Incorrect association of the focus particle <i>dake</i>: new evidence from child Japanese

Abstract It has been observed cross-linguistically that children often show non-adult-like behavior with sentences containing focus phrases, such as only in English. Children often misinterpret sentences in which focus phrases modify subjects, whereas they exhibit adult-like behaviors when they modify VPs or objects. That is, a subject-object asymmetry is observed in children’s incorrect associations of focus phrases. Although many previous studies have addressed this issue, why children show such non-adult-like behavior and subject-object asymmetry is largely unknown. This paper examines Japanese-speaking children’s interpretations of scrambled sentences containing the Japanese focus particle dake (O- dake S V sentences) and demonstrates that children clearly show adult-like behavior with them. Based on the results of this experiment, it is concluded that linear order is irrelevant to their non-adult-like behavior, as discussed by previous studies. Further, based on the novel observation, it is claimed that superficial (i.e., at the Surface-structure level in a traditional sense) c-command relations between an NP with dake and another NP are irrelevant to their incorrect associations of dake . Rather, this observation provides a piece of supporting evidence for the Reconstructed Structure Hypothesis.