Publications

Displaying 1 - 10 of 10
  • Erkelens, M. (2003). The semantic organization of "cut" and "break" in Dutch: A developmental study. Master Thesis, Free University Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
  • Hellwig, B. (2003). The grammatical coding of postural semantics in Goemai (a West Chadic language of Nigeria). PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.58463.
  • Kidd, E. (2003). An investigation of children’s sentence processing: A developmental perspective. PhD Thesis, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Australia.
  • Krämer, I. (2000). Interpreting indefinites: An experimental study of children's language comprehension. PhD Thesis, University of Utrecht, Utrecht. doi:10.17617/2.2057626.
  • Liszkowski, U. (2000). A belief about theory of mind: The relation between children's inhibitory control and their common sense psychological knowledge. Master Thesis, University of Essex.
  • Moscoso del Prado Martín, F. (2003). Paradigmatic structures in morphological processing: Computational and cross-linguistic experimental studies. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.58929.
  • Rowland, C. F. (2000). The grammatical acquisition of wh-questions in early English multi-word speech. PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham, UK.

    Abstract

    Recent studies of wh-question acquisition have tended to come from the nativist side of the language acquisition debate with little input from a constructivist perspective. The present work was designed to redress the balance, first by presenting a detailed description of young children's wh-question acquisition data, second, by providing detailed critiques of two nativist theories of wh- question acquisition, and third, by presenting a preliminary account of young children's wh-question development from a constructivist perspective. Analyses of the data from twelve 2 to 3 year old children collected over a year and of data from an older child (Adam from the Brown corpus, 1973) are described and three conclusions are drawn. First it is argued that the data suggest that children's knowledge of how to form wh-questions builds up gradually as they learn how to combine lexical items such as wh-words and auxiliaries in specific ways. Second, it is concluded that two nativist theories of grammatical development (Radford, 1990, 1992, 1995, 1996, Valian, Lasser & Mandelbaum, 1992) fail to account successfully for the wh-question data produced by the children. Third, it is asserted that the lexically-specific nature of children's early wh-questions is compatible with a lexical constructivist view of development, which proposes that the language learning mechanism learns by picking up high frequency lexical patterns from the input. The implications of these conclusions for theories of language development and future research are discussed.
  • Schultze-Berndt, E. (2000). Simple and complex verbs in Jaminjung: A study of event categorisation in an Australian language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.2057716.
  • Sprenger, S. A. (2003). Fixed expressions and the production of idioms. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.57562.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2003). Classifying hand configurations in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands). PhD Thesis, LOT, Utrecht. Retrieved from http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2003-0717-122837/UUindex.html.

    Abstract

    This study investigates the morphological and morphosyntactic characteristics of hand configurations in signs, particularly in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT). The literature on sign languages in general acknowledges that hand configurations can function as morphemes, more specifically as classifiers , in a subset of signs: verbs expressing the motion, location, and existence of referents (VELMs). These verbs are considered the output of productive sign formation processes. In contrast, other signs in which similar hand configurations appear ( iconic or motivated signs) have been considered to be lexicalized signs, not involving productive processes. This research report shows that meaningful hand configurations have (at least) two very different functions in the grammar of NGT (and presumably in other sign languages, too). First, they are agreement markers on VELMs, and hence are functional elements. Second, they are roots in motivated signs, and thus lexical elements. The latter signs are analysed as root compounds and are formed from various roots by productive processes. The similarities in surface form and differences in morphosyntactic characteristics observed in comparison of VELMs and root compounds are attributed to their different structures and to the sign language interface between grammar and phonetic form

Share this page