The ontogenesis of relative clauses in preschool children acquiring Norwegian

174 Pages·2015·0.94 MB·English

by  Morten Aase Løver

The ontogenesis of relative clauses
in preschool children acquiring
Norwegian

Morten Aase Løver

MA thesis, Department of Linguistics and
Scandinavian studies, Faculty of Humanities

UNIVERSITY OF OSLO

Spring 2015
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«Da har du problemer, ifølge peanøtthjerneforbundet»
- Joachim Nielsen (1964-2000)

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© Morten Aase Løver
2015
The ontogenesis of relative clauses in preschool children acquiring Norwegian
Morten Aase Løver
http://www.duo.uio.no/
Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo
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Summary
The current thesis addresses the acquisition of relative clauses in typically developing,
monolingual Norwegian children through spontaneous speech sampling.
Relative clauses are finite subordinate clauses that modify noun phrases. Relative clauses
have heads, which can have several syntactic functions in both the matrix clause and the
relative clause. Many possibilities of combinations can arise as a virtue of this, and the
developmental trajectory of these properties, as well as several others, constitutes the object
of study.
The material consists of 56 one hour-long audio recordings of children between 1;0 and 5;6.
The first relative clauses appeared in the age category 2;0-2;6.
The purpose of the thesis is to unite applied and theoretical approaches in describing the
object of study. The applied framework that was used was LARSP, a clinical tool of
diagnosation for children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The theoretical
framework that was used was the usage-based framework. The intended result of this is a
diagnosation tool in the form of a micro-profile, and a contribution to the theoretical discourse
on the acquisition of relative clauses.
The micro-profile is a detailed model of acquisition for a specific property. A micro-profile
for relative clauses was constructed based on the material.
The results showed that relative clauses develop through chunks and verb-island
constructions, from pragmatically useful and propositionally simple to more complex. Thus,
relative clauses develop in a manner that is very compatible with the previous research that
has been done within the usage-based framework, and similar to that of many other languages
that have been studied, but with several important differences. The differences have been
accounted for in terms of language-specific properties, for example center-embedding versus
right-branching, the difference between relative pronoun and subjunction and the existence
and absence of certain grammatical constructions.

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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I want to thank the parents of the children whose utterances constitute the
material of the thesis. Your cooperation, patience, enthusiasm made the data collection
delightful, fun and unforgettable. This would never have been possible without you.
Kristian Emil Kristoffersen introduced me to child language acquisition through the subject
LING1107, took Bror and me to the LARSP workshop in Reading and helped us start the
project. In addition, he gave my thesis an edge by reading and commenting on it in its final
stage.
Hans-Olav Enger, Helge Lødrup, Kjell Johan Sæbø, Magnus Hole Fjetland have offered
views, comments, corrections and insights that the present study is heavily influenced by.
A much-needed introduction to transcription was given us by Kristin Hagen and Anders
Nøklestad. Kristin Hagen also offered helped me with corpora search.
Pernille Hansen helped me give my thesis a statistical dimension by investing time in teaching
me, and read parts of my thesis to make sure I did it right.
Hanne Gram Simonsen invited us to the LARSP project and supervised my thesis, and did an
excellent job at it. Her knowledge, expertise, and instinct for structure, scientific practice and
language have been enormously important to this thesis. Hanne always showed me
enthusiasm, interest and trust when I came to counseling. By giving me elaborate answers to
my questions, be it day, evening, weekend, or holiday, she displayed genuine interest in my
project.
Everybody that have studied linguistics have offered the perfect climate to grow and learn. In
particular, I want to thank the MA students, who I have spent many breaks with, and have
supported me socially and academically in the writing process. They are Teodor Ekblad
Aagard, André Nilsson Dannevig, Aïda Leistad Thomassen, Malene Bøyum Solveig
Aspelund, Ragni Vik Johnsen, Daniel Zakkarias von Gertten, Sara Niday and Karen-Therese
Ugelvik.
Bror-Magnus Sviland Strand has planned the project, and collected and transcribed the data
material together with me. We have spent the last 18 months doing this. It has been a pleasure
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all along, and he has helped me with important insights and views. In addition to being my
closest collaborator, he has also been one of my closest friends in this period.
Finally, I want to thank my lovely Kari, who always was patient and a harbor of relaxation
after many hours of writing. I am looking forward to us spending more time with each other
now.
Morten Aase Løver
May 2015

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