Animacy and child grammar: An OT account

In this paper we report the results of an elicited imitation task on dative case marking in non-canonical double object constructions with 22 German children (3;9–6;8). The aim was to test the proficiency of the childrenʹs grammar and to see which strategies they use to produce ditransitive sentences in which the direct object precedes the indirect object. The analysis of the childrenʹs utterances/imitations shows that the animacy of the direct object affects the overt dative case marking of the indirect object. Children made more errors repeating dative case marking when the direct object was inanimate, i.e., they produced the accusative case on the indirect object (non-adult-like). When both objects were animate, children correctly produced the dative case on the indirect object. We describe and account for these performance strategies of the children in the framework of Optimality Theory. Assuming that the same universal constraints are at work as in the adult grammar, the difference between adults and children lies in the constraint ranking. We focus on a prominent pattern found in childrenʹs performance, which is absent (or rather oppressed) in the corresponding adult performance, and show that one and the same grammar accounts for both (in the sense of “strong continuity”).