Backward Versus Forward Anaphora: Reconstruction in Child Grammar

How Pragmatics and Syntax Make Principle B Acquirable1

“…On Reinhart's account, the child should experience processing difficulties in comparing the binding and coreference readings. One may argue that the reason why children appear to perform better on interpreting Principle C contexts is that in these contexts they reject backward anaphora regardless of condition C. However, Guasti and Chierchia (2000) have shown that very young children show mastery of condition C in reconstruction contexts involving backward anaphora. On our account, the asymmetry between children's performance on Principle B and Principle C environments is expected because R expressions are classified as such from the beginning.…”

Connectivity Effects in Pseudoclefts in Child Language

“…A more recent experiment by Guasti & Chierchia () concluded that the direction of the relation between the antecedent and the pronoun does not affect the accuracy of children's performance on Principle C, and that LF reconstruction is available to children. In the sentence with an embedded clause in (35), it can be seen that the pronoun, which is a null pronoun in this case, precedes the relevant NP, a musician .…”

“…The experiment by Guasti & Chierchia () found that 3‐ to 5‐year‐old Italian‐speaking children gave robust rejections of sentences like (35) and (36). Once more, the main difference between this experiment and the previous literature is that Guasti and Chierchia used a truth value judgment task rather than having children act‐out their interpretation of the sentences.…”

Knowledge of structural constraints on the dative alternation in children's pronoun interpretation

“…The findings from this study also demonstrate the early emergence of the structural constraint on the interpretation of sentences with pronouns for children. Guasti and Chierchia (1999) tested Italian-speaking children's knowledge of Principle C in standard sentences as in (23) and cases of ''reconstruction'' as in (24). (23) a. Mentre (pro) i ballava, un pagliaccio i suonava la chitarra While (pro) was dancing, a clown was playing the guitar ''While he was dancing, a clown was playing the guitar.''…”

“…In (24c), although the quantifier NP is contained in an object NP which is fronted from a position after the verb 'hide', since the null subject pronoun of the while-clause does not c-command the quantifier NP in its base position, Principle C does not apply. Three experiments were conducted in Guasti and Chierchia (1999). The results of an elicited imitation task demonstrated that Italian-speaking children were sensitive to the (un)grammaticality of the sentences in (23), and the findings from two truth value judgment experiments showed they rejected the readings in (23b) and (24a) about 90% of the time, but accepted the anaphoric/bound variable readings and the deictic reading of (23a), (24b) and (24c) about 86-92% of the time.…”