The Acquisition of Syntax

This volume contains a collection of studies that survey recent research in developmental linguistics, illustrating the fruitful interaction between comparative syntax and language acquisition. The contributors each analyse a well defined range of acquisition data, aiming to derive them from primitive differences between child and adult grammar. The book covers cross-linguistic and cross-categorial phenomena, shedding light on major developments in this novel and rapidly growing field. Extensions to second language acquisition and neuropathology are also suggested.

Marc-Ariel Friedemann, Luigi Rizzi

Series list v List of contributors IX Editors' acknowledgements X 1 The acquisition of syntax: introduction Marc-Ariel Friedemann and Luigi Rizzi 2 The acquisition of the Determiner Phrase in German child language 26 Sonja Eisenbeiss 3 Early French postverbal subjects 63 Marc-Ariel Friedemann 4 Split inflection in neurolinguistics 84 Na 'ama Friedmann and Yosef Grodzinsky 5 An excursion into interrogatives in Early English and Italian 105 Maria Teresa Guasti 6 Adult null subjects in non pro-drop languages 129 Liliane Haegeman 7 The acquisition of constituent questions and the requirements of interpretation 170 Cornelia Hamann 8 Accounting for morphological variation in second language acquisition: truncation or missing inflection? 202 Philippe Prevost and Lydia White Null subjects and root infinitives in the child grammar of French 236 Lucienne Rasetti 10 Remarks on early null subjects 269 Luigi Rizzi 11 The acquisition of verb placement in Lucernese Swiss German Manuela Schonenberger Index