On the learnability of implicit arguments
Nina Hyams | University of California at Los Angeles
It has been argued that the experiencer argument of seem is always syntactically projected, and should thus induce an intervention effect even when not overtly produced. The results of our experimental study provide evidence for this claim – English-speaking children perform poorly on raising with seem, whether the intervening experiencer argument is overt or implicit. Conversely, Spanish-speaking children show adult-like performance with the raising semi-modal verb parecer ‘seem’, which does not take an experiencer argument. This outcome raises questions regarding learnability, i.e. English-speaking children must know to project an implicit experiencer with seem, while Spanish-speaking children must not do so with the functional verb parecer. In this paper we provide a learning path that resolves this learning challenge.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Intervention accounts
- 1.2Acquisition studies
- 1.3
Spanish parecer
- 1.4Goals of this paper
- 2.Experimental study: English seem and Spanish parecer
- 2.1Subjects
- 2.2Material and procedure
- 2.3Results
- 3.The learnability problems
- 3.1How do children know when to project an implicit experiencer?
- 3.2How does the Spanish-speaking child know that there is a “second” parecer?
- 3.3How does the Spanish-speaking child learn that the second parecer, F-parecer, is a functional (modal-like) verb?
- 4.Summary and conclusions
- Acknowledgment
-
Notes
-
References
References (35)
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Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Liu, Minqi, Victoria Mateu & Nina Hyams
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On the Representation of Implicit Arguments in Child Grammar: Short Passives in Mandarin and English.
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► pp. 236 ff.

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