2012 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Empirical and theoretical studies of the acquisition of Argument Ellipsis.

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23820022
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	Linguistics
Research Institution	Mie University
Principal Investigator	OTAKI Koichi 三重大学, 共通教育センター, 特任講師(教育担当) (50616042)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2012
Keywords	項削除 / パラメータ / 生成文法 / 言語獲得
Research Abstract	The aim of this study is to investigate the acquisition of Argument Ellipsis, which has been observed in languages like Japanese and Korean. This study proposes the generalization that only languages that exhibit non-fusional case morphology allow Argument Ellipsis, and explains why such a generalization holds cross-linguistically. Also, this study demonstrates that Japanese-speaking children have knowledge of Argument Ellipsis. Given that direct evidence for the acquisition of Argument Ellipsis is limited, the results of the experiment lend further support to the theory of Argument Ellipsis proposed in this study, which claims that the acquisition of case markers triggers the acquisition of Argument Ellipsis.