As complex as they appear: Children’s comprehension of conjunctive expressions in Georgian
Cory Bill, Aurore Gonzalez, Imke Driemel, Tamar Makharoblidze
December 2022
 

Mitrovic and Sauerland (2014, 2016) claim that across languages DP-conjunction decomposes into [XP1 MU] [J [XP2 MU]]]. Languages vary wrt. which of the J or MU-particles are pronounced. Our study focuses on Georgian, a language that shows triadic exponence of J and MU. The aim of this work is to test Mitrovic and Sauerland’s (2014, 2016) account by investing the comprehension of conjunctive expressions by Georgian-speaking chidren (28 children; 3;9-5;10, M = 4;9). Our results show that (i) J-MU expressions are more difficult to comprehend than J expressions, (ii) J-MU expressions are more difficult to comprehend than MU expressions. Our results constitute a challenge for the account by Mitrovic and Sauerland (2014, 2016) and other existing accounts of conjunctive expressions (Brasoveanu and Szabolcsi 2013, Szabolcsi 2015, a.o.).
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/007101
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Proceedings of the 23rd Amsterdam Colloquium
keywords: conjunction, conjunctive expressions, acquisition, georgian, semantics
Downloaded:372 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]