Scope Relations of QP’s and Scrambling in the Acquisition of Japanese

Abstract

"In this paper, I investigate children’s acquisition of scope relations of QP’s in Japanese and point out its implications for the variation of scope relations of QP’s and for whether A-chains are available at the early stages of child language acquisition. I will show that the acquisition of scope relations of QP’s in Japanese does not obey the Subset Principle (Berwick 1985, Wexler and Manzini 1987) and suggest that the acquisition of scope relations of QP’s is lexical. I will also show that clause-internal scrambling does not change the scope relation of QP’s in early child Japanese, and speculate that A-chain formation in clause-internal scrambling undergoes maturation"