TY  - CHAP
A1  - Becker, Misha
T1  - The syntactic structure of predicatives : clues from the omission of the copula in child english
T2  - Papers on predicative constructions : Proceedings of the workshop on secundary predication, October 16-17, 2000, Berlin / ed. by Gerhard Jäger ..., Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin, 2001; ZAS papers in linguistics Vol. 22
N2  - This paper explores the syntax of main clause predicatives from the perspective of trying to account for an asymmetry in copular constructions in certain languages. One of the languages in which we find such an asymmetry is child English (around age 2). Specifically, new results show that children acquiring English tend to use an overt (and inflected) copula in individual-level predicatives, but they tend to omit the copula in stage-level predicatives. The analysis adopted to account for this pattern draws on evidence from adult English, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese that stage-level predicates are Aspectual (they contain AspP) while individual-level predicates are not (they involve only a lexical Small Clause predicate). Children's omission of the copula in structures with AspP is linked to the fact that at this stage of development, children fail to require finiteness in main clauses. In particular, Asp0 is temporally anchored in child English, thereby obviating the need for a finite (temporally anchored) Infl, i.e. an inflected copula.
KW  - Englisch
KW  - Syntax
KW  - Kindersprache
KW  - Auslassung
KW  - Prädikat
Y1  - 2001
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/30786
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-307868
UR  - http://www.zas.gwz-berlin.de/fileadmin/material/ZASPiL_Volltexte/zp22/zaspil22-becker.pdf
SN  - 1435-9588
SN  - 0947-7055
VL  - 22
SP  - 25
EP  - 42
PB  - Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung
CY  - Berlin
ER  -