The Effects of the Pronoun 'me' on Dative Comprehension

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Conwell
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Pronoun Use ◽  
Object Form

The English dative alternation has received much attention in the literature on argument structure acquisition in children. However, the data on the acquisition of this alternation have consistently revealed a counter-intuitive pattern: Children look more proficient with the lower frequency prepositional form of the dative than with the higher frequency double object form (Conwell & Demuth, 2007; Rowland & Noble, 2012). This may be because the DO dative typically occurs with pronominal argument types in first post-verbal position, which may result in an over-reliance on stereotyped forms (e.g., give+me) for early comprehension and production (Conwell, et al., 2011). This article presents three studies of the effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension by three-year-olds. Children’s comprehension of the DO dative improved significantly when the first post-verbal argument was pronominal; no other effects of pronoun use were significant. Children’s experience affects their ability to use lexically-general representations of syntactic structures.

The effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension

2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 1127-1141
Author(s):  
Erin CONWELL
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Pronoun Use ◽  
Object Form

AbstractThe English dative alternation has received much attention in the literature on argument structure acquisition in children. However, the data on the acquisition of this alternation have consistently revealed a counter-intuitive pattern: children look more proficient with the lower frequency prepositional form of the dative than with the higher frequency double object form (Conwell & Demuth, 2007; Rowland & Noble, 2010). This may be because the DO dative typically occurs with pronominal argument types in first post-verbal position, which may result in an over-reliance on stereotyped forms (e.g., give + me) for early comprehension and production (Conwell, O'Donnell, & Snedeker, 2011). This paper presents three studies of the effects of the pronoun me on dative comprehension by three-year-olds. Children's comprehension of the DO dative improved significantly when the first post-verbal argument was pronominal; no other effects of pronoun use were significant. Children's experience affects their ability to use lexically general representations of syntactic structures.

scholarly journals L2 acquisition of Spanish dative clitics by English and Dutch learners

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-534 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Ángeles Escobar-Álvarez
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Argument Structure ◽  
First Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Double Object ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
New Findings

This article examines the second language acquisition (SLA) of Spanish dative clitics in clitic doubling (CLD) structures that are closely related to the double object construction (DOC) in English and Dutch. It also addresses the question of how adult English and Dutch speakers learning L2 Spanish in a formal setting develop knowledge and use of the animacy constraint in the target language, which is different from the first language (L1) counterparts. The role of transfer in acquiring new syntactic structures has been taken into account, where dative clitics appear and animate objects are marked by the dative preposition ‘to.’ New findings are obtained on CLD and the Spanish animacy constraint from a grammaticality judgement task (GJT), completed by English and Dutch learners at B1 and B2 CEFR levels. The difficulties learners experienced were not always due to negative L1 transfer, but also related to the complexity of the argument structure where the clitic is inserted. This has clear implications for the teaching of pronominal elements which are closely related to different syntactic configurations in Spanish.

scholarly journals Maîtrise des clitiques datifs dans les structures bitransitives en français L2 par des apprenants anglophones : influence de la structure argumentale de la L1

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 30-60
Author(s):  
Louisette Emirkanian ◽  
Leslie Redmond ◽  
Adel Jebali
Keyword(s):  
Argument Structure ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Object Structure ◽  
Follow Up Study ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Verb Argument Structure ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
French And English ◽  
Verb Meaning

The objective of this study is to measure the influence of L1 verb argument structure, as well as verb meaning, on the mastery of dative clitics in French as a second language for a group of Anglophone learners. More specifically, we focus on ditransitive structures. While French and English share the V NP PP structure, English also has a double-object structure, V NP NP, for a subset of verbs. The results of our study show that L1 argument structure influences the mastery of dative clitics in French, especially for verbs that only accept the double-object structure in English. Further, the behaviour of our participants with verbs that accept the dative alternation led us to conduct a follow-up study. The findings show that verb meaning also influences performance with dative clitics, but this effect cannot be explained by L1 influence.

