Null Arguments in the Yoruba Child’s Early Speech

Bolanle Elizabeth Arokoyo

Abstract


This paper studied null arguments in the early speech of the Yoruba child. We examined whether null subjects are more prominent than null objects and whether the usage of null subjects decreases with language development in the early utterance of the Yoruba child. We also examined the relationship between argument ellipses and finiteness. Minimalist Programme was adopted as the theoretical framework because of its provision for minimality in the processes of language acquisition.  The database was made up of longitudinal naturalistic speech output of three Yoruba-speaking children between 15and 36 months of age. We discovered the preponderance of null argument-NPs at the initial stage; subjects-NPs were easily omitted while object-NPs were hardly omitted; the three Yoruba-speaking children began to make use of overt argument-NPs from fifteen months and gradually, null argument-NPs gave way. We found no direct relationship between the acquisition of finiteness and the end of null arguments.

 


Keywords


arguments, null, object, subject, finiteness, ellipses

Full Text:

PDF

References


Aldridge, M. (1989). ‘The acquisition of INFL’. Indiana University Linguistics Club Publications: Bloomington.

Allen, E. M. S. (2000). ‘A discourse-pragmatic explanation for argument representation in child Inuktitut.’ In Linguistics: an Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences. http//findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb195/is_3_38/ai_n28797777

Aronoff, J. M. (2003) ‘Null subjects in child language: evidence for a performance account.’ In Garding G. and Tsujimura, (ed.) WCCFL 22 Proceedings, Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. 43-55.

Balogh, J. and Y. Grodzinky. (2000). ‘Levels of linguistic representation in broca’s aphasia: implicitness and referentilaity of arguments’. In Bastiaanse R. and Y. Grodzinsky (eds.). Grammatical Disordersin Aphasia : a Neurolinguistic Perspective. London: Whurr Publishers. http://freud.tau.ac.il/~yosef1/papers/bast.pdf. retrieved on 30th, March, 2010.

Bavin, E. (2000) ‘Introduction: a Functional Approach to Ellipsis.’ In Linguistics: an Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences. http//findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb195/is_3_38/ai_n28797777

Brown, R. (1973). A first language: the early stages. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Cabré Sans Y. and Gavarró A. (2006). ‘Subject distribution and verb classes in child Catalan’. Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

Carnie, A. (2002). Syntax; a Generative Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Programme. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Chomsky, N. (1999). ‘Derivation by Phase’. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18. Cambridge, Mass: MITWPL.

Chomsky, N. (2004). ‘Beyond Explanatory Adequacy. Structures and Beyond.’ In Belletti Adriana (ed.). The Cartography of Syntactic Structure. Volume 3. Oxford: OUP. 104-131.

Cook, V. (1996). ‘Minimalism, Vocabulary and L2 Learning.’ Paper presented at AILA, Jyvaskyla, 1996. www.homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/Writings/Papers/AILA96.htm retieved on 25th January, 2010.

Deprez, V. and A. Pierce (1993) ‘Negation and functional projections in early grammar’, Linguistic Inquiry 24(1), 25-67.

Grüter, T. (2006). Object clitics and null objects in the acquisition of French. Doctoral Dissertation, McGill University.

Grüter, T. (2007). ‘Investigating object drop in child French and English: a truth value judgment task.’ In Alyona Belikova, Luisa Meroni, and Mari Umeda (ed.), Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America(GALANA), Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. www.lingref.com, document #1551. 102-113.

Haegeman, L. (1994) Introduction to government and binding theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Huang, C.-T J. (1982). Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar. Ph.D dissertation, MIT.

Hyams, N. (1983). Acquisition of parameterized grammars. Doctoral dissertation, CUNY, New York.

Hyams, N.. (1986). Language acquisition and the theory of parameters. Dordrecht: Reidel.

Hyams, N. and K. Wexler. (1993). Grammatical basis of null subjects in child language. Linguistic Inquiry 24, 421-459

Krämer, I. (1993). The licensing of subjects in early child language. In Colin Phillips (ed.), Papers on case & agreement II, MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 19, 197–212.

Lechner, W. (2006). ‘Economy in Minimalist Syntax.’ http:/www2.sfs.nphil.uni-tuebingen.de/nnsle01/1Minimalism.pdf. retrieved on 9th 0f March, 2010.

Lee, T. H. (2000). ‘Finiteness and null arguments in child Cantonese.’ In The Tsinghua Journal of Chinese Studies, New Series, Vol. 30, No. 1, 101-128.

Longa, V. M. G. Lorenzo (2008). ‘What about a ‘really’ Minimalist Theory of Language Acquisition?’ in Linguistics. Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. 46-3, 541-570.

Lorusso, P., C. Caprin and M. T. Guasti. (2004). ‘Overt subjects distribution in early Italian children.’ Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston.

Poeppel, D. and K. Wexler (1993). ‘The full competence hypothesis of clause structure in early German. Language, Volume 69, No 1, 1-33.

Radford, A. (1990). Syntactic theory and the acquisition of English syntax: the nature of early child grammars of English. Basil Blackwell: Oxford.

Radford, A. (1991). ‘Small children's small minds’. Essex Occasional Papers in Linguistic. Volume 32, 83-109.

Radford, A. (1997) Syntax: A Minimalist Introduction Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Radford, A. (2000). ‘Children in search of perfection: towards a minimalist model of acquisition’. In Essex Research in Linguistics, Vol. 34, 57-74.

Radford, A. (2004) Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rohrbacher, B. and A. Vainikka (1994). ‘On German verb syntax under age two.’ In Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. http://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/170.

Rowland, E. C. (1969) Teach yourself Yoruba. London: The English University Press.

Sano, T. and N. Hyams. (1994). ‘Agreement, finiteness, and the development of null arguments’. Proceedings of NELS 24:543-558.

Uziel-Karl, S. (2001). ‘Where’s Ellipsis? Whether and why there are missing arguments in Hebrew child language’. In Linguistics: an Interdisciplinary Journal of the Language Sciences. http//findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb195/is_3_38/ai_n28797777

Uziel-Karl, S. and R. A. Berman. (2000). “Where’s ellipsis? whether and why there are missing arguments in Hebrew child language”. Linguistics 38, 457-482.

Wang, Q., D. Lillo-Martin, C. Best and A. Levitt. (1992). Null subjects and objects acquisition of Chinese. Language Acquisition 2, 221-254.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/ijalel.v.1n.5p.116

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. 

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.