Acquisition of object clitics in child Polish

Abstract

The goal of the following project is to probe into the early knowledge of the syntactic and the pragmatic components of language at the syntax-pragmatics interface, as exemplified by discourse-related elements such as object clitics. Object clitics, in addition to allowing for cross-linguistic generalizations, provide an insight into the early clause structure and the mechanisms which constrain the syntax-pragmatics interface. Cross linguistic variation has been found to be limited and well-governed, and has been attributed to the underlying syntactic mechanism, such as the Unique Checking Constraint or a number of pragmatic constraints operative in the child’s grammar such as inability to mark referentiality. The present study seeks to validate the claims of the above theories by offering new data and a novel perspective. Also, it explores a theory which attempts to integrate the acquisition of syntax and pragmatics by attributing early non-adult-like structures in child grammar to a discourse linking mechanism analogous to the one postulated for root infinitives. The clitic production experiment is composed of two types of data. The naturalistic part presents the results of a pilot study based on daily language production by a monolingual Polish child age 2;1 – 2;9, which establishes the relative age of clitic production at the age of 2;9. The data elicitation experiment, conducted with 53 monolingual Polish children age 2;9 – 5;10, focuses on production of object clitics with obligatorily transitive verbs. Following the clitic production experiment, the children are tested for object clitic comprehension and knowledge of Principle B, as well as clitic referentiality resolution in pragmatically infelicitous contexts.