This dissertation investigates how a child can acquire the grammar of genericity and what it is that a child actually needs to learn in order to accomplish this task. The first step is to reframe the question asked by the previous literature on the acquisition of generics through the lens provided by linguistic theory. Here, I propse a learning algorithm that presents one way that a child could acquire knowledge of the distinction between generic and referring language. Specifically, I show how a syntactic analysis of genericity, Diesing's Mapping Hypothesis (Diesing 1992), can be combined with a theory of learning that posits a rich system of linguistic representations provided by Universal Grammar (UG) to allow the learner to acquire generic language by using what is in her input. The findings from two corpus studies show that part of the information the learner needs in order to acquire the grammar of genericity is available in the input. However, the full grammar is not. Instead, the child must rely on innate knowledge of syntactic structure and confirm her hypotheses with the input, rather than learning from it. A pair of Truth Value Judgment Task (TVJT) experiments provides evidence that children's interpretations go beyond what is in their input and that syntactic structure is used in the interpretation of generic and referring utterances. Further, the second TVJT study provides further experimental support for the VP-internal subject hypothesis and for Diesing's Mapping Hypothesis. Crucially this is demonstrated by priming interpretations of target sentences that are similar to the primes only because they exhibit similar syntactic representations. Taken all together, the ultimate conclusion from the studies presented in this dissertation shows that UG provides children with a rich grammar that they can use to filter the input in meaningful ways. It is thus that they can demonstrate linguistic sophistication beyond what is in their input. They can apply this to the acquisition of generic and referring language, which serve them well as they learn about the world.

Last modified

• 09/10/2018

Creator

• Elisa Sneed German

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/N2JH92

Subject

• Linguistics

Keyword

• Language acquisition
• VP-internal subject hypothesis
• Syntax-semantics interface
• Child language
• Generics

Date created

• 2008-05-12

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright