On the development of the expression of causativity: a syntactic hypothesis
- 1 February 1984
- journal article
- case report
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Journal of Child Language
- Vol. 11 (1) , 109-127
Abstract
Previous studies on the acquisition of causative verbs have analysed the deviations noticed in children's speech as resulting from the child's overgeneralized hypothesis about the morphological configuration of causative verbs. These studies are based on one type of deviation – the use of a non-causative verb for a causative verb. In this paper, longitudinal data are presented on the development of the lexical expression of causativity by one child learning Portuguese as her first language. Not only are non-causatives used for causatives, but causatives are also used for non-causatives. The latter type of deviation provides evidence for an analysis according to which the child takes into account the syntactic structure where causative verbs occur.Keywords
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