Formalism and Functionalism Working Together? Exploring Roles for Complementary Contributions in the Domain of Child Null Arguments

• Published in: INQUIRIES IN LINGUISTIC DEVELOPMENT: IN HONOR OF LYDIA WHITE, Slabakova, Roumyana, Montrul, Silvina A., & Prevost, Philippe [Eds], Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006, pp 233-255
• Main Author: Allen, Shanley E M
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: 01.01.2006
• Subjects: Argument Structure; Child Language; Complements; Ellipsis; Functional Linguistics; Generative Grammar; Language Acquisition; Subject
• ISBN: 9789027232328; 9027232326
• DOI: 10.1075/z.133

Explanations of child subject & object omission have been proposed from the perspectives of underlying grammatical knowledge, processing & production capabilities, & discourse-pragmatics. Although each approach has independently had good success in describing & explaining a significant proportion of null arguments in child speech, they have interacted very little with each other. In this chapter, I elucidate ways in which each of the perspectives could inform work in the other, filling remaining gaps & answering open questions. I particularly focus on potential contributions of the discourse-pragmatics approach, since it has received the least exposure in general literature. Areas of potential interaction include explaining the differential omission of subjects & objects, explaining the differential omission of subjects in finite & non-finite clauses, explaining the differential omission of subjects in transitive & intransitive clauses, identifying topics for a topic-drop analysis, explaining optionality in terms of which arguments are omitted, exploring continuity between omitted subjects in child language & pronominal arguments in adult language, resolving whether children's understanding of discourse dynamics is adult-like, & exploring continuity across language types in mechanisms & explanations for argument omission. References. Adapted from the source document