EVALUATING SYNTACTIC ANALYSES WITH CHILDREN
Koji Sugisaki
Mie University

Abstract
Recent, vast progress both in syntactic theory and in the study of child language further
tightened the connection between these two fields, and enables us to make the contribution
from the latter to the former.

This paper summarizes two case studies to illustrate how

evidence from acquisition can be used to evaluate competing syntactic analyses.

These casestudies, which are drawn from the author’s own research, focus on (i) the acquisition of theditrantive construction in Japanese and (ii) the acquisition of swiping in English.

The casestudies presented here demonstrate that the study of child language has the potential to makesignificant contributions to the theoretical studies of syntax.*

Keywords: ditransitives, scrambling, swiping, language acquisition

1.

Introduction
An impressive number of language acquisition studies conducted within the Principles

and Parameters approach to UG have made at least two major findings.

One group ofstudies revealed that various principles of UG constrain the course of acquisition fromvirtually the very beginning of life (e.g. Otsu (1981) and Crain and Thornton (1998)), and adifferent group of studies demonstrated that even children’s “errors” fall under the range ofpossible human languages determined by parameters (e.g. Hyams (1986), McDaniel, Chiu
and Maxfield (1995), Thornton (2004)).

In making these findings, the contribution was

mainly from theoretical studies to the study of child language, in that the role of the latter was-1-limited to providing supportive evidence to the former.

Yet, recent vast progress in both ofthese fields further tightened the connection between theoretical analyses and acquisition
research, and enables us to make the opposite contribution.

For example, as Snyder andIsobe (this volume) convincingly demonstrate, the time course of child language acquisition
constitutes a very important ground to evaluate parametric proposals, which suggests that the
study of child language has the potential to identify the parameters of variation permitted byhuman language.
In this study, I will illustrate another way to make the opposite contribution. Morespecifically, this study summarizes two case studies to illustrate how the investigation of childlanguage can contribute to differentiate among competing syntactic analyses of a certain
phenomenon.

These case studies, which are drawn from the author’s own research, deal

with (i) the acquisition of the ditransitive construction in Japanese (Sugisaki and Isobe(2001)) and (ii) the acquisition of swiping in English (Sugisaki (2008)).

The case studies

presented here, if successful, will demonstrate that evidence from acquisition can be used todetermine which of the proposed syntactic analyses is on the right track, and hence that the
study of child language can make significant contributions to the theoretical studies of syntax.

2.

Case-study 1: The Syntax of Ditransitives in Japanese
Our first case-study, taken from Sugisaki and Isobe (2001), concerns the acquisition ofditransitive construction in Japanese.

As is widely known, the word order in Japanese isrelatively free: The verb must come at the end of the sentence, but the order of other phrases
can be changed freely. Thus, for a ditransitive sentence, which contains three arguments, thefollowing six word orders are available:(1)a.

John-gaMary-nisono hon-oageta.

John-Nom

Mary-Dat

that book-Acc

gave.

-2-

‘John gave that book to Mary.’
b.

c.

d.

e.

f.

John-gasono hon-oMary-niageta.

John-Nomthat book-Acc

Mary-Dat

gave

Mary-niJohn-gasono hon-oageta.

Mary-Dat

John-Nomthat book-Acc

gave

Sono hon-oJohn-gaMary-niageta.

that book-Acc

John-Nom

Mary-Dat

gave

Mary-nisono hon-oJohn-ga

ageta.

Mary-Dat

that book-Acc

John-Nomgave

Sono hon-oMary-niJohn-ga

ageta.

that book-Acc

Mary-Dat

John-Nomgave

It is widely assumed that the syntactically unmarked position for the subject is located before
all objects and verbs (see Hoji (1985) and Saito (1985), among many others).

In contrast,

the unmarked word order among the VP-internal arguments of the ditransitive construction isstill controversial.

Whether (1a) or (1b) constitutes the basic word order remains one of thecentral issues in the study of Japanese syntax.

