Development of the Syntax-Discourse Interface by S Avrutin

Development of the Syntax-Discourse Interface by S Avrutin

In this book, I address several issues of child linguistic development from the perspective of the syntax -discourse interface. Traditionally, language acquisition research has focused on the development of one of the linguistic modules, e.g. acquisition of syntax, morphology or phonology. While this approach can be viewed as fruitful in some cases, there is a number of linguistic phenomena whose explanation depends on the interaction of different modules and, therefore, different domains of linguistic knowledge. A typical example is pronominal anaphora: It can be shown that to correctly use pronominal elements, normal adult speakers must possess both syntactic and pragmatic knowledge, and that these kinds of knowledge must interact with each other. With regard to the language acquisition process, such phenomena suggest a somewhat different approach to the language acquisition research. Indeed, if some experimental studies show that children make errors in the construction under investigation, it will be necessary to consider these results from the point of view of the interaction of the different domains of linguistic knowledge involved in their interpretation. In other words, if this particular construction requires the integration of, for example, syntactic and discourse-based knowledge, children's errors may, in principle, be due to their lack of the former, the latter, or both kinds of knowledge, and cannot be taken as direct evidence for the underdeveloped status of just one of them.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9789048153077
ISBN 10	9048153077
Title	Development of the Syntax-Discourse Interface
Author	S Avrutin
Series	Studies In Theoretical Psycholinguistics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Springer
Year published	2010-12-04
Number of pages	214
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.