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Scrambling in the Acquisition of English?

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The Acquisition of Scrambling and Cliticization

Part of the book series: Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics ((SITP,volume 26))

Abstract

Word order errors in child English have two things in common with the phenomenon of scrambling. First, the same explanations which have been offered for scrambling namely, clause—internal movement and base-generation, have been offered for word order errors. Second, just as little else in the scrambling literature besides the rough definition of scrambling as the permutation of two elements which are clause-mates is conceded (see Haider, this volume), the only recognized fact is that children acquiring English sometimes produce word order errors. It is not certain when these errors emerge, what their overall frequency is or if one type of word order error is more frequent than another. Consider the representative samples in Table 1.

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Powers, S.M. (2000). Scrambling in the Acquisition of English?. 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_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3232-1_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-5432-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-3232-1

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