In the next subsection, we review two major

proposals concerning the basic word order of Japanese ditransitives

2.1.

Two Approaches to the Ditransitive Construction in JapaneseIn his seminal work, Hoji (1985) argues that the dative argument is projected in ahigher position than the accusative argument, yielding the basic order of NOM-DAT-ACC-V
as in (1a) (see also Nemoto (1993), Tada (1993), Takano (1998), and Yatsushiro (2003)).
The ACC-DAT order as in (1b) is derived from the DAT-ACC order by scrambling theaccusative object to a position structurally higher than the dative object. This is schematicallyshown in (2).
-3-

(2)

a.

[ NP-Nom[[ NP-Dat[ NP-Acc

V ]]]]b.

[ NP-Nom[ NP-Acc1[ NP-Dat[

V ]]]]

t1

One piece of evidence for this proposal comes from the scope interpretation: While thedative argument unambiguously takes scope over the accusative argument in the DAT-ACC
order, the relative scope is ambiguous with the ACC-DAT order, as illustrated in (3). This
contrast is explained in a straightforward way if we assume that the ACC-DAT order isderived from the DAT-ACC order by scrambling the accusative NP and that the trace of
movement contributes to the scope interpretation.
(3)a.

John-gadaremo-ni[Bill ka Mary]-osyookaisita.

John-Nomeveryone-Dat

Bill or Mary-Acc

introduced‘John introduced Bill or Mary to everyone.’everyone > Bill or Maryb.

*Bill or Mary > everyone

John-ga[Bill ka Mary]-odaremo-ni

syookaisita.

John-Nom

Bill or Mary-Acc

everyone-Dat

introduced‘John introduced Bill or Mary to everyone.’everyone > Bill or MaryBill or Mary > everyone(Hoji (1985: 257-8))

Miyagawa (1997) advances an alternative hypothesis, according to which both the
DAT-ACC and ACC-DAT orders can be base-generated without syntactic movement, asshown in (4) (see also Kitagawa (1994) and Koizumi (1995)).
(4)a.

[ NP-Nom [ NP-Dat[ NP-Acc

V ]]]

b.

[ NP-Nom [ NP-Acc[ NP-Dat

V ]]]A major argument for Miyagawa’s analysis is the absence of the Chain Condition effectin the ditransitive construction.

The crucial result of Rizzi’s (1986) Chain Condition is thatno structure like (5) can exist:
-4-

(5)

X1

Y1

t1

(where X c-commands Y and Y c-commands t and there is movement from t toX.)
In simple transitives, the ACC-NOM order, which is derived from the NOM-ACC order via
scrambling, shows the Chain Condition effect, as exemplified in (6).

In contrast, the

ACC-DAT order in ditransitives does not exhibit such a violation, as shown in (7).
According to Miyagawa, the grammatical status of (7) suggests that no movement is involvedin generating the ACC-DAT order.

Thus, both DAT-ACC and ACC-DAT orders are bestviewed as being base-generated.
(6)??? [John-toMary]-o1[John-and Mary]-Acc1

otagai1-ga

t1

mita.

each other1-Nom

saw‘John and Mary, each other saw.’(7)

John-ga[Hanako-to Mary]-o1(paatii-de)otagai1-ni

John-Nom[Hanako and Mary]-Acc1(party-at)

each other1-Dat(t1)

syookaisita.
introduced‘John introduced Hanako and Mary to each other at the party.’(Miyagawa (1997: 4-5))
2.2.

Predictions and Experiment
In the acquisition of Japanese, it has been observed at least since Hayashibe (1975) that

there seems to be a period in development, sometimes up to five years old, where children
exhibit difficulty in interpreting scrambled word orders and tend to interpret scrambled
sentences like (8a) as if they have a non-scrambled word order as in (8a).１(8)a.

Kamesan-ga

ahirusan-oosimashita.

turtle-Nom

duck-Acc

pushed-5-‘A turtle pushed a duck.’b.

