Research 

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Jacqueline van Kampen

Postal address
Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS
Janskerkhof 13
3512 BL Utrecht
The Netherlands

e-mail: Jacqueline.vanKampen@let.uu.nl
phone: +31.30 253 60 54
fax: +31.30 253 60 00

 

Current research    Some papers    Some presentations

 

 

Current Research

My current research project: 'Order and stability of steps in language acquisition'

Summary

The acquisition of any human grammar is realized in a series of distinctive steps. Some aspects of grammar are acquired before others. In generative grammar each step in language acquisition is seen as the setting of a parameter within a general grammatical frame (UG). Longitudinal analysis of acquisition data will yield empirical evidence about the relative order and time each of such steps takes. The present proposal will first demonstrate for a specific set of cases (i) the actual order of some Dutch parameter settings, and (ii) the actual speed of each of these parameter settings. The subsequent goal is to formulate principles of interaction between UG and input data such that (i) and (ii) can be derived. These interaction principles must have relevance for all languages. Therefore, at relevant points in the project a comparison will be made with the acquisition of English and French and more generally with the language types analyzed in the research program on learnability at CUNY led by J.D. Fodor.

The project will specify order and speed for acquisition steps related to:

The acquisition of Tense oppositions and parameters of

- directionality

- V-movements (in V-second, residual V-second and ‘VSO’ languages)

- wh-movement and topicalization

 

The acquisition of Reference oppositions and parameters of

- pied-piping

- definite/indefinite distinctions

- object-shift

- dummy subjects 

 

Construction of these acquisition steps should result in: (a) cases of actual parameter setting, each specified for its robustness or speed and placed in a linear order with respects to the others; (b) principles that derive the order and speed of the acquisition steps from the currently available grammar and the available input data.

 

Some papers

 

 

Local top

International Encyclopedia

(2005) 'Subjects and the (Extended) Projection Principle', in: Keith Brown (editor-in-chief) Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, 2nd edition. Oford: Elsevier Science.

 

International journals

(2005) 'Language specific bootstraps for UG categories' to appear in International Journal of Bilingualism.

(2004) 'An acquisitional view on optionality', Lingua 114, 1133-1146.

(2001) Review of Becker ‘The Development of the Copula in Child English’, in: GLOT International 7-5, URL http://www.linguistlistplus.com.

 

Books and contributions to books

(to appear) 'Early operators and late topic-drop/pro-drop', to appear in: L. to appear in: L. Escobar & V. Torrens (eds.) The Romance Turn Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

(2005) 'The acquisition of the standard EPP in Dutch and French', to appear in: J. Costa Agreement. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

(2004) 'Learnability order in the Frecnh pronominal system', in: R. Bok-Bennema, B.Hollebrandse, B.Kampers-Manhe & P.Sleeman (eds.) Selected Papers from Going Romance 2002, 163-183. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

(2001) 'Grammaticale Ontwikkeling', in: S Gillis & A. Schaerlakens (eds) Kindertaalverwerving. Een Handboek voor het Nederlands, 225-285. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff. With Frank Wijnen

(2000) ‘Left branch extraction as operator movement: Evidence from child Dutch’, in: S.M. Powers & C. Hamann (eds.) The Acquisition of Scrambling and Clitization 479-503. Kluwer, Norwell.

(1997) First Steps in Wh-movement Delft: Eburon.

(1996) ‘PF/LF convergence in acquisition’, in: K. Kusumoto (ed.) Proceedings of the NELS 26, 149-163.

(1994) ‘Do-insertion and LF in child language’, in: J. Don, B. Schouten, W. Zonneveld (eds.) OTS Yearbook 1994, 25-41. 1995. With Arnold Evers (first author).

(1994)‘The learnability of the Left Branch Condition’, in: R. Bok-Bennema & C. Cremers (eds.) Linguistics in the Netherlands 1994, 83-94. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  

 

International database contributions

(1999-2000) Publication of (transcriptions of) 72 tape-recordings of Laura and 50 tape-recordings of Sarah in the CHILDES archives (Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, B. MacWhinney).

 

International conference proceedings

(2005) ‘Possessive constructions in Dutch dialects and child language’, to appear in: Proceedings of the 39th Linguistic Colloquium 2004. Berlin: Peter Lang. With Norbert Corver.

(2004) ‘Locality constraints imposed by acquisition frames’, in: O. Crouzet, H. Damirdache and S. Wauquier-Gravelines (eds.) Proceedings of JEL (Journées d’Etudes Linguistiques) ‘Domaines’ 2004, 35-41. With Arnold Evers.

(2004) ‘The rise of prediction by EPP’, in: A. Brugos, L. Micciulla and Ch.E. Smith (eds.) Proceedings of BUCLD 28, 2003, 267-281.

(2004) ‘The learnability of syntactic categories’, in: J. van Kampen and S. Baauw (eds.)  Proceedings of GALA 2003, 245-256.

(2001) ‘Pragmatic bootstraps for category assignment: from non-discourse towards discourse oriented language’, in: S. Kern (ed.) Proceedings of ELA (Early Lexicon Acquisition), cd-rom, 26 pages.

(1996) ‘How greedy is the child? Long distance movement in small steps’, in: M. Verrips & F. Wijnen (eds.) ASCLD 3 ‘Papers from the Dutch-German Colloquium on Language Acquisition’, 91-108. Amsterdam: Instituut voor Algemene Taalwetenschap. With Arnold Evers

 

Working papers

(2001) ‘E-language, I-language and the order of parameter setting’, UiL OTS Working Papers 00105-S-S, Utrecht University, 51 p. With Arnold Evers.

(1995) ‘Subextraction of operators’, OTS Working Papers TL-95-001, Utrecht University, 25 pages .

(1992) ‘An acquisition procedure for the I-Projection in Dutch and English’, OTS Working Papers, Utrecht University, 20 pages.  With Arnold Evers. 

 

 

 

Some presentations 

 

 

Local top

‘Underspecification of functional features’, Boston Conference on Language Development, Boston University, October 23-25 1992.

‘Moving the wh-element in Dutch child language’, Child Language Seminar Bangor (U.K.), March 29 1994.

‘Form chain, spell out, Child Language Seminar’, Bangor (U.K.), March 30 1994.

‘How greedy is the child? Long distance movement in small steps’, Dutch-German Colloquium on Language Acquisition, Groningen University, September 1 1994.

 ‘LF Relevance in language acquisition’, VF-Programma Taaltheorie en Taaldescriptie, University of Nijmegen (KUN), March 31 1995.

‘Optionality as a window on LF’, Workshop on Optionality, OTS, Utrecht University, September 1-2 1995.

‘Scope and LF’, Groningen Assembly on Language Acquisition (GALA 95), Groningen University, September 7-9 1995.

‘PF/LF convergence in acquisition’, North East Linguistics Society Conference (NELS 26), Harvard/MIT, October 25-27 1995.

 ‘Economy within the scope of the child’, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft 18.Jahrestag ‘Sprach und Schrift’, Freiburg, Germany, March 1 1996.

‘Three types of delay in language acquisition’, Conference on Storage and Computation, Utrecht University, October 19 1998. With A. Evers

‘The order of steps in language acquisition’, VIIIth International Congress for the Study of Child Language, San Sebastian, Spain, July 12-16 1999. With A. Evers.

 ‘Io/Do Syntax: Bootstraps for lexicon and discourse’ GLOW 2002, Workshop ‘The Syntax-Discourse Interface’, Utrecht University, April 12 2002.

 

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