Full Description
The twelve contributions in this volume all focus on the question of whether developing grammars contain, at each stage of language acquisition, the full range of functional categories such as INFL, AGR, or COMP. The evidence examined is the placement of verbs, especially in verb-second constructions. Since the position of verbal elements depends on the finiteness distinction (the presence of agreement and tense markings), the development of these phenomena is studied as well. Although there is consensus among the authors that grammars in the course of language acquisition conform at each stage to the principles of universal grammar, they disagree on whether the full repertoire of functional categories is available from early on, or whether some are implemented only later. The studies presented here investigate monolingual and bilingual first language acquisition as well as adult second language acquisition. The languages studied are Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Sesotho, and Swedish.
Contents
Functional categories and verb placement in language development, J.M. Meisel; the acquisition of the morphosyntax of finite verbs in English, A. Radford; functional categories and early Swedish, C. Platzack; accessing functional categories in Sesotho - interactions at the morpho-syntax interface, K. Demuth; finiteness and verb placement in early child grammars - evidence from simultaneous acquisition of French and German in bilinguals, J.M. Meisel and N. Mueller; language acquisition and competing linguistic representations - the child as arbiter, I. Gawlitzek-Maiwald et al; the acquisition of agreement morphology and its syntactic consequences - new evidence on German child language from the Simone-Corpus, H. Clahsen and M. Penke; verb movement, agreement, and tense in L2 acquisition, L. Eubank; the ban on parameter resetting, default mechanisms, and the acquisition of V2 in Bernese Swiss German, Z. Penner; routes to verb placement in early German and French - the independence of finiteness and agreement, M. Verrips, J. Weissenborn; from the initial state to V2 - acquisition principles in action, T. Roeper; the genesis of clausal structure, N. Hyams; categories of first syntax, Be, Be+ing, and nothingness, V. Valian; on the acquisition of functional categories - a general commentary, J. De Villiers.
