Little Words: Their History, Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, and Acquisition

Cover Page......Page 1
Title Page......Page 4
Contents......Page 6
Illustrations......Page 10
Preface......Page 12
1. Introduction......Page 14
I. History......Page 20
2. From “Two” to “Both”: Historical Changes in the Syntax and Meaning of Oba in Slavic......Page 22
3. When Small Words Collide: Morphological Reduction and Phonological Compensation in Old Leonese Contractions......Page 34
II. Phonology......Page 48
4. Distinguishing Function Words from Content Words in Children’s Oral Reading......Page 50
5. Motivating Floating Quantifiers......Page 60
III. Syntax......Page 72
6. Applicative Phrases Hosting Accusative Clitics......Page 74
7. The Little DE of Degree Constructions......Page 88
8. The Complementizer The......Page 100
9. What Is There When Little Words Are Not There? Possible Implications for Evolutionary Studies......Page 112
10. Spanish Personal a and the Antidative......Page 122
IV. Semantics......Page 132
11. Predicting Argument Realization from Oblique Marker Semantics......Page 134
12. Aspect Selectors, Scales, and Contextual Operators: An Analysis of by Temporal Adjuncts......Page 144
13. Distributive Effects of the Plural Marker –tul in Korean......Page 156
V. Pragmatics......Page 170
14. The Pragmatics of the French Discourse Markers donc and alors......Page 172
15. “Little Words” in Small Talk: Some Considerations on the Use of the Pragmatic Markers man in English and macho/tío in Peninsular Spanish......Page 184
16. Little Words That Could Impact One’s Impression on Others......Page 196
VI. Acquisition......Page 210
17. Instructed L2 Acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish......Page 212
18. The Role of Pedagogical Tasks and Focus on Form in Acquisition of Discourse Markers by Advanced Language Learners......Page 224
19. Article Acquisition in English, German, Norwegian, and Swedish......Page 236
20. A Continuum in French Children’s Surface Realization of Auxiliaries......Page 250