Kamesan-oahirusan-ga

osimashita.

turtle-Acc

duck-Nom

pushed‘A duck pushed a turtle.’
If it is generally the case that scrambled orders pose a difficulty to Japanese-speaking children,the two syntactic analyses reviewed in the previous subsection make different predictions.
Since the analysis by Hoji (1985) postulates scrambling in deriving the NOM-ACC-DAT-V
order from the NOM-DAT-ACC-V order, this analysis predicts that Japanese-speaking
children have more difficulty in comprehending sentences with NOM-ACC-DAT-V orderthan those with NOM-DAT-ACC-V order.

In contrast, since Miyagawa’s (1997) analysis

allows the base-generation of both orders, this analysis predicts that the difficulty
Japanese-speaking children have in comprehending sentences with NOM-ACC-DAT-V ordershould be the same as for those with NOM-DAT-ACC-V order.
In order to evaluate these predictions, Sugisaki and Isobe (2001) conducted anexperiment with 20 Japanese-speaking children, ranging in age from 3;11 (three years, elevenmonths) to 5;00 (mean age 4;06). The task was truth-value judgment (Crain and Thornton(1998)). In this task, the children were told stories accompanied by an animation presented
on a computer screen. At the end of each story, the character Meowce appeared on thescreen and described what he thought had happened in the story.

The task for the children

was to judge whether Meowce's description was correct or not, by pointing at one of the two
cards Meowce had in his hands, ○ (correct) or × (wrong).

A samples story andexamples of Meowce’s utterances are given in (10) and (10), respectively.
(9)

Sample story (which is accompanied by (10b)):
Satoshi came back home with his Pokémon Pikachu during his long journey, inorder to introduce Pikachu to his mother.
-6-

Opening the door, Satoshi said,

“Mom, I’m back home!”

However, there was no response.

On the table hefound a memo that said, “I am out shopping.” Looking at the memo, he said,“Oh no, Mom cannot meet Pikachu right now.” However, he got a good idea.
He took Pikachu to his room, and showed him a picture.
Satoshi and his mother were smiling.
mom!”(10) a.

In that picture,

He said, “Hey look, Pikachu. This is my

Pikachu looked very happy to see Satoshi’s mother.

Satoshi-ga

akachan-ni

Pokémon-omisetayo.

Satoshi-Nom

baby-Dat

Pikachu-Acc

showed‘Satoshi showed his Pokémon to the baby.’b.

Satoshi-ga

Pikachu-ookaasan-ni

misetayo.

Satoshi-Nom

Pikachu-Acc

mother-Dat

showed‘Satoshi showed Pikachu to his mother.’
The results revealed that, while children correctly responded to the sentences with the
DAT-ACC order 90% of the time, they provided corrected responses to sentences with the
ACC-DAT order only 60% of the time.２

These results suggest that Japanese-speaking

children have more difficulty in comprehending the NOM-ACC-DAT-V order than the
NOM-DAT-ACC-V order, and hence favor the scrambling analysis by Hoji (1985) over thebase-generation analysis by Miyagawa (1997).３,４

3.

Case-study 2: The Syntax of Swiping
For our second case-study, we turn to the acquisition of an exotic property of English.

It has been observed at least since Ross (1969) and Rosen (1976) that English allows apeculiar type of elliptical wh-questions that can be found only under sluicing, in which thewh-object of the preposition appears not after the preposition but before it, as illustrated in(11).

Merchant (2002) calls this construction Swiping (sluiced wh-word inversion with-7-

prepositions in Northern Germanic).
(11) a.

John fixed it, but I don’t remember what with.

b.

John was talking, but I don’t remember who to.

