The Acquisition of Complex Sentences
The Acquisition of Complex Sentences

Author: Holger Diessel

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-09-02

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 1139454080

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This book presents a comprehensive study of how children acquire complex sentences. Drawing on observational data from English-speaking children aged 2 to 5, Holger Diessel investigates the acquisition of infinitival and participial complement clauses, finite complement clauses, finite and nonfinite relative clauses, adverbial clauses, and coordinate clauses. His investigation shows that the development of complex sentences originates from simple non-embedded sentences and that two different developmental pathways can be distinguished: complex sentences including complement and relative clauses evolve from simple sentences that are gradually expanded to multiple-clause constructions, and complex sentences including adverbial and coordinate clauses develop from simple sentences that are integrated in a specific biclausal unit. He argues that the acquisition process is determined by a variety of factors: the frequency of the various complex sentences in the ambient language, the semantic and syntactic complexity of the emerging constructions, the communicative functions of complex sentences, and the social-cognitive development of the child.

The Acquisition of Relative Clauses
The Acquisition of Relative Clauses

Author: Evan Kidd

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 9027234787

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Explaining the acquisition and processing of relative clauses has long challenged psycholinguistics researchers. The current volume presents a collection of chapters that consider the acquisition of relative clauses with a particular focus on function, typology, and language processing. A diverse range of theoretical approaches and languages are bought to bear on the acquisition of this construction type, making the volume unique in its coverage. The volume will appeal to students and scholars whose interest lies in the acquisition and processing of syntax with a particular focus on complex sentences in crosslinguistic and functionalist perspective.

Complex Sentences in Grammar and Discourse
Complex Sentences in Grammar and Discourse

Author: Joan L. Bybee

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing

Published: 2002-01-01

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 9789027225856

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The papers in this volume in honor of Sandra Annear Thompson deal with complex sentences, an important topic in Thompson's career. The focus of the contributions is on the ways in which the grammatical properties of complex sentences are shaped by the communicative context in which they are produced, an approach to grammatical analysis that Thompson pioneered and developed in the course of her distinguished career.

Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences
Information Structure and Reference Tracking in Complex Sentences

Author: Rik van Gijn

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2014-03-15

Total Pages: 417

ISBN-13: 9027270759

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This volume is dedicated to exploring the crossroads where complex sentences and information management – more specifically information structure and reference tracking – come together. Complex sentences are a highly relevant but understudied domain for studying notions of IS and RT. On the one hand, a complex sentence can be studied as a mini-unit of discourse consisting of two or more elements describing events, situations, or processes, with its own internal information-structural and referential organization. On the other hand, complex sentences can be studied as parts of larger discourse structures, such as narratives or conversations, in terms of how their information-structural characteristics relate to this wider context. The book offers new perspectives for the study of the interaction between complex sentences and information management, and moreover adds typological breadth by focusing on lesser studied languages from several parts of the world.

Grounding in Chinese Written Narrative Discourse
Grounding in Chinese Written Narrative Discourse

Author: Wendan Li

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-02-19

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 9004360883

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In Grounding in Chinese Written Narrative Discourse Wendan Li offers a comprehensive account of how Chinese, as a morphologically challenged language, uses grammatical means to highlight (or foreground) major events of a narrative and to demote (or background) other supporting descriptions.

Children with Specific Language Impairment
Children with Specific Language Impairment

Author: Laurence B. Leonard

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 358

ISBN-13: 9780262621366

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Children with Specific Language Impairment covers all aspects of SLI, including its history, possible genetic and neurobiological origins, and clinical and educational practice.

A Grammar of Nungon
A Grammar of Nungon

Author: Hannah Sarvasy

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2017-03-13

Total Pages: 659

ISBN-13: 9004340106

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A Grammar of Nungon is the most comprehensive modern reference grammar of a language of northeast Papua New Guinea. Nungon is a previously-undescribed Finisterre-Huon Papuan language spoken by about 1,000 people in the Saruwaged Mountains, Morobe Province. Hannah Sarvasy provides a rich description of the language in its cultural context, based on original immersion fieldwork. The exposition is extraordinarily thorough, covering phonetics, phonology, word classes, morphology, grammatical relations, switch-reference, valency, complex predicates, clause combining, possession, information structure, and the pragmatics of communication. Four complete interlinearized Nungon monologues and dialogues supplement the copious textual examples. A Grammar of Nungon sets a new standard of thoroughness for reference works on languages of this region.

Language Development from Two to Three
Language Development from Two to Three

Author: Lois Bloom

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-05-28

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 9780521435833

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The studies in this book cover a range of topics in child language development, including: acquistion of semantic-syntactic relations, negation, verb inflections, questions, syntactic connectives, complementation, causality, imitation, and discourse contigency. Of special interest is the development of verb subcategorization, and the importance of action, locative, epistemic, and perception verbs in particular. Language Development from Two to Three will be of interest to a range of readers in psychology, linguistics, early childhood education, speech and language pathology, and second language learing.

The Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge
The Acquisition of Syntactic Knowledge

Author: Robert C. Berwick

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780262022262

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The computer model. Computation and language acquisition. The acquisition model. Learning phrase structure. Learning transformations. A theory of acquisition. Acquisition complexity. Learning theory: applications. Locality principles and acquisition.