2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Japanese-speaking children's interpretation of null elements: An experimental study
| Project/Area Number |
19K00599
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Review Section |
Basic Section 02060:Linguistics-related
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| Research Institution | University of Yamanashi (2021-2022)
Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music (2019-2020) |
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Principal Investigator |
Isobe Miwa 山梨大学, 大学院総合研究部, 教授 (00449018)
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| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
岡部 玲子 専修大学, 文学部, 教授 (60512358)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2019-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | 言語獲得 / 日本語 / 非顕在的要素 / Verb-echo answer / 生成文法 / 語彙的緊密性 |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
The aim of this research project was to investigate how Japanese-speaking children interpret null elements and, by doing so, to contribute to the theory of language and the theory of language acquisition. In particular, the present research focused on children’s verb-echo answers and lexical integrity.
Our experiments revealed that four- to five-year-old participants were able to assign the adult-like (adjunct-inclusive) interpretation to VEAs. The results provide supporting evidence that children’s VEAs are derived through string-vacuous verb raising and TP ellipsis.
We also experimentally examined children’s knowledge of lexical integrity, i.e., whether children treated an N-N compound as one “word,” thereby disallowing part of it from being elided and differentiating it from NPs. The results suggest the possibility that five-year-olds start to treat N-N sequences as “compound words,” distinguishing them from corresponding noun phrases.
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| Free Research Field |
心理言語学
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| Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements |
実験の実施により、4～5歳の日本語児がVEAを大人と同様に解釈できることを示した。これにより、VEAは「動詞がVからCへ語順変化を伴わずに主要部移動した後、主語を含むTPが省略されたことにより生じる」とする統語分析を支持し、語順の変化を伴わない主要部移動やTP省略が生得的言語知識の一部である可能性を高めた。複合名詞の一部の削除不可能性については、5歳頃までには、複合名詞が語であることを理解していることを示唆する結果を得た。これにより、「語の一部を削除することはできない」という普遍的制約がすでに備わっている可能性を高めた。
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