Seminarul din luna noiembrie va avea loc joi, 17.11, la ora 18:00.
Do Romanian children understand lack of necessity modals as interdiction?
(joint work with Anton Benz (ZAS Berlin) and Gabriela Slavuteanu (University of Bucharest))
Invitat: Asist. dr. Camelia Bleotu
Prezentare:
In the current talk, we present 4 experiments investigating the interaction between negation and deontic necessity in child Romanian by looking at unambiguous forms such as nu e nevoie sǎ ‘not is need SĂ’, expressing lack of necessity, and trebuie sǎ nu ‘must SĂ not’, expressing interdiction, as well as at the ambiguous nu trebuie sǎ ‘not must SĂ’, a negated modal with two intonationally differentiated meanings (lack of necessity and interdiction). Experimental evidence shows that, in the absence of situational context, Romanian 5-year-olds interpret both interdiction and lack of necessity forms as expressing interdiction, regardless of surface scope or intonation. Children’s answers may reflect an initial preference for strong scope and/or a tendency to choose one single alternative out of several. However, in the presence of situational context or in cases where modal forms expressing interdiction or lack of necessity are set in contrast, children seem to perform much more adult-like, revealing awareness of the prosodic and semantic differences between modal forms.
Seminarul de cercetare este un proiect prin care dorim să cunoaștem mai bine preocupările și munca de cercetare ale colegilor noștri din cadrul Facultății de Limbi și Literaturi Străine, dar și din alte centre universitare din țară sau din străinătate. Seminarul se organizează deocamdată online, în a treia zi de joi a fiecărei luni, începând cu orele 18.00.