Since the recent minimalist analysis by Merchant (2002), this phenomenon has gainedmuch attention, and two major types of analysis have been proposed in the syntactic literature.
One approach (Merchant (2002); see also van Craenenbroeck (2004)) argues that swiping
crucially involves pied-piping of prepositions in its derivation, while the other approach (e.g.
Kim (1997), Hasegawa (2006), Nakao and Yoshida (to appear)) claims that swiping is derived
through preposition-stranding (P-stranding).

Let us now briefly review these two

approaches.

3.1.

Two Approaches to Swiping
One of the fundamental characteristics of swiping is that, at least in English, only alimited variety of wh-expressions can occur in this construction.

Based on his classificationof wh-elements in swiping sentences given in (12), Merchant (2002) postulates the conditionin (14) that the wh-element must be a head, not a phrase.５(12) Possible and impossible wh-elements in swiping:a.

Swiping possible:

who, what, when, whereb.

Swiping impossible:

which, which one, whose, how rich,what kind, what time, what town, etc.

(13) a.

* She bought a robe for one of her nephews, but God knows which(one) for.

b.

* They were riding in somebody’s car, but I don’ know whose in.

(14) The Minimality Condition:
Only ‘minimal’ (i.e. X0) wh-operators occur in swiping.
-8-In order to account for this fundamental property of swiping, Merchant (2002)
proposed an analysis in which swiping sentences are derived through wh-movement involving
pied-piping of a preposition, followed by head movement of the wh-word to the selecting
preposition.

Merchant argues that this head movement of the wh-element occurs at PF, after

Spell-Out and after the application of the deletion operation. A sample derivation under thisanalysis is shown in (15).
(15)(John was talking, but I don’t remember …)
a.

wh-movement + pied-piping:
[CP

b.

[IP

he was talking [PP about what]] ]sluicing (IP-deletion) in PF:[CP [PP about what] [IPc.

he was talking

t

]

]

head movement in PF:[CP [PP what + aboutt]]This “pied-piping + PF head-movement” analysis provides a straightforward account for
the Minimality Condition: In order to adjoin to the preposition, which is a head, thewh-element must also be a head, due to Structure Preservation. In other words, by using
head movement to derive the observed inversion, this analysis correctly rules out thepossibility that phrasal wh-operators participate in swiping.
Even though the analysis by Merchant (2002) captures the Minimality Condition (14)in a straightforward way, it offers no account of the cross-linguistic distribution of swipingthat Merchant himself notes: The languages that allow swiping are limited to those that permit
P-stranding.

English, Danish, and some varieties of Norwegian allow swiping (Merchant(2002: 309)), and these languages also permit P-stranding (Merchant (2002: 291)), as-9-

illustrated in (16) and (17).

This observation suggests that the availability of P-stranding

constitutes a necessary condition for the possibility of swiping.６

Yet, as we have seen above,

what is crucially involved in Merchant’s analysis is pied-piping, not P-stranding.

Then,under this approach, it remains mysterious why P-stranding seems relevant in determining the
distribution of swiping across languages.
(16) Danish:
a.

Per

er

gået

i

biografen,

men jeg

ved

ikke

Per

is

gone

to

cinema

but

know

not

hvem

med.

who

with

I

‘Per went to the movies but I don’t know who with.’
b.

Hvem

har

Peter

snakket

med?

who

has

Peter

talkedwith‘Who was Peter talking with?’(17) Norwegian:a. % Per

gikk

på

kino,

men jeg

veit

ikke

Per

went

to

cinema

but

know

not

hvem

med.

who

with

I

‘Per went to the movies but I don’t know who with.’
b.

Hvem

har

Per

snakket

med?

who

has

Per

talkedwith‘Who was Per talking with?’
An alternative approach proposed by Hasegawa (2006), Kim (1997), and Nakao andYoshida (to appear) is better suited to explain this cross-linguistic generalization.
- 10 -

These

studies argue that the swiping construction is derived through the combination of P-stranding
and a rightward movement of PP.

