Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Acquisition of (Word Order) Variation

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Variation in the Input

Part of the book series: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics ((SITP,volume 39))

Abstract

This book contains Chapters that investigate children’s acquisition of different types of variation in the primary linguistic data (PLD) that they are exposed to. Natural languages often display word order variation that may at first sight seem like instances of optionality. An example of this is the word order alternation in particle verb constructions in Norwegian, where the particle may precede or follow the direct object DP, illustrated in (1a, b)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Anderssen, Merete. 2006. The acquisition of compositional definiteness in Norwegian. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Tromsø.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anderssen, Merete and Marit Westergaard. 2010. Frequency and economy in the acquisition of variable word order. Lingua, doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2010.06.006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barbier, Isabella. 2000. An experimental study of scrambling and object shift in the acquisition of Dutch. In The acquisition of scrambling and cliticization, eds. Susan Mary Powers and Cornelia Hamann, 41–69. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bentzen, Kristine. 2005. What's the better move? On verb placement in Standard and Northern Norwegian. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 28(2): 153–188.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bentzen, Kristine. 2007. The degree of verb movement in embedded clauses in three varieties of Norwegian. Nordlyd 34: Scandinavian Dialect Syntax 2005, University of Tromsø. 127–146.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bentzen, Kristine. 2009. Subject positions and their interaction with verb movement. Studia Linguistica 63(3): 1–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Borer, Hagit, and Bernhard Rohrbacher. 2002. Minding the absent: Arguments for the full competence hypothesis. Language Acquisition 10(2): 123–175.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bresnan, Joan, Anna Cueni, Tatiana Nikitina, and Harald Baayen. 2007. Predicting the dative alternation. In Cognitive foundations of interpretation, eds. Gerlof Bouma, Irene Krämer and Joost Zwarts, 69–94. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Science.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brugè, Laura. 2002. The positions of demonstratives in the extended nominal projection. In Functional structure in DP and IP: The cartography of syntactic structures, ed. Guglielmo Cinque, vol. 1, 15–53. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cinque, Guglielmo. 2005. Deriving Greenberg’s Universal 20 and its exceptions. Linguistic Inquiry 36: 315–332.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Diakonova, Marina. 2003. The acquisition of word order in English and Russian. MA thesis, University of Tromsø.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hyams, Nina. 1992. The genesis of clausal structure. In The acquisition of verb placement: functional categories and V2 phenomena in language acquisition, ed. Jürgen Meisel, 371–400. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Josefsson, Gunlög. 1996. The acquisition of object shift in Swedish child language. In Children’s language 9, eds. Carolyn E. Johnson and John H. V. Gilbert, 153–165. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kayne, Richard. 1994. The anti-symmetry of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Platzack, Christer. 1996. The initial hypothesis of syntax: A minimalist perspective on language acquisition and attrition. In Generative perspectives on language acquisition, ed. Harald Clahsen, 369–414. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poeppel, David, and Kenneth Wexler. 1993. The full competence hypothesis of clause structure in Early German. Language 69(1): 1–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rizzi, Luigi. 1993/1994. Some notes on linguistic theory and language development: The case of root infinitives. Language Acquisition 3(4): 371–393.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rizzi, Luigi. 1994. Early null subjects and root null subjects. In Language acquisition studies in generative grammar, eds. Teun Hoekstra and Bonnie D. Schwartz, 151–176. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rizzi, Luigi. 2000. Remarks on early null subjects. In The acquisition of syntax: Studies in comparative developmental linguistics, eds. Marc-Ariel Friedemann and Luigi Rizzi, 269–292. Harlow: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rodina, Yulia. 2008. Semantics and morphology: The acquisition of grammatical gender in Russian. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tromsø.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roeper, Thomas. 1999. Universal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 2: 169–185.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schaeffer, Jeanette. 2000. The acquisition of direct object scrambling and clitic placement: Syntax and pragmatics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schönenberger, Manuela. 2001. Embedded V-to-C in child grammar: The acquisition of verb placement in Swiss German. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snyder, William. 2007. Child language: The parametric approach. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Snyder, William, and Karin Stromswold. 1997. The structure and acquisition of English dative constructions. Linguistic Inquiry 28: 281–317.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vangsnes, Øystein A. 2005. Microparameters for Norwegian wh-grammars. Linguistic Variation Yearbook 5, 187–226. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Verrips, Maaike, and Jürgen Weissenborn. 1992. Routes to verb placement in early German and French: The independence of finiteness and agreement. In The acquisition of verb placement: Functional categories and V2 phenomena in language acquisition, ed. Jürgen Meisel, 283–331. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Viau, Joshua. 2006. Give = cause + have/go: Evidence for early semantic decomposition of dative verbs in English child corpora. In Proceedings of the 30th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, eds. David Bamman, Tatiana Magnitskaia and Colleen Zaller, 665–676. Somerville: Cascadilla Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Westergaard, Marit R. 2003. Word order in wh-questions in a North Norwegian dialect: Some evidence from an acquisition study. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 26(1): 81–109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westergaard, Marit. 2008. Verb movement and subject placement in the acquisition of word order: Pragmatics or structural economy? In First language acquisition of morphology and syntax: Perspectives across languages and learners [Language Acquisition and Language Disorders], eds. Pedro Guijarro-Fuentes, Pilar Larranaga and John Clibbens, 61–86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Westergaard, Marit. 2009a. The acquisition of word order: Micro-cues, information structure and economy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

