Eerste-Taalverwerving en Functionele Grammatica: Een functionele benadering van de verwerving van adverbia

Typological research has shown that most linguistic universals may be described as implicational hierarchies: if a language has x, then it also has y, but not the opposite. This article discusses the question if these universal hierarchies are somehow reflected in first language acquisition. To test this hypothesis, the acquisition of adverbs in English is examined. The adverbs are classified according to their communicative function, their morphological structure and their deictic status. Functional Grammar serves as a theoretical linguistic base for this investigation. The results sofar suggest that the implicational hierarchies may indeed play a role in language acquisition, although this is not a sufficient explanation.