Dative Alternation in Nigerian English: A Corpus-based Approach

Glottotheory ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 103-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayowa Akinlotan ◽  
Akande Akinmade
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Double Object ◽  
American Variety ◽  
Dative Alternation

AbstractDative alternation is that sort of construction which requires a choice from two available choices; the double object (DOC) (i. e. Please give Mary the book) and the preposition construction (TOC) (i. e. Please give the book to Mary). Empirical evidence detailing the characteristics and motivations of dative choices in different varieties have been put forward in the literature. Albeit, nothing is known about the nature and motivations of this phenomenon in Nigerian variety of English, an important source of empirical evidence in the English-world-wide paradigm. With 739 sentences extracted from International Corpus of English, we examined the effects of 16 predictors on this construction in the Nigerian variety; showing how the behavior of these predictors compares with findings reported in other varieties. Among other findings, we found that overall Nigerian variety is closer to American variety than Indian variety, and pronominality as the strongest predictor, outweighing register as a reputable predictor.

scholarly journals Locating variation in the dative alternation

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Biggs
Keyword(s):  
Double Object ◽  
British English ◽  
Double Object Construction ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Object Construction ◽  
Main Variety ◽  
Syntactic Properties

This paper investigates the structure of the dative alternation in dialects of Northwest British English. This includes theme passivization of apparent Double Object Constructions (It was given her). Detailed investigation shows that different dialects use distinct licensing strategies to derive the Theme passive structure. The main variety discussed is Liverpool English, where Theme passivisation is shown to derive from a prepositional dative with a null preposition. In contrast, Manchester English, a neighbouring variety, derives Theme passives of the Double Object Construction, via an Applicative configuration (Haddican 2010, Haddican and Holmberg 2012). The study shows that a range of syntactic properties and restrictions on a structure can be traced back to variation in the functional lexicon.

scholarly journals Simple vs. complex transitive constructions in the acquisition of English structures

2021 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 127-140
Author(s):  
Silvia Sánchez Calderón
Keyword(s):  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Spontaneous Production ◽  
The Difference ◽  
English Monolingual

This study examines the acquisition of English simple monotransitive and complex dative alternation (DA) structures (double object constructions (DOC) and to/for-datives) in the longitudinal spontaneous production of monolingual children. In order to address these issues, we analyzed data from twelve English monolingual children and from adults’ child-directed speech, as available in CHILDES (MacWhinney, 2000). The findings revealed that simple monotransitive constructions started being produced earlier and showed a higher incidence when compared to complex DA constructions, which suggests that the degree of syntactic complexity has had an effect on the acquisition of transitives. However, the two complex DA constructions emerged at an approximately similar age, which could be explained by the Case assigning related properties. Furthermore, the chronological progression and the difference regarding the incidence of the three constructions (monotransitives > DOCs > to/for-datives) could be attributed to the amount of exposure to these structures in the adult input.

scholarly journals Second Language Acquisition of the English Dative Alternation by Native Speakers of Arabic

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-88
Author(s):  
Anwar S. Aljadani
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Semantic Properties

Abstract This paper reports on an experimental study that investigates the influence of the disparity between English and Arabic on second language acquisition, namely the phenomenon of the acquisition of the English dative alternation by Arab learners. The disallowance of certain Arabic verbs to occur in the double object dative structure causes difficulty for Arab learners to acquire English as far as the acquisition of the dative alternation is concerned. The experiment is devised to examine whether Arab learners are sensitive to syntactic and semantic properties associated with the English dative alternation. The experiment involved picture tasks with two structures: the prepositional dative structure and the double object dative structure. Overall, the results of the experiment show that the L2 learners failed to acquire the double object dative structure which does not exist in their L1. Based on these results, it is argued that L1 has an important effect on the acquisition of L2.

scholarly journals Pragmatische aspecten van de datiefalternering in het Nederlands

