University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Copula Omission: A Deeper Look Into One Explanation

Strohman, Amy

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/47222

Description

Title
Copula Omission: A Deeper Look Into One Explanation
Author(s)
Strohman, Amy
Issue Date
2013-05
Keyword(s)
  • copula
  • grammar
  • locative
  • nominal
Abstract
A copula is a morpheme that signals that a noun phrase, prepositional phrase or adjective phrase is a predicate. The English copula is be, whose forms am, is, are, was, and were encode the grammatical features of tense and agreement.Children acquiring English as a first language go through a period in which they omit copula, as well as other closed class morphemes (Brown, 1973). There are several explanations for why children are telegraphic. Among those explanations, three specifically address the omission of copula. This project tested the predictions of the semantic type explanation (Becker, 2004). Becker’s hypothesis was supported by an extremely small sample size (n = 4). The purpose of this study was to test Becker’s hypothesis with a sample size of twelve children.
Type of Resource
text
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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/47222

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