The acquisition of possession in English (original) (raw)
Related papers
2009
This work deals with the acquisition of L2 English 's Genitive Constructions with Bare Proper Name possessors by native speakers of Italian. We investigated original L2 English data collected through a written elicitation test from a group of 94 Italian teenagers learning L2 English in a formal environment. Results indicate that both Universal Grammar and transfer from the L1 are implied in the acquisition of these structures. In Section 1 we compare Italian and English Possessive Constructions in the light of a model of possessive DPs; in Section 2 we present the experimental design and the results, which will be discussed in Section 3.
A Post-Transformational Study of Phrasal Possessive Constructions in English
Zanco Journal of Humanity Sciences
This paper observes the three modules of government-binding (henceforth GB) theory which come into existence after transforming a syntactic string from D-structure to S-structure level. Transforming a syntactic structure via the process of movement leads to the appearance of a new structure, which is different from the original one at D-structure level. Here the focus is on the phrasal possessive constructions to which bounding (movement) theory, government theory, and binding theory are applied. The paper tries to provide a possible answer to the question of whether there is any relationship between the three post-transformational modules or not with respect to possessives. Also, and more importantly, it aims at indicating the extent to which possessives adhere to the modules. The paper is a theoretical one whose data is from textbooks and scholarly articles, rather than from participants. One of the outstanding conclusions is that the two modules of government theory and binding theory are highly intertwined due to sharing the structural relation of c-command.
Children's possessive structures: A case study
Essex research reports in linguistics, 1998
Two-and three-year-old children generally go through a stage during which they sporadically omit possessive 's, so alternating between saying (e.g.) Daddy's car and Daddy car. At roughly the same age, children also go through a stage (referred to by Wexler 1994 as the optional infinitives stage) during which they sporadically omit the third person singular present tense +s inflection on verbs, so alternating between e.g. Daddy wants one and Daddy want one. The question addressed in this paper is whether children's sporadic omission of possessive 's is related to their sporadic omission of third person singular present tense s-and if so, how. This question is explored in relation to data provided by a longitudinal study conducted by Joseph Galasso of his son Nicolas between ages 2;3 and 3;6 (based on transcripts of weekly audio recordings of Nicolas' speech production).
An empirical study about the expression of possession in L2 English
2014
This dissertation provides empirical data on the acquisition of an English grammar property in non-native speakers of English (L2) with Spanish as the first language (L1). It is a study where results obtained from a group of teenagers are analyzed in terms of their most common errors with regards to the expression of possession in English and with a focus on the Saxon Genitive construction. The analysis of empirical data carried out in this dissertation about the students´ preferences shows that, although the expression of possession is common for both languages, the Saxon Genitive construction is only present in English and it is, therefore, the locus of non-native-like structures mainly due to cross-linguistic influence.
On the dual nature of the ‘possessive’ marker in Modern English
1997
This paper shows, after Watkins (1967) and Tremblay (1989, 1991), that the possessive phrase of This is John's does not necessarily include an elliptical Possessee. This ambiguity is argued to arise from the dual nature of the possessive marker, which may either be inflectional or derivational in Modern English. In the first case, it may be analysed as a functional head, as proposed by Abney (1987) and Kayne (1993, 1994); in the second case, it operates in the lexicon, deriving possessive adjectives which exhibit complementary morphological and semantic properties in adnominal and predicate positions.
An L2 perspective on possessives: Contrasts and their possible consequences
OSLa Oslo Studies in Language , 2017
The present paper presents the contrastive background and the basic objectives of a cross-linguistic research project (POSS) that takes an L2-oriented perspective on possessives in English, Norwegian, German, French and selected Slavic languages. Our paper focuses on L1/L2 pairs involving Norwegian as L2 or L1. Section 1 outlines the rationale behind our project. The morphosyntactic (‘core’) systems of English, French, German, Norwegian and Russian 3rd possessives are described and compared in section 2 while section 3 draws attention to dimensions of contrasts that fall outside the scope of our project. Section 4 specifically addresses the L2 issue, presenting for selected L1/L2 pairs our basic assumptions concerning challenges to the acquisition of the L2 possessive core system. Section 5 contains a concluding summary.