2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
An advanced investigation of reconstruction effects in terms of the first language acquisition
| Project/Area Number |
26370497
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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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| Research Field |
Linguistics
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| Research Institution | Miyagi Gakuin Women's University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
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| Keywords | 言語の生得性 |
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
In this research, we investigated whether English children can understand the constructions that involve reconstruction effects, in which the moved element is interprted at the launch site, as adults do, especially concentrating on clefts. We first theorized these types of sentences. Then, in order to see whether the children possess the grammar that we theorized, we executed a series of behavioral experiments. Our experimental results suggest that the children have the same kind of the grammar that adults use for interpreting the clefts that involve reconstruction effects. The results of our research, hence, could provide a piece of the evidence that children have already acquired the same kind of grammar that adults have in terms of reconstruction effects. It entails the existance of some sort of abstract level of grammar in child language that is beyond the surface word order or phrase structure.
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| Free Research Field |
言語学
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