    Google Scholar 

  • Westergaard, Marit. 2009b. Usage-based vs. rule-based learning: The acquisition of word order in Wh-questions in English and Norwegian. Journal of Child Language 36(5): 1023–1051.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westergaard, Marit. 2009c. Microvariation as diachrony: A view from acquisition. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 12(1): 49–79.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westergaard, Marit R., and Øystein A. Vangsnes. 2005. Wh-questions, V2, and the left periphery of three Norwegian dialects. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 8: 117–158.

    Google Scholar 

  • Westergaard, Marit, and Kristine Bentzen. 2007. The (non-) effect of input frequency on the acquisition of word order in Norwegian embedded clauses. In Frequency effects in language acquisition: Defining the limits of frequency as an explanatory concept [Studies on Language Acquisition], eds. Insa Gülzow and Natalia Gagarina, 271–306. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wexler, Kenneth. 1994. Optional infinitives, head movement and the economy of derivation. In Verb movement, eds. David Lightfoot and Norbert Hornstein, 305–350. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wexler, Kenneth. 1999. Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation of the optional infinitive stage. In Language acquisition: Knowledge representation and processing, special issue of Lingua, eds. Antonella Sorace, Caroline Heycock and Richard Shillock, 23–79. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yang, Charles. 2002. Knowledge and learning in natural language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yang, Charles. 2004. Universal grammar, statistics or both? Trends in cognitive sciences 8: 451–456.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zuckerman, Shalom. 2001. The acquisition of “optional” movement. Ph.D. dissertation, Groningen University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zuckerman, Shalom, and Aafke Hulk. 2001. Acquiring optionality in French wh-questions: An experimental study. Revue québécoise de linguistique 30(2): 71–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway

    Merete Anderssen, Kristine Bentzen & Marit Westergaard

Authors
  1. Merete Anderssen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Kristine Bentzen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Marit Westergaard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Merete Anderssen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Advanced Study in, Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL), University of Tromsoe, Tromsoe, 9037, Norway

    Merete Anderssen

  2. Center for Advanced Study in, Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL), University of Tromsoe, Tromsoe, 9037, Norway

    Kristine Bentzen

  3. Center for Advanced Study in, Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL), University of Tromsoe, Tromsoe, 9037, Norway

    Marit Westergaard

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Anderssen, M., Bentzen, K., Westergaard, M. (2011). The Acquisition of (Word Order) Variation. In: Anderssen, M., Bentzen, K., Westergaard, M. (eds) Variation in the Input. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9207-6_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation