Recursive Possessives in Child Japanese
Akiko Terunuma (Daito Bunka University, Japan)
Terue Nakato-Miyashita (Kitasato University, Japan)
Recursion is the result of Merge, which is the universal recursive operation that underlies
the building of hierarchical structures (Chomsky (2007, 2008) among others), and it seems
to appear in all languages (see Lobina (2011) for formal discussion). One form of recursion
is found in possessive construction. The acquisition of recursive possessives in English has
been investigated in the recent literature, but little is known about recursive possessives in
child Japanese (except for Fujimori (2010)). Providing new data from child Japanese, the
present study attempts to shed some light on the acquisition path of recursive possessives.
Our data reveal that the structure with a single possessive and the one with two possessives
appear in child Japanese one after another, and then the structure with more than two possessives is acquired almost at the same time. We provide two possible analyses of our data,
both of which modify the DP substitution account (Roeper (2011)). Under the first analysis,
the crucial step for the acquisition of unlimited recursion of possessives lies in the substitution of DPs for NPs within possessive phrases. Under the second analysis, what is crucial is
the acquisition of a certain mechanism which licenses multiple possessive phrases, in addition to the substitution of DPs for NPs in general.
Recent experimental studies in English report that young children have difficulty in comprehending and producing sentences with two possessives (Limbach and Adone (2010), PérezLeroux et al. (2012)). Their results suggest that in the course of acquisition, there is a stage
where only non-recursive single possessives are allowed, followed by a stage where several
are possible. This poses a theoretical challenge: what property must be triggered in order for
children to recognize unlimited productivity of recursive possessives? One proposal is that
recursive possessives are allowed when an NP is replaced by a DP (Roeper (2011)). Until DP
projection emerges, possessives are considered to be noun modifiers like Adj, and children
assign a non-recursive structure to the noun phrase with a single possessive. For example,
John’s father is assigned the structure [NP [MODP John’s] father]. When DP is projected, the structure where DP contains another DP is acquired and hence recursive possessives are allowed.
Under the DP substitution account, it is predicted that once children’s responses to sentences with two possessives (2-POSS) become adult-like, their responses to sentences with more
than two possessives also become adult-like. However, the results of our experiments show
that this is not the case. Our experiments were designed to investigate how 3- to 6-yearold Japanese-speaking children interpret sentences with 1- to 4-POSS sentences. Children
were given a picture and asked some questions about it. Examples of the test sentences are as follows: Reddo-kun-no kaban-wa nani-iro kana? ‘What color is Reddo’s bag?’ (1POSS), Reddo-kun-no neko-no shatsu-wa nani-iro kana? ‘What color is Reddo’s cat’s shirt?’
(2-POSS), Guriin-kun-no otooto-no tomodachi-no kaban-wa nani-iro kana? ‘What color is
Guriin’s younger brother’s friend’s bag?’ (3-POSS), and Pinku-chan-no tomodachi-no nekono shatsu-no choocho-wa nani-iro kana? ‘What color is Pinku’s friend’s cat’s shirt’s butterfly?’
(4-POSS). Our main findings are (a) children’s responses to 3- and 4-POSS sentences are significantly different from adults’ even when their responses to 2-POSS sentences are almost
adult-like, and (b) no difference is found between children’s responses to 3-POSS sentences
and to 4-POSS sentences (children come to give an adult-like interpretation to 3-POSS and
4-POSS sentences almost at the same time).
Our results cannot fully be attributed to the incremental parsing difficulty. Under an incremental parsing hypothesis, children’s responses to sentences with recursive possessives are
expected to be worse as the number of possessives increases. As our data indicate, however, children show no greater difficulty with 4-POSS sentences than with 3-POSS sentences.
The DP substitution account cannot give a straightforward explanation to our findings. However, if we modify this account, taking into consideration two types of possessives available
in UG, two analyses are possible. As evidenced by the ambiguity of the man’s hat ([the
man]’s hat and the [man’s hat]), adult grammar allows two types of possessives (Munn (1995),
van Hout et al. (2013) among others): One with a DP projection in its Spec (DP-possessive
with the structure of [DP [POSSP [DP]’s] NP]) and the other type with an NP projection in its Spec
(NP-possessive with the structure of [NP [POSSP [NP]’s] N]). One analysis of our findings is obtainable if we assume that the substitution of DPs for NPs does not happen all at once, but
starts from the root. The structure of DP-possessive is obtained from that of NP-possessive
when the NP in possessive phrases is substituted by a DP. Suppose such substitution inside
of possessive phrases delays as compared to the DP substitution for the top node of noun
phrases. Then, children in the stage where only the top node of noun phrases is substituted
by a DP cannot generate the structure with more than two possessives. However, they can
generate a non-recursive 2-POSS structure by using an NP-possessive and a possessive
phrase as a noun modifier. For example, John’s father’s car is assigned the structure [DP [POSSP
[NP [MODP John’s] father]’s] car]. The adult-like structure with recursive possessives is acquired
when the NP in possessive phrases is substituted by a DP. After that, children generate the
recursive structure with any number of possessives.
An alternative analysis is also possible if we assume a mechanism which licenses multiple
DP-possessives. On this view, the substitution of DPs for NPs is applied to NP nodes within
possessive phrases and on the top of noun phrases at the same time. DP-possessives are
available to children as soon as DP projection emerges, but children cannot generate the
adult-like structure with recursive possessives because they have not acquired a mechanism
that allows the iteration of the same type of POSSP. At this stage, however, they can generate a non-recursive 2-POSS structure by using a DP-possessive and an NP-possessive (e.g.
[DP [POSSP [DP [NP [POSSP [NP John]’s] father]]’s] car]).
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