Evidence for the VP Constituent from Child Korean.

Abstract

An examination of children's sentence structure in Korean argues for a verb phrase (VP) constituent in child grammar, but suggests that this does not necessarily support its existence in adult Korean grammar. Korean children, it is noted, generally restrict their sentences to one word order, subject-object-verb, despite the existence of another order in adult grammar. It is proposed that, as children acquire various word order possibilities and scope relations, they may realize that the VP constituent is no longer consistent with the word order facts of adult language and thus will abandon it. (MSE) *********************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************&******************************77******* PRCLI) 27 (1988) PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY ... 1 C'eaJa, TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC). U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Oirce 01 Educational Research and improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC, Villa document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating L C Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction Quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent axial OERI p)sibon or policy Evidence for the VP Constituent from Child Korean* Young-mee Yu Cho and Ki-Sun Hong Stanford University 0. Recently many interesting discussions (Hale 1982, Mohanan 1962, Saito 1985, Whitman 1979, 1986) have centered around a typological distinction between configurational and nonconfigurational languages. Loosely defined, configurational Itnguages are those in which word order is fixed, whereas scrambling type free word order is observed in nonconfigurational languages. Korean and Japanese have been identified as nonconfigurational, due to their relatively free word order. Consider the following: (1) a. nay-ka Suni-eykey saiwa-lul I-NOM DAT apple-ACC 'I gave an apple to Suni.' b. nay -ka sakwa-lul Suni-eykey c. Suni-eykey nay -ka sakva -lul d. Suni-eykey sakwaraul nay -ka e. sakwa-lul nay -ka Suni-eykey f. sakwa-lul Suni-eykey nay -ka cwu-ess-ta. give-PAST-VE cwu-ess-ta. cwu-ess-ta. cwu-ess-ta. cwu-ess-ta. cwu-ess-ta. As demonstrated in (1), the words in a sentence can occur in any order, with the the verb, which should be rigidly final. 1. The freedom in word order leads to an important question regarding a verb stituent. A simple generalization which we can make from (1) is that only the sister directly dominated by S are freely ordered. Due to this fact, recent studies of Korean existence of a VP constituent. Consider (2):