A sample derivation under Hasegawa’s (2006) analysis isshown in (18).７(18) (John was talking, but I don’t remember …)
a.

wh-movement + P-stranding:[CPb.

he was talking[PPabout what

]]

]

[PP

about

]]

]

] [PP

about

rightward movement of PP:[CP what

c.

[IP

[IP

he was talkingtsluicing (IP-deletion) in PF:[CP what[IP

he was talkingt]]Such “P-stranding + PP movement” analysis is quite appealing in that it opens up a way
to capture the cross-linguistic generalization that swiping is restricted to P-stranding
languages. On the other hand, this approach has difficulty in offering a satisfactory accountof the Minimality Condition: There is no reason not to expect both phrasal and minimal
wh-expressions to appear in the swiping construction, given that both of them can undergo
P-stranding.
(19) a.
b.

What was John talking about?
Which (book) was John talking about?

In sum, both “pied-piping + PF head-movement” analysis and “P-stranding + PP
movement” analysis have their own strengths and weaknesses, and the evaluation of these two
approaches awaits evidence from a different source. In light of this situation, we now turn toa different source of evidence: the time course of child language acquisition.

- 11 -

3.2.

Predictions and Transcript Analysis
The “pied-piping + PF head-movement” approach and the “P-stranding + PP

movement” make different predictions for the acquisition of English. The former approachgives wh-movement involving pied-piping a central role in the derivation of swiping.

Under

this analysis, the syntactic knowledge required for pied-piping constitutes a proper subset ofthe syntactic knowledge required for swiping.

Then, we expect that English-learning

children should never acquire swiping significantly earlier than pied-piping withwh-movement. In other words, the pied-piping approach predicts that (20) should hold in
the acquisition of English.

In contrast, under the P-stranding approach, wh-movement

involving P-stranding constitutes a crucial step in deriving swiping sentences, and thesyntactic knowledge required for P-stranding constitutes a proper subset of the syntactic
knowledge required for swiping. Then, we predict that English-learning children should
never acquire swiping significantly earlier than P-stranding with wh-movement, as stated in
(21).
(20)

Prediction for Acquisition from the Pied-piping Approach:English-learning children should acquire pied-piping with wh-movement
significantly earlier than or at around the same time as swiping.

(21)

Prediction for Acquisition from the P-stranding Approach:English-learning children should acquire P-stranding with wh-movement
significantly earlier than or at around the same time as swiping.

In order to determine which of the two acquisitional predictions is correct, Sugisaki(2008) analyzed 20 longitudinal corpora for English from the CHILDES database(MacWhinney (2000)), which provide a total sample of more than 434,000 lines of childspeech.

For each child, we located the first clear uses of (i) swiping, (ii) wh-movement

involving pied-piping, and (iii) wh-movement involving P-stranding. The corpora analyzed- 12 -

in that study are summarized in Table 1. The CLAN program Combo was used, together
with complete files of prepositions and wh-words in English, to identify potentially relevant
child utterances.

These were then searched by hand and checked against the originaltranscripts to exclude imitations, repetitions, and formulaic routines.

The age of acquisition

was taken as the first clear use, followed soon after by repeated use (Stromswold (1996),
Snyder (2007)).
Child

Collected byAge Span# Child Utterances

Abe

Kuczaj (1976)

2;04 – 5;00

22,633

Adam

Brown (1973)

2;03 – 4;10

45,555

Anne

Theakston et al. (2001)

1;10 – 2;09

19,902Aran

Theakston et al. (2001)

1;11 – 2;10

17,193

Becky

Theakston et al. (2001)

2;00 – 2;11

23,339Carl

Theakston et al. (2001)

1;08 – 2;08

25,084

Dominic

Theakston et al. (2001)

1;10 – 2;10

21,180Eve

Brown (1973)

1;06 – 2;03

11,563

Gail

Theakston et al. (2001)

1;11 – 2;11

16,973

Joel

Theakston et al. (2001)

1;11 – 2;10

17,916John

Theakston et al. (2001)

1;11 – 2;10

13,390Liz

Theakston et al. (2001)

1;11 – 2;10

16,569

Naomi

Sachs (1973)

1;02 – 4;09

15,960NicoleTheakston et al. (2001)

2;00 – 3;00

16,950Nina

Suppes (1973)

1;11 – 3;03

31,505Peter

Bloom (1970)

1;09 – 3;01

26,891

Ruth

Theakston et al. (2001)

1;11 – 2;11

20,419Sarah

Brown (1973)

2;03 – 5;01

37,012- 13 -

Shem

Clark (1978)

2;02 – 3;02

17,507

WarrenTheakston et al. (2001)

1;10 – 2;09

16,651

Table 1:

The results were as follows.

Corpora Analyzed

Two children (Abe and Aran) showed frequent use ofswiping, while other children did not produce any swiping sentences. One of these twochildren (Abe), however, uttered only a single type of swiping: What for? This limitation
leaves the possibility that this expression is a formulaic routine for this child.

Hence, weshould focus on the analysis of the remaining single child, Aran.
Aran exhibited the first clear use of swiping at the age of 2;07. His swiping sentences
exhibited two kinds of wh-expressions (who and what) and various different prepositions.
This variety suggests that Aran has already acquired adult-like knowledge of swiping.

Someactual utterances are listed in (22).
(22) a.

*CHI:

what in ?

(Aran26a.cha)

b.

*CHI:

who for ?

(Aran27a.cha)

c.

*CHI:

who from ?

(Aran28b.cha)

d.

*CHI:

what with ?

(Aran33a.cha)

Despite such productive use of swiping, Aran showed no single use of pied-piping withwh-movement throughout his corpus.

This complete absence of pied-piping in the

spontaneous speech makes it impossible to statistically evaluate the prediction in (20), andhence we cannot determine its validity.

Yet, the lack of pied-piping in child English despite

the presence of swiping casts serious doubt on the analysis in which swiping is derived
through wh-movement involving pied-piping.
In contrast, P-stranding under wh-movement was frequently observed in Aran’s speech.
The first clear use of P-stranding appeared at the age of 2;05, two months earlier than the first- 14 -

clear use of swiping.

In order to evaluate the statistical significance of the observed

age-differences between acquisition of P-stranding and acquisition of swiping, I counted thenumber of clear uses of the earlier construction before the first clear use of the later
construction.

Next, the relative frequency of the two constructions in the child’s own speech

was calculated, starting with the transcript after the first use of the later construction, andcontinuing through the end of the corpus.

A Binomial Test was then used to obtain theprobability of sampling the observed number of tokens of the earlier construction simply bychance, before the first use of the later construction, under the null hypothesis that both
became available concurrently and had the same relative probability of use as in latertranscripts (Stromswold (1996), Snyder (2007)).
This statistical analysis revealed that Aran acquired P-stranding significantly earlier
than swiping (p < .0001), along the line of the prediction in (21).

This finding, combinedwith the complete lack of pied-piping, lends support to the P-stranding approach to swiping,and puts further explanatory burden on the pied-piping analysis.

5.

Conclusion
The two case studies reviewed above suggest that clearly-delineated syntactic analyses

make certain predictions for acquisition, and hence that evidence from child language can bebrought to differentiate among competing syntactic analyses. Such contributions from thestudy of child language to syntactic theory are still quite small in number, in my view.

I

conclude this paper by hoping that a larger number of studies attempt to make this way ofcontribution, to further tighten the connection between acquisitional investigations and thetheoretical studies of syntax.

