CNL Lunch

Hirohisa Kiguchi with Rosalind Thornton

ChildrenÕs Understanding of Binding Principle B in ACD Constructions

Thursday April 19th, 12:30pm, 3416 Marie Mount Hall

Thornton and Wexler (1999) investigate the interaction between ChildÕs Binding Principle B and VP-ellipsis in coordinate structures. Our study extends their work to another type of VP-ellipsis called Antecedent Contained Deletion (ACD) constructions shown in (1).

(1) *Darth Vader found heri the same kind of treasure that the Mermaidi did.
(2) [[the same kind of the treasure that the Mermaidi did [find heri]] Darth Vader found heri.

Adult speakers of English know that a pronoun her, cannot refer to the Mermaid, in the ACD sentence (1) whose logical form violates Binding Principle B in (2). In our experiment children rejected 85% of the target sentences like (1). This suggests that Binding Principle B resides in childÕs grammars, supporting Thornton & Wexler (1999). To make sure that the violation of Principle C on surface is NOT the reason of childrenÕs rejection of our target sentences, we also examined the sentences as in (3) whose surface violates Principle C but logical form in (4) does not violate any kind of Binding Conditions.

(3) Kermit gave himi the same color paint that the SmurfiÕs father did.
(4) [the same color paint that the SmurfiÕs father did [give himi]] Kermit gave himi .

Children accepted 95% of our target sentences in this experiment. This suggests that as for ACD constructions, Binding Conditions are applied solely at LF even in childÕs grammar, supporting the view of Fiengo and May (1994) and Fox (1999, 2000).