1970 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 87-107
Author(s):  
Timothy Colleman
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Trivalent Verbs

The majority of Dutch trivalent verbs taking both a Patient and a Recipientargument allow for two different complementation patterns: theRecipient is either encoded as a bare NP in a double object pattern (Jefgeeft Piet een boek) or as a PP headed by aan (Jef geeft een boek aanPiet). As for the function of this variation (known as Dative Alternation),various authors have suggested semantic explanations, often basedupon the notion of affectedness. lt is clear, however, that the hypotheticalsubtle semantic differences between the two constructions may beoverridden by pragmatic factors . This paper presents the results of aninvestigation into the correlation between information structure andDative Alternation in Dutch.

The dative alternation in South Asian English(es)

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Bernaisch ◽  
Stefan Th. Gries ◽  
Joybrato Mukherjee
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Conditional Inference ◽  
The South ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Indian English ◽  
British English ◽  
Semantic Class ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Syntactic Pattern ◽  
Conditional Inference Trees

The present paper focuses on the modelling of cross-varietal differences and similarities in South Asian English(es) and British English at the level of verb complementation. Specifically, we analyse the dative alternation with GIVE, i.e. the alternation between the double-object construction (John gave Mary a book) and the prepositional dative (John gave a book to Mary) as well as their passivised constructions with regard to the factors that potentially exert an influence on this alternation in seven varieties of English. The South Asian varieties under scrutiny are Bangladeshi English, Indian English, Maldivian English, Nepali English, Pakistani English and Sri Lankan English, while British English serves as the reference variety. The patterns of GIVE are annotated according to the following parameters including potential predictors of the dative alternation: syntactic pattern and semantic class of GIVE; syntactic complexity, animacy, discourse accessibility and pronominality of constituents (cf. Gries 2003b; Bresnan and Hay 2008). The choices of complementation patterns are then statistically modelled using conditional inference trees and a random-forest analysis. The results indicate that many of the predictors found to be relevant in British English are at play in the South Asian varieties, too. The syntactic pattern of GIVE is, in descending order, uniformly influenced by the predictors pronominality of recipient, length of recipient, semantic class of GIVE and length of patient. Interestingly, the predictor country is marginal in accounting for the dative alternation of GIVE across the varieties at hand. Based on this observation, we derive variety-independent protostructions, i.e. abstract combinations of (cross-varietally stable) features with high predictive power for a particular syntactic pattern, which we argue to be part of the lexicogrammatical “common core” (Quirk et al. 1985: 16) of English. The implications of the present paper are twofold. While the order of the predictors regarding their influence on the dative alternation is clearly compatible with earlier studies (cf. e.g. Green 1974; Ransom 1979; Hawkins 1994; Gries 2003b), the stability of the order across varieties of English calls for a) a more fine-grained gradation of linguistic forms and structures at the lexis-grammar interface as indicators of structural nativisation and b) a revision of earlier verb-complementational findings specific to individual or groups of varieties of South Asian English.

Exploring epicentres empirically

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Th. Gries ◽  
Tobias Bernaisch
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Random Effects ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Indian English ◽  
British English ◽  
Double Object Construction ◽  
Deviation Analysis ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Object Construction

The present paper studies the dative alternation with GIVE, i.e. the alternation between the double-object construction (e.g. John gave Mary a book) and the prepositional dative (e.g. John gave a book to Mary), in relation to the norms underlying this constructional choice in six South Asian Englishes. Via Multifactorial Prediction and Deviation Analysis with Regression (MuPDAR) including random effects, we identify (i) factors triggering different constructional choices in South Asian Englishes in comparison to British English and (ii) the linguistic epicentre of English in South Asia with regard to the dative alternation. We are able to show that discourse accessibility of patient and recipient as well as pronominality of recipient are actuators of structural nativisation in South Asian Englishes and — in agreement with a more general sociolinguistic approach — find via a bottom-up approach that Indian English may be regarded as the linguistic epicentre of English for South Asia.

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