@phdthesis{Sauermann2016,
  author    = {Sauermann, Antje},
  title     = {Impact of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation},
  publisher = {Universit{\"a}tsverlag Potsdam},
  address   = {Potsdam},
  isbn      = {978-3-86956-330-5},
  issn      = {1869-3822},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-89409},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {This dissertation examines the impact of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation in German-speaking preschoolers. A puzzle in the area of language acquisition concerns the production-comprehension asymmetry for non-canonical sentences like "Den Affen f{\"a}ngt die Kuh." ("The monkey, the cow chases."), that is, preschoolers usually have difficulties in accurately understanding non-canonical sentences approximately until age six (e.g., Dittmar et al., 2008) although they produce non-canonical sentences already around age three (e.g., Poeppel \& Wexler, 1993; Weissenborn, 1990). This dissertation investigated the production and comprehension of non-canonical sentences to address this issue. Three corpus analyses were conducted to investigate the impact of givenness, topic status and the type of referring expression on word order in the spontaneous speech of two- to four-year-olds and the child-directed speech produced by their mothers. The positioning of the direct object in ditransitive sentences was examined; in particular, sentences in which the direct object occurred before or after the indirect object in the sentence-medial positions and sentences in which it occurred in the sentence-initial position. The results reveal similar ordering patterns for children and adults. Word order variation was to a large extent predictable from the type of referring expression, especially with respect to the word order involving the sentence-medial positions. Information structure (e.g., topic status) had an additional impact only on word order variation that involved the sentence-initial position. Two comprehension experiments were conducted to investigate whether the type of referring expression and topic status influences the comprehension of non-canonical transitive sentences in four- and five-year-olds. In the first experiment, the topic status of the one of the sentential arguments was established via a preceding context sentence, and in the second experiment, the type of referring expression for the sentential arguments was additionally manipulated by using either a full lexical noun phrase (NP) or a personal pronoun. The results demonstrate that children's comprehension of non-canonical sentences improved when the topic argument was realized as a personal pronoun and this improvement was independent of the grammatical role of the arguments. However, children's comprehension was not improved when the topic argument was realized as a lexical NP. In sum, the results of both production and comprehension studies support the view that referring expressions may be seen as a sentence-level cue to word order and to the information status of the sentential arguments. The results highlight the important role of the type of referring expression on the acquisition of word order variation and indicate that the production-comprehension asymmetry is reduced when the type of referring expression is considered.},
  language  = {en}
}
@misc{Schmidt2016,
  type      = {Master Thesis},
  author    = {Schmidt, Andreas},
  title     = {Udmurt as an OV language},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-89465},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {iii, 94},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {This is the first study to investigate Hubert Haider's (2000, 2010, 2013, 2014) proposed systematic differences between OV and VO language in a family other than Germanic. Its aim is to gather evidence on whether basic word order is predictive of further properties of a language. The languages under investigation are the Finno-Ugric languages Udmurt (as an OV language) and Finnish (as a VO language). Counter to Kayne (1994), Haider proposes that the structure of a sentence with a head-final VP is fundamentally different from that of a sentence with a head-initial VP, e.g., OV languages do not exhibit a VP-shell structure, and they do not employ a TP layer with a structural subject position. Haider's proposed structural differences are said to result in the following empirically testable differences: (a) VP: the availability of VP-internal adverbial intervention and scrambling only in OV-VPs; (b) subjects: the lack of certain subject-object asymmetries in OV languages, i.e., lack of the subject condition and lack of superiority effects; (c) V-complexes: the availability of partial predicate fronting only in OV languages; different orderings between selecting and selected verbs; the intervention of non-verbal material between verbs only in VO languages; (d) V-particles: differences in the distribution of resultative phrases and verb particles. Udmurt and Finnish behave in line with Haider's predictions with regard to the status of the subject, with regard to the order of selecting and selected verbs, and with regard to the availability of partial predicate fronting. Moreover, Udmurt allows for adverbial intervention and scrambling, as predicted, whereas the status of these properties in Finnish could not be reliably determined due to obligatory V-to-T. There is also counterevidence to Haider's predictions: Udmurt allows for non-verbal material between verbs, and the distribution of resultative phrases and verb particles is essentially as free as the distribution of adverbial phrases in both Finno-Ugric languages. As such, Haider's theory is not falsified by the data from Udmurt and Finnish (except for his theory on verb particles), but it is also not fully supported by the data.},
  language  = {en}
}