Verb placement in main and embedded clauses has attracted much attention among first language acquisition researchers. For example, to researchers on the acquisition of the Scandinavian languages one central question is why children acquiring verb second in main clauses and the Mainland Scandinavian (MSc) verb placement in embedded clauses (Negation-Verb order) never make verb placement errors in main clauses but incorrectly place verbs before negation/adverbs in embedded clauses:
(1) *…om ni behöver inte några brädor. (Swedish, Harry 3;0) …if you need not any boards ‘…if you don’t need any boards.’ Target: …om ni inte behöver några brädor.
In previous research on Faroese, Norwegian and Swedish, various factors and their influence on the acquisition of embedded verb placement have been explored, such as transfer of the syntax of verb second from main to embedded clauses, the specific syntactic properties of auxiliaries and modals, and misinterpretation of the language input. Yet, it is still unclear what factors influence the acquisition of Negation-Verb order in embedded clauses. One problematic aspect is the lack of comparable data from different ages, both within languages and between languages.
In this presentation, new data on the acquisition of Negation-Verb order in embedded clauses are presented. The data come from two elicitation experiments with Swedish-acquiring children aged 4-6 years. The results of the first experiment, which was conducted with 17 5-6 year old children, suggest that the syntactic properties of auxiliaries and modals, but not transfer, may influence the placement of verbs in embedded clauses. The second experiment, which is currently being designed, will be conducted to evaluate these results with 4-5 year olds.
The new data will complement existing spontaneous and elicited data from Faroese, Norwegian and Swedish children; the influence of various factors on the acquisition of verb placement in embedded clauses will be investigated.
17th World Congress of the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA)