Acquisition of Expletive Elements (C03)

• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551281144

This project provides the first systematic investigation of how children acquire expletive elements. It focuses on two expletive elements: definite articles with proper names (syntactic expletives) and expletive negation (semantic expletives) and investigates how children comprehend, produce, and process them in three languages: Greek, Catalan, and German. The results will inform us about the role of the properties of definite articles with proper names and expletive negation in their acquisition trajectory and can shed light into the development of the Algorithm of Interpretation in children.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1760: SiNoSi: Silence, Noise and Signal in Language
• Applicant Institution: Universität Konstanz
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Theodoros Marinis