Root Infinitives in Child Second Language English: An Aspectual Features Account

Autor/in	Gavruseva, Elena
Titel	Root Infinitives in Child Second Language English: An Aspectual Features Account
Quelle	In: Second Language Research, 20 (2004) 4, S.335-371 (37 Seiten)Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0267-6583
Schlagwörter	Form Classes (Languages); Second Languages; Semantics; Morphemes + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Analytischer Sprachbau; Second language; Zweitsprache; Semantik; Morphem
Abstract	This article examines the emergence of finiteness in early second language (L2) English of five consecutive bilinguals (ages 6 to 9). The departure point is Gavruseva's (2002; 2003) proposal that nonfinite root predicates result from the underspecification of syntactic aspectual heads at the initial state S0. Gavruseva's 'underspecification of AspP' account is developed further by examining the feature contents of aspectual projections in English from a crosslinguistic perspective. It is argued that English, in contrast to Russian and French, lacks the genuine imperfective and perfective morphemes and so makes use of a greater variety of aspectual features (e.g., intrinsic and compositional telicity features, inter alia). It is also proposed that an English verb's telicity semantics defines its aspectual class and predicts its finiteness status in children's early grammar. An advantage of the 'aspectual features account' is that it explains why statives (inherent atelics) and punctual eventives (inherent telics) show much higher finiteness rates than nonpunctual eventives (an aspectual class defined by acompositional telicity feature) in the child L2 data. Other approaches to the root infinitive phenomenon such as the Truncation Hypothesis (Rizzi 1993/94) and the Morphological Deficit Hypothesis (Haznedar and Schwartz, 1997; Lardiere, 1998; Prevost and White, 2000) cannot explain these finiteness patterns. (Author).
Anmerkungen	Hodder Arnold Journals, Turpin-Distribution, Stratton Business Park, Pegasus Drive, Biggleswade, Bedfordshire SG18 8QB UK. Tel: +44 (0)1767 604951; Fax: +44 (0)1767 601640; e-mail: subscriptions@turpin-distribution.com.
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10