Abstract
The Generalized Minimality approach to comprehension difficulties with non-local dependencies (Grillo 2005, 2008) predicts that in non-local dependencies (e.g. object relatives) a partial match in internal structure between the moved and the intervening DP can generate a minimality effect and lead to comprehension difficulties in several populations, including children and agrammatic Broca's aphasics. This paper presents two experiments on headed and free whmovement: a sentence to picture matching task with 4-5 year-old children and a selfpaced reading task with adults. In both experiments we observed minimality effects in the absence of lexical restriction in one of the DPs involved; these results shed light on the sensitivity of the minimality principle and bring further support to the feature based approach to intervention effects.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 143-160 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Revue Roumaine de Linguistique |
Volume | 57 |
Issue number | 2 |
Publication status | Published - 6 Aug 2012 |
Keywords
- Acquisition
- Feature hierarchy
- Free relatives
- Full competence
- Generalized Minimality
- Non local dependencies