Phrase Structure in Early Child English: A View from the Minimalist Program

• Project/Area Number: 25370550
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Mie University
• Principal Investigator: Sugisaki Koji 三重大学, 教養教育機構, 教授 (60362331)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Project Status: Completed (Fiscal Year 2015)
• Budget Amount: ¥2,080,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥480,000); Fiscal Year 2015: ¥650,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥150,000); Fiscal Year 2014: ¥650,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000、Indirect Cost: ¥150,000); Fiscal Year 2013: ¥780,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000、Indirect Cost: ¥180,000)
• Keywords: 母語獲得 / 普遍文法 / 極小主義 / 生成文法 / 構造依存性 / 動詞句内主語仮説 / yes/no疑問文 / ミニマリストプログラム / wh疑問文 / 否定

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This study addresses the question of whether early child English conforms to the VP-internal Subject Hypothesis. We first re-evaluate the evidence provided by Deprez & Pierce (1993) for the existence of VP-internal subject stage in the acquisition of English. Building on the syntactic analysis of the collocation why not? by Merchant (2006), we present evidence against D&P's assumption that children’s sentence-initial "no" is a marker for sentential negation. We then turn to Chomsky’s (2012a,b) minimalist analysis of subject-auxiliary inversion, and analyze children’s yes/no-questions based on that syntactic analysis. The results of our transcript analysis reveal that children acquiring English never produce any incorrect yes/no-question in which the most prominent element in the subject noun phrase undergoes inversion. This finding constitutes new piece of evidence that young children satisfy the requirement that subjects must first be merged internally to the predicate.

Research Products

• [Journal Article] Quantifier float and structure dependence in child Japanese (2015)
  • Author(s): Koji Sugisaki
  • Journal Title: Language Acquisition Volume: 23 Pages: 75-88
  • Peer Reviewed / Acknowledgement Compliant
• [Journal Article] Quantifier Float and Structure Dependence in Child Japanese (2015)
  • Author(s): Koji Sugisaki
  • Journal Title: Language Acquisition Volume: --- Issue: 1 Pages: 75-88
  • DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2015.1047094
  • Peer Reviewed / Acknowledgement Compliant
• [Journal Article] Why Not? in Child English and its Theoretical Implications (2014)
  • Author(s): Koji Sugisaki
  • Journal Title: JELS Volume: 31 Pages: 172-178
  • NAID: 40020722460
• [Presentation] 幼児英語に見られる助動詞doの誤り：素性継承に基づく分析 (2015)
  • Author(s): 杉崎 鉱司
  • Organizer: コーパスからわかる言語の可変性と普遍性
  • Place of Presentation: 東北大学 （宮城県・仙台市）
  • Year and Date: 2015-09-08
  • Invited
• [Presentation] Wh-islands in Child Japanese Revisited (2014)
  • Author(s): Koji Sugisaki & Keiko Murasugi
  • Organizer: The 39th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 39)
  • Place of Presentation: Boston University, Boston, Masachusetts, USA
  • Year and Date: 2014-11-07 – 2014-11-09
• [Presentation] Argument Ellipsis in Child Japanese Revisited (2014)
  • Author(s): Koji Sugisaki
  • Organizer: The 10th Workshop on Altaic Formal Linguistics (WAFL10)
  • Place of Presentation: MIT, Cambridge, Masachusetts, USA
  • Year and Date: 2014-05-02 – 2014-05-04
  • Invited
• [Presentation] 幼児英語におけるWhy not?とその理論的含意 (2013)
  • Author(s): 杉崎 鉱司
  • Organizer: 日本英語学会第31回大会
  • Place of Presentation: 福岡大学
• [Presentation] Re-evaluating Neg-initial Sentences and VP-internal Subjects in Child English (2013)
  • Author(s): 杉崎 鉱司
  • Organizer: Tokyo Workshop on Biolinguistics
  • Place of Presentation: 上智大学
• [Book] Advances in Biolinguistics: The Human Language Faculty and Its Biological Basis (2016)
  • Author(s): Koji Fujita, Cedric Boeckx, Antonio Benitez-Burraco, Gonzalo Castillo, Samuel Epstein, Naoki Fukui, Michio Hosaka, Masayuki Ike-uchi, Hironobu Kasai, Takaomi Kato, Evelina Leivada, Pedro Tiago Martins, Hiroki Narita, Kentaro Nakatani, Miki Obata, Hajime Ono, Koji Sugisaki, Masanobu Ueda, Noriaki Yusa, Mihoko Zushi
  • Total Pages: 286
  • Publisher: Routledge
• [Book] 言語の設計・発達・進化 -生物言語学探究- (2014)
  • Author(s): 藤田耕司・福井直樹・遊佐典昭・池内正幸（編）
  • Total Pages: 328
  • Publisher: 開拓社