Functional categories in learner language (Mouton de Gruyter, 2009)
Includes bibliographical references and index
Contents -- Preface / Christine Dimroth and Peter Jordens -- Convergence on finite V2 clauses in L1, bilingual L1 and early L2 acquisition / Rosemarie Tracy and Dieter Thoma -- The acquisition of functional categories in child L1 and adult L2 Dutch / Peter Jordens -- The acquisition of syntactic finiteness in L1 German: A structure-building approach / Steffi Winkler -- Stepping stones and stumbling blocks: Why negation accelerates and additive particles delay the acquisition of finiteness in German / Christine Dimroth -- Does finiteness mark assertion? A picture selection study with native speakers and adult learners of German / Sarah Schimke -- Light verbs and the acquisition of finiteness and negation in Dutch as a second language / Josje Verhagen -- Finiteness in children with SLI: a functional approach / Anke Jolink -- Functional and modal elements in child and adult Russian / Natalia Gagarina -- How much (morpho- )syntax is needed to express finiteness? / Karen Ferret and Clive Perdue -- Relating Italian articles and clitic object pronouns in bilingual children acquiring Italian and German / Tanja Kupisch and Natascha Müller -- Index
Research on spontaneous processes of language acquisition has shown that early learner systems are based on lexical structures. At some point in acquisition this lexical-semantic system is given up in favour of a target-like functional category system. This work deals with the driving forces behind the acquisition of the functional properties of inflection, word-order variation, definiteness and agreement