Investigations into children's acquisition of the partitive structure

Abstract

Recent literature suggests that children’s acquisition of DP is a process of gradual feature acquisition (Roeper 2006). This study looks at the acquisition of DP’s barrier feature from the perspective of the acquisition of the syntax of the English partitive construction. This study explores the contrast between the partitive and the pseudopartitive. An adjective preceding the partitive cannot modify the lower noun, but it can in an equivalent pseudopartitive construction. This study shows that children aged 3-5 do not make this distinction, suggesting that children don’t recognize partitive-internal DP as a barrier to adjectival modification.