Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-xxrs7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T00:19:13.659Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Acquisition of Relative Clauses in Relation to Language Typology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2007

Bernard Comrie
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology University of California Santa Barbara

Extract

The articles that constitute the body of this journal issue present rich empirical evidence and theoretical reasoning that relate to the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs). Most are concerned with SLA, more specifically with the acquisition of East Asian languages (in particular, Japanese and Korean) by those who are already speakers of other languages, including European languages. The article by Yip and Matthews (this issue) is slightly different in that it documents the bilingual acquisition of Cantonese and English by children, with English being acquired with a slight lag relative to Cantonese, but, like the other articles, it also provides evidence of the confrontation of European and East Asian languages in the general area of language acquisition.

Type
COMMENTARY
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Comrie, B. (1996). The unity of noun-modifying clauses in Asian languages. In Pan-Asiatic Linguistics: Proceedings of the Fourth International Symposium on Languages and Linguistics, January 8–10, 1996 (pp. 10771088). Salaya, Thailand: Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University at Salaya.
Comrie, B. (1998a). Attributive clauses in Asian languages: Towards an areal typology. In W. Boeder, C. Schroeder, K. H. Wagner, & W. Wildgen (Eds.), Sprache in Raum und Zeit: In memoriam Johannes Bechert, Band 2—Beiträge zur empirischen Sprachwissenschaft (pp. 5160). Tübingen: Gunter Narr.
Comrie, B. (1998b). Rethinking the typology of relative clauses. Language Design, 1, 5986.Google Scholar
Keenan, E. L. & Comrie, B. (1977). Noun phrase accessibility and Universal Grammar. Linguistic Inquiry, 8, 6399.Google Scholar
Matsumoto, Y. (1997). Noun-modifying constructions in Japanese: A frame-semantic approach. Amsterdam: Benjamins.