Little Words is an interdisciplinary examination of the functions and change in the use of clitics, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, discourse particles, auxiliary/light verbs, prepositions, and other “little words” that have played a central role in linguistic theory and in language acquisition research. Leading scholars present advanced research in phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse function, historical development, variation, and acquisition by children and adults.

This unique volume integrates the views and findings of these different research areas into one professional source to be used within and across disciplines. Languages studied include English, Spanish, French, Romanian, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Slavonic, and Medieval Leonese.

Ronald P. Leow is an associate professor of Spanish applied linguistics and director of Spanish Language Instruction at Georgetown University.

Héctor Campos is an associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, linguistics, and modern Greek at Georgetown University.

Donna Lardiere is an associate professor of linguistics at Georgetown University.

Preface

1. Introduction Ronald P. Leow, Héctor Campos, and Donna Lardiere

Part I: History

2. From "Two" to "Both": Historical Changes in the Syntax and Meaning of Oba in Slavic Agnieszka Łazorczyk and Roumyana Pancheva

3. When Small Worlds Collide: Morphological Reduction and Phonological Compensation in Old Leonese Contractions Minta Elsman and D. Eric HoltPart II: Phonology

4. Distinguishing Function Words from Content Words in Children's Oral Reading Carol Lord, Robert Berdan, and Michael Fender5. Motivating Floating Quantifiers Lisa RochmanPart III: Syntax

6. Applicative Phrases Hosting Accusative Clitics Luis Sáez7.The Little DE of Degree Constructions Remus Gergel8. The Complementizer The Heather Lee Taylor9. What is There When Little Words Are Not There?: Possible Implications for Evolutionary Studies Ljiljana Progovac10. Spanish Personal a and the Antidative Omar Velázquez-Mendoza and Raúl AranovichPart IV: Semantics

11.Predicting Argument Realization from Oblique Marker Semantics John Beavers12. Aspect Selectors, Scales, and Contextual Operators: An Analysis of by Temporal Adjuncts Michael F. Thomas and Laura A. Michaelis13. Distributive Effects of the Plural Marker -tul in Korean Jong Un ParkPart V: Pragmatics

14. The Pragmatics of the French Discourse Markers donc and alors Stéphanie Pellet15. "Little Words" in Small Talk: Some Considerations on the Use of the Pragmatic Markers man in English and macho/tío in Peninsular Spanish Laura Alba-Juez16. Little Words that Could Impact One's Impression on Others: Greetings and Closings in Institutional Emails Sigrun Biesenbach-LucasPart VI: Acquisition

17. Instructed L2 Acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Spanish Melissa Bowles and Silvina Montrul18. The Role of Pedagogical Tasks and Focus on Form in Acquisition of Discourse Markers by Advanced Language Learners Maria José de la Fuente19. Article Acquisition in English, German, Norwegian, and Swedish Tanja Kupisch, Merete Anderssen, Ute Bohnacker, and Neal Snape20. A Continuum in French Children's Surface Realization of Auxiliaries Christina D. Dye