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dc.contributor.advisorAnderssen, Merete
dc.contributor.authorHeravi Karimouy, Mitra
dc.date.accessioned2015-02-02T11:11:52Z
dc.date.available2015-02-02T11:11:52Z
dc.date.issued2014-11-14
dc.description.abstractThis thesis explores the null subject phenomenon in English-speaking monolingual children by taking a closer look at the effect of discourse-pragmatic features on the realization of subject arguments in the speech of an English-speaking child. For that purpose, first the three dominant approaches in the literature, namely grammatical, performance and discourse-pragmatic accounts, are reviewed. Then, the framework of Hughes and Allen’s (2006, 2013, in press) studies is adopted to analyze the effect of four accessibility features, namely animacy, physical presence, prior mention, and linguistic disambiguation in the selected data. The results show that the child’s use of null subjects decreases as he moves towards the end of the null subject stage. They also indicate that the child is sensitive to the information flow and produces subjects based on the accessibility of different discourse-pragmatic features. The findings also reveal that such features have different weights as well as an incremental effect on the child’s choice of subject arguments. Finally, the other two approaches—the grammatical and performance perspectives—are brought back into discussion; by comparing all the three perspectives, it is concluded that an alternative unifying approach, as Allen (2006) maintains, would be able to provide a better more comprehensive explanation of the null subject phenomenon than any of the three can do alone.en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10037/7057
dc.identifier.urnURN:NBN:no-uit_munin_6647
dc.language.isoengen
dc.publisherUiT Norges arktiske universiteten
dc.publisherUiT The Arctic University of Norwayen
dc.rights.accessRightsopenAccess
dc.rights.holderCopyright 2014 The Author(s)
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0en_US
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)en_US
dc.subject.courseIDENG-3991en
dc.subjectVDP::Humanities: 000::Linguistics: 010::English language: 020en
dc.subjectVDP::Humaniora: 000::Språkvitenskapelige fag: 010::Engelsk språk: 020en
dc.subjectEnglish Linguisticsen
dc.subjectdiscourse-pragmatic featuresen
dc.subjectlanguage acquisitionen
dc.subjectnull subject stageen
dc.subjectreferential choiceen
dc.titleThe null subject stage and children's referential choice: a case study of an English-speaking monolingualen
dc.typeMaster thesisen
dc.typeMastergradsoppgaveen


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Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)
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