Aspects of the acquisition of object control and ECM-type verbs in EP
Ana Lúcia Santos*, Anabela Gonçalves*, Inês Duarte* & Nina Hyams**
*Universidade de Lisboa, **UCLA
Object control and ECM-type verbs occur in superficially similar structures (1,2).
How then do children acquire the lexical-argument structure of these verbs? (See Becker 2006,
on subject raising vs. subject control verbs). Moreover, E(uropean) P(ortuguese) ECM-type
verbs (perception verbs and causatives) select not only ECM complements but also inflected
infinitives (3), prepositional infinitives with perception verbs (4), and complex predicates (5).
It is therefore interesting to see which structures emerge earlier, placing them on a scale of
complexity. Landau & Thornton (2011) have explored the acquisition (spontaneous
production) of the different complement structures under want and suggested that more
defective structures, e.g., raising to object (ECM), are acquired later, because the child must
truncate the embedded CP to be able to project the target structure.
In this paper, we explore the acquisition of object control (OC) and the different
complement structures selected by ECM-type verbs, based on an analysis of spontaneous and
elicited production data. The spontaneous production corpus includes data from 3 children
(1;6-3;11, 1;6-3;10, 1;5-2;9, MLUw 1.2-3.8, 27586 utterances). In the elicited production
experiment we tested 3- 6 year-olds in a sentence completion task in which the child hears a
story (context) also acted out with props, and is asked to help the puppet complete his
descriptions of the story (6). We tested: perception verbs (ver ‘see’), causatives (mandar
‘make’, deixar ‘let’), subject control verbs (querer ‘want’, conseguir ‘be able to’), and object
control verbs (ensinar a ‘teach’, proibir de ‘forbid’). In all cases, the lower subject is plural,
making visible the contrast between inflected and uninflected infinitives. Test verbs were
selected from the set of verbs occurring in the spontaneous corpus (both in child and child
directed speech). Experimental data collection is still under way and we refer here the
preliminary results from 27 subjects.
We focus on two main issues: First, a comparison between the OC and the ECM verbs
suggests an avoidance of object control. This may manifest itself as substitution of an OC
verb (proibir) by a negated ECM verb (não deixar) (7); in other cases, children produce nontarget-like structures in which the OC verb appears to have only a single internal argument (8).
This may indicate that the acquisition of the lexical argument structure of OC verbs is still
unstable. In fact, we assume that only constituency contrasts such as in (9), with a be-cleft,
indicate the presence of two internal arguments for proibir and only one internal argument for
deixar (Raposo1989). Because we take it that only positive evidence is available, we suggest
that children’s default analysis is that these verbs select a single internal argument until they
have sufficient evidence for multi-valent analysis. This proposal is compatible with the type
of non-target results obtained in our elicited production task.
Secondly, we explore children’s production preferences among the non-finite
complements of ECM-type verbs. Inflected infinitives are the most frequent answer in elicited
production; conversely, unambiguous ECM structures are rare, and complex predicates are
avoided or surface as non-target-like forms (10). This suggests an initial preference for CP
complements followed by later acquisition of more defective complement structures. In
addition, the fact that complex predicates are scarce may suggest a difficulty with the
reorganization of thematic roles in causative complex predicate (see Gonçalves, 1999).
(1) O Manuel ensinou-os a estudar.
the Manuel taught-them to study
‘Manuel taught them to study.’
(2) O Manuel viu-os a estudar.
the Manuel saw-them to study
‘Manuel saw them studying.’
(3) O Manuel mandou os meninos / eles estudarem.
the Manuel made the children / they study-INF-3PL
‘Manuel made the children study.’
(4) O Manuel viu os meninos (a) estudarem.
the Manuel saw the children (to) study-INF-3PL
‘Manuel saw the children studying.”
(5) O Manuel mandou estudar os meninos.
the Manuel made study-INF the children
(6)a. O que é que o leão viu? O leão…
what is that the lion saw? The lion…
‘What did the lion see? The lion…’
b. A mãe deixou o quê? A mãe…
the mother let
what ? the mother…
‘What did mommy allow? Mommy…”
(7) O pai
não deixou os filhos entrar na
água.
4;11.26
the father NOT let
the children enter in_the water
(target: O pai proibiu os filhos de entrar na água. ‘Daddy forbade the children to enter
into the water.’)
(8) a. O pai proibiu de
eles irem
para a água.
6;1.06
the father forbade
PREP they go-INF-3PL to the water
b. O pai proibiu
eles irem
para a água.
5;1.15
the father forbade they go-INF-3PL to the water
(9) a. O pai
proibiu os filhos foi de
nadar.
the father forbade the children was PREP swim
b. *O pai deixou os filhos foi nadar.
(10) (O pai)
mandou empurrar os elefantes o carro.
5;1.0
(the father) made push
the elephants the car
(target: O pai mandou empurrar o carro aos elefantes)
References
Becker, M. (2006). There began to be a learnability puzzle. Linguistic Inquiry 37, 441-456.
Landau, I. & R. Thornton (2011). Early child Control. Lingua 121, 920-941.
Gonçalves, A. (1999). Predicados complexos verbais em contextos de infinitivo não
preposicionado. PhD dissertation, Univ. Lisbon.
Raposo, E. (1989). Prepositional infinitival constructions in European Portuguese". In Jaeggli,
O. & K. Safir (eds.). The Null Subject Parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer.