Dimensiones de pritchard y karasick

Becker 2006 considers, and eventually rejects, the possibility that children initially expect

a control structure when a verb occurs with an infinitival complement. If children initially

assume that all verbs that take infinitival complements are control verbs, non-referential

expletive subjects are one way to identify the verbs that are raising because they indicate

that no theta-role has been assigned to the external argument introduced by a verb. Con-

trol verbs, unlike raising verbs, are incompatible with expletive subjects. However, Becker

2006 argues against this learning mechanism on the basis of verbs likebeginthat fall into

both the control and raising categories. If the learner analyzesbeginas a pure raising verb

using expletive subjects, as init began to rain, then the learner would have no positive evi-

dence to also identify it as a control verb later on. If the learner assumes both a raising and

a control structure forbegin, then there is nothing in the input that prevents the learner

from assuming that pure raising verbs liketendorseemare also optionally control verbs

likebegin. In other words, what prevents the learner from overgeneralizing the property

that verbs can occur in both control and raising structures? The possibility of running

1

Throughout the analysis, I use the term “expletive subject” and “non-referential subject” interchange- ably or in conjunction. The term “expletive” is used to also include the constructions in null subject lan-

guages in which the grammatical subject position is null. I am agnostic as to whether that position is

occupied by an unpronounced expletive, or is simply absent. The account proposed in this chapter is also applicable to null subject languages as children learning these languages are attuned to the referentiality of the null content. Evidence for the knowledge of the content of null subjects at an early age is evident,

for instance, from work on Mandarin, a topic drop language. Wang, Lillo-Martin, Best, and Levitt (1992)

show that children between the ages of 2 and 4 never use an overt non-expletive lexical item in weather constructions, even when prompted to do so. The fact that non-referential subjects in their language are unpronounced, thus, appears to be known by children learning pro-drop and topic-drop languages.

into the problem of overgeneralization is one reason why Becker 2006 assumes that verbs

that take infinitival complements are initially analyzed as having a raising structure.

Becker 2006, 2014 contend that any analysis of the acquisition of raising and control

predicates must address the problem of learning pure raising, pure control, and ambiguous

predicates without overgeneralizing that all predicates are ambiguous between raising

and control. A visualization of the problem can be seen in Figure 2.1 below:

Raising Control

Ambi

Figure 2.1:Relationship between control, raising, and ambiguous verbs.

As illustrated in Figure 2.1, the problem any analysis of the acquisition of control and

raising verbs faces is that of singling out pure control and raising verbs, while still allowing

for a class of verbs that fall into both categories. In doing so, we must additionally take care

to prevent a situation in which all potential control and raising predicates are generalized

as being ambiguous predicates.

The problem of overgeneralization is one reason that leads Becker 2006 to hypothesize

that children initially assume all verbs that take an infinitival complement are raising

verbs. Another reason for assuming a raising first analysis is that Becker 2006 conducted

a series of experiments using truth value judgment tasks which showed at first glance that

children appear to analyzewant as a raising verb. The studies find that children tend to

treat sentences likethe flower wants to be pink(Becker 2006:445) as a raising construction

because they rate this sentence as pragmatically acceptable. Adult controls, in contrast,

tend to judge such sentences as infelicitous or “silly”. These studies interpret children’s

The results from this experiment, and the reasoning on the problem of overgeneralization,

together lead Becker 2006 to conclude that children first assume a raising structure when

they encounter a verb that takes an infinitival complement. In later work, Becker 2014

refines this claim to argue that children only assume a raising structure when they hear an

inanimate subject with control and raising verbs. However, this refinement still postulates

that in a sentence like the flower wants to be pink, children extend a raising structure to

want, which is a control verb.

The results of Becker 2006’s experiments suggest findings contra work that show the

acquisition of control at an early age (Cairns, McDaniel, Hsu, and Rapp 1994; Goodluck

1981; Goodluck, Terzi, and Díaz 2001; Hsu, Cairns, and Fiengo 1985; Maratsos 1974; Mc-

Daniel, Cairns, and Hsu 1990/91; Sherman and Lust 1993). In previous studies, Sherman

and Lust 1993, for instance, finds that in sentences without multiple linguistic antecedents,

children as young as 3 years old pass comprehension tests.2 Additionally, in crosslinguis-

tic work, Goodluck, Terzi, and Chocano Diaz 2001 illustrate that 4-5 year old children

show the ability to comprehend control sentences in Spanish and Greek. However, as

Hirsch and Wexler 2007 note, Becker’s results could also be interpreted as younger chil-

dren treating and acceptingthe flowerto be animate for the purposes of the task. Although

the results are also consistent with children interpretingwant as a raising verb, the pos-

sibility of another explanation indicate that the results cannot be taken to be inarguable

proof for assuming a raising structure default.

As mentioned earlier, in subsequent work, Becker 2009, 2014 depart from the explicit

support of a raising-first hypothesis, but maintain the argument that the learner assumes

a raising structure for predicates that occur with an inanimate subject. This argument

2

The difference between single and multiple antecedents is crucial in determining children’s ability to

comprehend control sentences. For instance, in a sentence like John promised Bill to go to the store, the

null subject PRO is coindexed withJohn, and notBill. Children are known to misinterpret these sentences

and assume incorrectly that PRO is coindexed withBill(Chomsky 1969). Children in these cases do not

pass comprehension tests as they pick out the wrong antecedent for PRO. However, children pick out the

correct referent when there is one linguistic antecedent present. These facts indicate that children can

generally comprehend control structures, but that the presence of multiple antecedents introduces further complications.

means that the results of the experiment can be seen as children acceptingthe flower wants

to be pinkas raising because children have not yet learned thatwant only takes animate

subjects; i.e., they have not learned that want is a control predicate. However, consid-

ering the evidence that children have mastered control constructions well before raising

constructions (e.g., Goodluck, Terzi, and Díaz 2001; Sherman and Lust 1993) and Becker

2014’s retraction of the raising-first hypothesis, I assume in this chapter that children

have a default control structure for verbs that take an infinitival complement. I assume

a control default even for cases where a control verb likewant occurs with an inanimate

subject. The raising structure of verbs, in contrast, must be learned.

The rest of this chapter argues that the problem of overgeneralization for ambiguous

predicates does not arise, and as a result, we need not assume that the learner initially as-

signs a raising structure to the verb, even when it occurs with an inanimate subject. I first

provide a quantitative evaluation of Becker 2014’s indirect negative evidence approach

in the following section, Section 2.3. In the next section, I show that the rates of inani-

mate subjects with the three kinds of predicates are not different enough for the learner

to disambiguate between them accurately.