finiteness....Pages 245-272
Functions of Finiteness in Child Language....Pages 273-302
Additive Particles and Scope Marking in Child German....Pages 303-328
(Un)Stressed ook in Child Dutch....Pages 329-348

✦ Subjects

Psycholinguistics; Semantics; Comparative Linguistics