Functional item

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In the framework of

bound morphemes such as nominal and verbal affixes.[3] Though functional items have feature structure, the do not enter into θ-marking.[4]

The following table provides examples of commonly used functional items:[5]

Functional (Closed) Categories of English Examples
Preposition to, from, under, over, with, by, at, above, before, after, through, near, on, off, for, in, into, of, during, across, without, since, until
Determiner the, a, an, this, that, these, those, yon, every, some, many, most, few, all, each, any, less, fewer, no, one, two, three, four, etc., my, your, his, her, its, our, their
Conjunction and, or, nor, neither, either
Complementizers that, for, if, whether
TAM[6] -ed, have, has, had, am, is, are, was, were, do, does, did, will, would, shall, should, can, could, may, might, must
Agreement[7] -s[8]
Negation not

Infants' Acquisition of Functional Items

Infants start identifying functional items in the second semester after birth. They are able to recognize functional items by hearing them frequently and also through phonological and distributional cues.[9] Moreover, infants are able to distinguish between functional and lexical items based on phonological and acoustic cues.[10] Children's first word combinations are limited in the range of relational meanings. According to some views of language acquisition, cognitive development provides the categories of early combinational speech, and input from the child's speech provides lexical items that fill those categories. Functional items commonly included English children's early acquisition include early stage words such as "in, on, a, the, 'm, 's, 're (contractible copulas) and possessive 's.[11]

Children with specific language impairments have difficulties with a range of elements within functional categories. Compared to younger, normally developing children with equal mean utterance lengths, impaired children do not use grammatical elements associated with the categories as much. However, there is no evidence that they lack whole functional categories altogether; even children with very limited speech are shown to use two or more different elements within each functional category system.[12]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4051-3384-5
    .
  2. ^ Andrew Carnie, "Syntax A Generative Introduction", Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, p. 52-53.
  3. doi:10.1111/j.1467-1770.1994.tb01452.x
    .
  4. ^ Noam Chomsky, The Minimalist Program, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995, p.54.
  5. ^ Andrew Carnie, "Syntax A Generative Introduction", Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, p. 53-54.
  6. Tense-Aspect-Mood. Cf. Talmy Givón (2001), Syntax: An Introduction, Volume 1, Amsterdam: Benjamins.[1]
  7. ^ Noam Chomsky (1995), The Minimalist Program, Cambridge: MIT Press, p. 146-150.
  8. ^ 3rd person singular overt agreement marker restricted to present tense indicative contexts.
  9. PMID 23557599
    .
  10. PMID 10553673. Retrieved 30 September 2013.[permanent dead link
    ]
  11. ISBN 978-1-133-93909-2
    .
  12. ^ LB, Leonard (1995). "Functional categories in the grammars of children with specific language impairment". Journal of Speech and Hearing Research (6): 0022–4685. Retrieved 1 October 2013.
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