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Ellipsis, syntax and discourse in the acquisition of European Portuguese
- Author(s): Ana Lúcia Santos 1
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View Affiliations Hide AffiliationsAffiliations:1 University of Lisbon
- Format: PDF
- Publication Date March 2009
- e-Book ISBN: 9789027289766
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lald.48
This book offers a new contribution to the debate concerning the acquisition of the syntax-discourse interface. It provides evidence that children acquiring European Portuguese have a very early ability to spontaneously produce VP ellipsis as answers to yes-no questions. It is also argued that the distribution of VP ellipsis in European Portuguese (including its co-existence with Null Complement Anaphora) supports the hypothesis that the identification condition on ellipsis is derivable from some innate knowledge of the syntax-discourse interface. Answers to yes-no questions also provide evidence concerning children’s interpretation of questions containing a cleft or the operator só ‘only’. The analysis of spontaneous production is complemented by a comprehension experiment, showing that children have two problems in the interpretation of these questions: (i) they do not understand that the cleft and só introduce a presupposition and (ii) they start with a default focus assignment strategy and may not access other focus interpretations.
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