Notes on Passive Object Relatives

Belletti, Adriana

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199740390.003.0004

Cited by 17 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Belletti's (2009) account capitalizes on Collins' (2005) ‘smuggling’ approach to copular passives in English and on the Relativized Minimality (RM) account proposed by Rizzi (1990) and applied to the comprehension of object relatives by Friedmann et al (2009). …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annoying Danish relatives: Comprehension and production of relative clauses by Danish children with and without SLI

2012

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This study examines the comprehension and production of subject and object relative clauses (SRCs, ORCs) by children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) and their typically developing (TD) peers. The purpose is to investigate whether relative clauses are problematic for Danish children with SLI and to compare errors with those produced by TD children. Eighteen children with SLI, eighteen TD age-matched (AM) and nine TD language-matched (LM) Danish-speaking children participated in a comprehension and in a production task. All children performed better on the comprehension compared with the production task, as well as on SRCs compared to ORCs and produced various avoidance strategies. In the ORC context, children with SLI produced more reversal errors than the AM children, who opted for passive ORCs. These results are discussed within current theories of SLI and indicate a deficiency with the assignment of thematic roles rather than with the structural make-up of RCs.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Annoying Danish relatives: Comprehension and production of relative clauses by Danish children with and without SLI

2012

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“…The other environment in which speakers have been observed to produce passive structures is the relative clause. For our design, the most directly relevant previous study was carried out by Belletti (2014). Belletti (2014) observed that Italian children use passives when they are prompted to produce an object relative clause, in a similar fashion as they do with wh-questions, as in (12).…”

Section: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

How to be Brief: Children’s and Adults’ Application of Grice’s Brevity Maxim in Production

Yatsushiro

Sauerland

2019

Languages

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The brevity maxim of Gricean pragmatics states that unnecessary prolixity should be avoided. We report a case in which 5-year-old children’s performance conforms better to Grice’s maxim than adults’ behavior. Our data come from a semi-spontaneous German relative clause production study that we carried out with 5- and 7-year-old children as well as adults. In particular, we focus on the pragmatics of the passive predicates that were produced. These constituted about a third of both child and adult productions in items that targeted an object relative clause structure. Since the expression of the agent is syntactically optional with passive predicates, the brevity maxim predicts that the agent should only be expressed when it is informative. We compare two conditions to test this prediction: one where the agent is informative and one where it is not. We find that 5-year-old children display significantly greater sensitivity to the brevity maxim than adults do. In two follow-up studies, we show that adults’ violations of brevity cannot be explained by priming of by-phrases expressing the agent and that there is an effect of age within children as well.

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“…. Of relevance here is Belletti's (2009) finding that Italian-speaking children age 6 and older produce passive object relatives (PORs) in elicitation tasks targeting object relatives (ORs). According to Belletti, PORs obviate the need to move across an intervening subject, as normally required in active ORs.…”

Section: The Role Of Maturationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In many studies of children acquiring English, adultlike performance on clear, unequivocal verbal passives is not reliably present until sometime after age 4;0, with performance on be-passives of non-actional verbs sometimes remaining non-adultlike until age 6 or 7 (Bever 1970;Horgan 1978;Maratsos et al 1985;de Villiers & de Villiers 1985;Borer & Wexler 1987;Meints 1999;Orfitelli 2012b). In contrast, a minority of studies find fully adultlike performance, even on passives of non-actional verbs, in three-year-olds (Crain, Thornton & Murasugi 1987/2009Pinker, Lebeaux & Frost 1987;O'Brien, Grolla & Lillo-Martin 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimality effects in children’s passives

Snyder¹,

Hyams²

2015

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

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Many studies find true verbal passives in English acquired only after age four, but some find three-year-olds fully adultlike. We explain this discrepancy using Relativized Minimality (RM, Rizzi 2004). Collins (2005a) argues the passive involves movement of the logical object across the logical subject (either PRO, or a lexical DP with 'by'), and normally this requires smuggling. We propose smuggling is maturationally unavailable until age four. Three-year-olds succeed only if the intervener is eliminated, as in certain Romance reflexive-clitic constructions; or if +Topic/+WH on the logical object can prevent an RM violation, as in certain studies of the English passive. Following Grillo (2008), we explain the still-later acquisition of non-actional passives by their need for both smuggling and semantic coercion.

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Notes on Passive Object Relatives

Cited by 17 publications

References 15 publications

Annoying Danish relatives: Comprehension and production of relative clauses by Danish children with and without SLI

Annoying Danish relatives: Comprehension and production of relative clauses by Danish children with and without SLI

How to be Brief: Children’s and Adults’ Application of Grice’s Brevity Maxim in Production

Minimality effects in children’s passives

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