2010 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Toward the elucidation of the human language faculty based on language acquisition studies: With a focus on children's acquisition of Japanese

Research Project

Project/Area Number	21720137
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Linguistics
Research Institution	Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music
Principal Investigator	ISOBE Miwa Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, 言語・音声トレーニングセンター, 助教 (00449018)
Project Period (FY)	2009 – 2010
Keywords	言語獲得 / 生成文法 / 言語機能 / コントロール
Research Abstract	Mastery of control has been one of the central issues in the study of child language acquisition since it is assumed in the study of the language faculty that the principles of control are biologically determined. This research project investigated Japanese-speaking children's knowledge of adjunct control by utilizing sentences containing two types of null subjects, PRO and null pronominal, in temporal clauses. The experiment revealed that 3 to 5-year-olds acquiring Japanese successfully identified both kinds of null subjects in the same way as an adult. This finding supports the view that the control principles are innate.