- 15 -

References

Bloom, Lois (1970) Language Development: Form and Function in Emerging Grammars,
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Brown, Roger (1973) A First Language: The Early Stages, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA.
Clark, Eve (1978) “Strategies for Communicating,” Child Development 49, 953-959.
van Craenenbroeck, Jeroen (2004) Ellipsis in Dutch Dialects, LOT Dissertation Series 96,
LOT, Utrecht.
Crain, Stephen, and Rosalind Thornton (1998) Investigations in Universal Grammar: A Guide
to Experiments on the Acquisition of Syntax and Semantics, MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA.
Hasegawa, Hiroshi (2006) “On Swiping,” English Linguistics 23, 433-445.
Hayashibe, Hideo (1975) “Word Order and Particles: A Developmental Study in Japanese,”
Descriptive and Applied Linguistics 8, 1-18.
Hoji, Hajime (1985) Logical Form Constraints and Configurational Structures in Japanese,
Doctoral dissertation, University of Washington.
Hyams, Nina (1986) Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Isobe, Miwa, Natuko Katsura, Masatoshi Koizumi, Kuniya Nasukawa, Yumi Sakai, Koji
Sugisaki, and Noriaki Yusa (2004) “The Syntax of Ditransitives in Japanese: A
Preliminary Report from Acquisition,” Proceedings of the Fifth Tokyo Conference on
Psycholinguistics, 163-182.
Isobe, Miwa and William Snyder (this volume) “Child Language Acquisition as a Source ofEvidence for Parameters.”
Kim, Jeong-Seok (1997) Syntactic Focus Movement and Ellipsis: A Minimalist Approach.
- 16 -

Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Kitagawa, Yoshihisa (1994) “Shells, Yolks, and Scrambled e.g.'s,” Proceedings of NELS 24,
221-239.
Koizumi, Masatoshi (1995) Phrase Structure in Minimalist Syntax, Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
[A revised version published by Hituzi Syobo, Tokyo, 1999]
Kuczaj, Stan (1976) -ing, -s, and -ed: A Study of the Acquisition of Certain Verb Inflections,
Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota.
MacWhinney, Brian (2000) The CHILDES Project: Tools for Analyzing Talk. Lawrence
Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ.
Matsuoka, Mikinari (2003) “Two Types of Ditransitive Constructions in Japanese,” Journal of
East Asian Linguistics 12, 171-203.
McDaniel, Dana, Bonnie Chiu, and Thomas L. Maxfield (1995) “Parameters for
Wh-movement Types: Evidence from Child English,” Natural Language andLinguistic Theory 13, 709-753.
Merchant, Jason (2002) “Swiping in Germanic,” Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, ed.
by C. Jan-Wouter Zwart and Werner Abraham, 295-321, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Miyagawa, Shigeru (1997) “Against Optional Scrambling,” Linguistic Inquiry 28, 1-25.
Miyagawa, Shigeru, and Takae Tsujioka (2004) “Argument Structure and Ditransitive Verbs
in Japanese,” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 13, 1-38.
Murasugi, Keiko, and Tomoko Kawamura (2005) “On the Acquisition of Scrambling inJapanese,” The Free Word Order Phenomenon: Its Syntactic Sources and Diversity,ed. by Joachim Sabel and Mamoru Saito, 221-242, Mouton, Berlin.
Nemoto, Naoko (1993) Chains and Case Positions: A Study from Scrambling in Japanese,
Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Nakao, Chizuru and Masaya Yoshida (To appear) “"Not-so-propositional" Islands and their- 17 -

