Evidence from L1 acquisition for the syntax ofwh-scope marking in French *

Abstract

IntroductionThe goal of this paper is twofold. We first provide empirical arguments from L1 acquisition of French questions for the syntax of wh-in-situ in the adult grammar. In particular, we provide arguments for the existence of a non-lexical Q morpheme in French. (Cheng & Rooryck 2000;Mathieu 1999). The central claim we make is that this Q morpheme licenses both wh-in situ -be it in the child or the adult grammar-and partial wh-movement in French L1 acquisition (Oiry 2002).The second goal of this paper is to provide empirical arguments for alternative wh-scope marking structures in L1 acquisition of French. We argue that the seemingly surprising syntax of certain Long Distance (henceforth, LD) questions in L1 French reflects the existence in the child grammar of alternative non-adult strategies for forming wh-questions. These strategies, which involve either an argumental/referential or a non argumental/referential scope marker in the matrix, are ungrammatical in the target language but reflect parameters settings for other languages. In particular, we identify two classes of scope marking strategies: indirect vs. direct dependency strategies. Direct dependency yields both partial wh-movement and wh-in-situ: a non-lexical Q morpheme merged in the matrix Spec CP ensures that the scope of a lower wh-phrase, either in situ or partially fronted at Spell-out, is extended over the matrix clause. Indirect dependency (Dayal 1996(Dayal , 2000 involves an argument wh-phrase quantifying over propositions in the matrix clause and a subordinate wh-clause serving as a restriction on the matrix wh-quantifier. The latter appears either in situ or fronted to the matrix Spec CP in the overt syntax.We then turn to the question of how are findings bear on the issue of the acquisition stages involved in the language development process. The experimental results from the production task carried out to elicit root questions does not validate the claim that wh-in situ is the default option in French child grammar (see Hulk & Zuckerman (2000) or Zuckerman (2001), for instance). Our findings suggest that, if indeed there a preference for forming root questions, the preference is for overt wh-movement; see Deprez (1995) andSoares (2003) for similar conclusions regarding the status of wh-in situ in L1 French and L1 European Portuguese, respectively. This preliminary generalization requires further careful and systematic investigation.The syntax of long distance dependencies in French child grammar suggests, however, that the child goes through acquisition stages where long distance dependencies are not established via long movement but rather always involve local movement in the subordinate clause. The dependency between the matrix and the subordinate clause is then established via either (i): coindexation of an argument wh-phrase in the matrix clause quantifying over propositions with the subordinate wh-clause itself (indirect dependency strategy); or (ii) coindexation of a Q morpheme in the matrix clause with a lower wh-phrase itself ...

Scope-marking Strategies in the Acquisition of Long Distance wh-Questions in French and Dutch

“…During the last 10 years, similar phenomena have been observed in other languages like Dutch (van Kampen, 1997;van Kampen & Evers, 1995), French (Dos Anjos, 2004;Jakubowicz, 2004Jakubowicz, , 2005Lancien, 2003;Oiry, 2002;Oiry & Demirdache, 2006;Strik, 2002Strik, , 2003Strik, , 2006, Spanish, and Basque (Gutierrez, 2006) in studies conducted with typically developing children, L2 learners and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). A third type of nontarget scope-marking strategy showed up in the French studies (and very rarely in Spanish), namely Partial Movement of the wh-word to the left periphery of the embedded clause, without an overt scope-marker in the left periphery of the matrix clause (see (3)).…”

Wh-questions: Moving beyond the first phase

“…This medial error persists longer in children than the error on opaque sentences as in 3) above that only have a trace in the medial position (de Villiers and Pyers, 2002) and is found across modalities of production (Thornton, 1990) and judgment (McDaniel et al, 1995) and in other non-partial movement languages such as French (Oiry and Demirdache, 2006). The syntactic basis of our earlier account (de Villiers et al, 1990; Roeper and de Villiers, 1994) rested on parametric theory: children choose “partial movement”, a Germanic option, rather than full movement, which is the English option (McDaniel et al, 1995).…”

“…While the form in (c) is not English, partial wh-movement is common in many languages (see Fanselow, 2003 for an overview; also Abdulkarim, 2001; Dayal, 2000; Lahiri, 2002a, 2002b; Oiry and Demirdache, 2006; Schulz, 2004; for particular proposals). Chomsky (2005) proposes that it is the default form of cyclic movement not only for wh- but also for Tense, following Koster (2003).…”

Measuring derivational complexity: New evidence from typically developing and SLI learners of L1 French

“…16 We leave open the question of whether the reduction takes place before or after spell-out. 17 See Oiry and Dermidache (2006) who adopt Dayal's approach, not only for French PM questions, but also for wh-copying. As remarked by one of the reviewers, Jacqueline van wh-phrase in the left periphery of the matrix clause.…”