论文信息 - Optional Infinitives in Russian and Their Implications for the Pro-Drop Debate

Optional Infinitives in Russian and Their Implications for the Pro-Drop Debate

Objectives In this paper we will argue that evidence from Russian child language favors an analysis of (adult) Russian as a non-pro-drop language (Franks 1995), rather than a pro-drop language (Benedicto 1993). Our argument is based on the distribution of Optional Infinitives (OI's), a construction that is specific to child language. By Optional Infinitive we mean an infinitival verb form used in a root clause, where the target language requires a finite form. OI's have been reported in various languages, including:

William Snyder | Eva Bar-Shalom

[1] R. Brown. A First Language , 1973 .

[2] A. Pierce. On the emergence of syntax : a crosslinguistic study , 1989 .

[3] S. Franks. Parameters of Slavic morphosyntax , 1995 .

[4] William Snyder,et al. Language acquisition and language variation : the role of morphology , 1995 .

[5] C Snow,et al. Child language data exchange system , 1984, Journal of Child Language.

[6] Virginia Valian. Syntactic subjects in the early speech of American and Italian children , 1991, Cognition.

[7] D. Poeppel,et al. The full competence hypothesis of clause structure in early German , 1993 .