Implications for Swiping,” Proceedings of Western Conference on Linguistics 2006.
Otsu, Yukio (1981) Universal Grammar and Syntactic Development in Children: Toward a
Theory of Syntactic Development. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Otsu, Yukio (1994) “Early Acquisition of Scrambling in Japanese,” Language Acquisition
Studies in Generative Grammar, ed. By Teun Hoekstra and Bonnie D. Schwartz,
253-264, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.
Rizzi, Luigi (1986) “On Chain Formation,” Syntax and Semantics 19: The Syntax of
Pronominal Clitics, ed. by Hagit Borer, 65-95, Academic Press, New York.
Rosen, Carol (1976) “Guess What About?” NELS 6, 205-211.
Ross, John Robert (1969) “Guess Who?” CLS 5, 252-286.
Sachs, Jacqueline (1983) “Talking about Here and Then: The Emergence of Displaced
Reference in Parent-Child Discourse,” Children's Language, Volume 4, ed. By K. E.
Nelson, Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
Saito, Mamoru (1985) Some Asymmetries in Japanese and their Theoretical Implications,
Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Suppes, Patrick (1973) “The Semantics of Children's Language,” American Psychologist 88,
103-114.
Snyder, William (2007) Child Language: The Parametric Approach, Oxford University Press,
New York.
Stromswold, Karin (1996) “Analyzing Children's Spontaneous Speech,” Methods forAssessing Children's Syntax, ed. By Dana McDaniel, Cecile McKee and Helen Smith
Cairns, 23-53, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Sugisaki, Koji (2008) “Swiping in Child English,” poster presented at the 27th West Coast
Conference on Formal Linguistics.
Sugisaki, Koji, and Miwa Isobe (2001) “What can Child Japanese Tell us about the Syntax of- 18 -

Scrambling?” Proceedings of the 20th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics,
538-551.
Suzuki, Takaaki, Sookeun Cho, Miseon Lee, William O'Grady, Minsun Song, and Naoko
Yoshinaga (1999) “Word Order Preferences for Direct and Indirect Objects in Children
Learning Japanese,” Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Cognitive
Science and the 16th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Cognitive Science Society Joint
Conference, 108-112.
Tada, Hiroaki (1993) A/A' partition in derivation, Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
Takano, Yuji (1998) “Object Shift and Scrambling,” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
16, 817-889.
Theakston, Anna. L., Elena V. M. Lieven, Julian M. Pine, and Caroline F. Rowland (2001)“The Role of Performance Limitations in the Acquisition of Verb-Argument Structure:
An Alternative Account,” Journal of Child Language 28, 127-152.
Thornton, Rosalind (2004) “Why Continuity,” Proceedings of the 29th Annual Boston
University Conference on Language Development, 620-632.
Yatsushiro, Kazuko (2003) “VP Internal Scrambling,” Journal of East Asian Linguistics 12,141-170.

Faculty of Humanities, Law and Economics
Mie University
1577 Kurimamachiya-cho, Tsu-shi,Mie 514-8507- 19 -

ENDNOTES*

I would like to thank Noriko Imanishi and Yukio Otsu for valuable comments. The

usual disclaimers apply.
１

For an observation that manipulation on the presentation of test sentences

significantly improves children’s comprehension of scrambled sentences, see Murasugi and
Kawamura (2005) and Otsu (1994).
２

Based on their act-out experiment, Suzuki et al. (1999) argue that the DAT-ACC

order is slightly more difficult that the ACC-DAT order.

See Isobe et al. (2004) for a

possible interpretation of this discrepancy.
３

Miyagawa’s (1997) analysis is significantly revised in Miyagawa and Tsujioka(2004).

An acquisitional evaluation of this revised analysis has to be left for future research.

４

Matsuoka (2003) argues that Japanese has (at least) two types of ditransitive verbs,

and that that the basic order varies depending on verb types.

See Isobe et al. (2004) for an

experiment evaluating this syntactic analysis.
５

The wh-expressions which and whose are monomorphemic, as well as those in (12a).

Yet, Merchant (2002) argues that which must select a complement (which may be null due toNP-ellipsis), and whose can be analyzed as who in the specifier of DP headed by the
genitive ’s. These properties distinguish them from the other simple wh-expressions listed in(12a).
６

It is not a sufficient condition, though. Languages like Frisian, Icelandic, andSwedish rule out swiping, even though they permit P-stranding.
７

A crucial difference between Hasegawa’s (2006) analysis and those of Kim (1997)

and Nakao and Yoshida (to appear) is that the latter analysis places the PP movement before
the P-stranding movement. Since this difference does not affect the discussion to follow, I will
refrain from further discussion.
- 20 -