Relativized relatives: Types of intervention in the acquisition of A-bar dependencies

Abstract

Young children find (some) object relatives much harder to understand than subject relatives. The main finding of this article is that not all object relatives are difficult. The difficulty with object relatives (and object Wh-questions) is selective: it depends on the structural similarity between the A'-moved element and the intervening subject. We interpret this selective effect in terms of a proper extension of Relativized Minimality, the principle of syntactic theory which expresses locality effects linked to intervention, and whose psycholinguistic relevance has been highlighted in Grillo's work on agrammatism. Six experiments have been conducted with 22 Hebrew-speaking children aged 3;7-5;0 to substantiate our claims empirically. Experiments 1 and 2 tested the comprehension of headed subject and object relatives with and without a resumptive pronoun, in sentences with lexically restricted (D NP) subjects. Subject relatives were comprehended well, but the performance on object relatives was at chance. The addition of resumptive pronouns did not improve comprehension. Experiments 3 and 4 manipulated the lexical restriction of the moved element and the intervening subject, using free relatives and impersonal pro subjects, respectively. When the moved constituent and the intervening subject were structurally dissimilar in terms of lexical-NP restriction, the performance significantly improved. Experiment 5 showed a similar comprehension pattern in another type of A' movement: Wh-questions. The comprehension of who and which subject and object questions was difficult only when both the crossing element and the intervener included a lexical NP restriction. Finally, a similar pattern emerged in production: in an elicited production study, children showed a tendency to avoid producing structures in which both the moved element and the intervener are lexically restricted. We conclude suggesting a line of analysis of the difference between children and adults in dealing with object A'-dependencies. #

Notes on Passive Object Relatives

“…4 The authors actually propose that the inability to produce OR at the relevant age in Hebrew can in fact be used as a detector of SLI in that language. Younger children (3;7 -5;5, some data reported in Friedmann, Belletti, Rizzi (2009)) experience difficulty with the production of OR in Hebrew as well.…”

“…In recent work with N.Friedmann and L.Rizzi (Friedmann, Belletti, Rizzi (2009), see Grillo (2005Grillo ( , 2008 for related proposals on aphasics), we have proposed an intervention type explanation, formulated in terms of the locality principle known as Relativized Minimality (RM), for the parallel difficulty that children are known to experience in the comprehension of object relatives. 9 The hypothesis that I would like to entertain here is that the same intervention type explanation may account for production, thus partly extending the account in terms of RM formulated for comprehension.…”

“…In the following section I summarize the essential lines of the account developed in Friedmann, Belletti, Rizzi (2009) for the comprehension data, directly relevant for the proposal to be developed in section 4 on production.…”

“…Arguably, this may be a favored option at some developmental stages. 1 The account in terms of locality extends to production the account in terms of Relativized Minimality, recently formulated by Friedmann, Belletti, Rizzi (2009) on the comprehension of relative clauses, based on experimental results on Hebrew development. The difficulty with OR in contrast with SR is also a frequently observed fact in comprehension (Arosio, Adani, Guasti (2006) on Italian and references cited therein for recent general discussion) both in development and in adult parsing.…”

“…The difficulty with OR in contrast with SR is also a frequently observed fact in comprehension (Arosio, Adani, Guasti (2006) on Italian and references cited therein for recent general discussion) both in development and in adult parsing. This general issue is addressed in detail in Friedmann, Belletti, Rizzi (2009); it will be touched upon here in order to substantiate the proposal on production.…”