Abstract
During the past decade, many investigators of child language have reported that in early grammar verbs often surface without finite morphology in root clauses (for example, Jordens (1990), Weverink (1989) for Dutch). Wexler (1994) refers to this phenomenon as the optional infinitive stage because such examples occur alongside finite sentences. Examples of optional infinitives are given in (1) for Dutch, French, and German:
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Schaeffer, J. (2000). Object Scrambling and Specificity in Dutch Child Language. In: Powers, S.M., Hamann, C. (eds) The Acquisition of Scrambling and Cliticization. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, vol 26. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3232-1_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3232-1_4
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