Subjects and Interface Delay in Child Spanish and Catalan

Abstract

I observe that in an earlystage of child Catalan and Spanish, no overt subjects are used. At this same age and MEAN LENGTH OF UTTERANCE (MLU), child speakers of overt subject languages such as French, German, Dutch, and English use at least some overt subjects optionally. I explain this crosslinguistic variation bysuggesting that the adult target grammars vary with respect to the position in which overt subjects are realized. In the overt subject languages, subjects are realized in the canonical specifier-of-IP position, whereas in the null subject languages (such as Catalan and Spanish), subjects are located in a topic/focus position, which becomes accessible onlylater in development. As evidence for this, I show that overt subjects, fronted objects, and WH-questions begin to be used at the same point in development in child Catalan and Spanish. I also argue that subject agreement constitutes an incorporated pronominal subject in Catalan and Spanish and that children converge on this parametric option veryearly . The inabilityof child Spanish- and Catalan-speakers to use discourse-pragmatic information is explained as a delayin the development of the interface between grammar and discourse-pragmatics.

Protosyntax: A thetic (unaccusative) stage?

“…In (53) we have some examples from Hyams & Wexler (1993): (53) Want go get it Show Mommy that Not making muffins Thus, even children acquiring non-null-subject languages like English do not always produce full SV structures. Further, a delay in the production of appropriate preverbal subjects in other languages has also been recently noted (Casielles et al 2006, Grinstead 2004, Westergaard 2008. If supported by further research these studies would confirm the intrinsic complexity of these apparently simple SV structures.…”

Acquisition of a null subject language

“…Grinstead (2004) found that children speaking Spanish and Catalan use subject with non-verbal predicates. Blom & Geert (2004) argue that children first go through a stage where they overdrop subjects in finite sentences.…”

Inversion inwh-questions in child Romance and child English

“…Bel"s finding, that children converge early on the possibility of both null and overt subjects and that they differentiate between the two in an apparently adult-like way, is partially at odds with the results of Grinstead (2004), who finds that children go through a period of using only null subjects first and develop overt subjects later. Nonetheless, the Spanish-speaking children in Grinstead"s study still show relatively early convergence on the full range of possibilities for subjects, with preverbal overt subjects first appearing between 1;10 and 2;1 (and between 1;10 and 2;4 with the Catalan-speaking children).…”

“…The only study where we have direct information on the relative timing of the acquisition of subject properties and the acquisition of wh-movement is Grinstead (2004). The Spanish-speaking children in his study begin using overt preverbal subjects between 1;10 and 2;1, but they apparently do not begin performing wh-movement until at least 2;3 -2;5, since none of them have given evidence of wh-movement by the time of their final file (between 2;2 and 2;4).…”