Meisel Juergen M Ed Bilingual First Language Acquisition Fre PDF
Meisel Juergen M Ed Bilingual First Language Acquisition Fre PDF
Meisel Juergen M Ed Bilingual First Language Acquisition Fre PDF
EDITORS
EDITORIAL BOARD
Melissa Bowerman (Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen)
Patricia Clancy (University of California at Santa Barbara)
Werner Deutsch (Universität Braunschweig)
Kenji Hakuta (Stanford University)
Kenneth Hyltenstam (University of Stockholm)
Peter Jordens (Free University, Amsterdam)
Barry McLaughlin (University of California at Santa Cruz)
Jürgen M. Meisel (Universität Hamburg)
Anne Mills (University of Amsterdam)
Csaba Pleh (University of Budapest)
Michael Sharwood Smith (University of Utrecht)
Catherine Snow (Harvard University)
Jürgen Weissenborn (Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen)
Lydia White (McGill University)
Helmut Zobl (Carleton University, Ottawa)
Volume 7
Jürgen M. Meisel
JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
University of Hamburg
Preface 1
Jürgen M. Meisel
Acquiring German and French in a Bilingual Setting 3
Peter Jordens
The DUFDE Project 15
Regina Köppe
The Acquisition of Gender and Number Morphology within NP 29
Caroline Koehn
Gender and Number Agreement within DP 53
Natascha Müller
Getting FAT: Finiteness, Agreement and Tense in Early Grammars 89
Jürgen M. Meisel
More about INFL-ection and Agreement: The Acquisition of
Clitic Pronouns in French 131
Georg Kaiser
Case Assignment and Functional Categories in Bilingual Children:
Routes of Development and Implications for Linguistic Theory 161
Achim Stenzel
NP-Movement and Subject Raising 209
Regina Köppe
Parameters Cannot be Reset: Evidence from the Development of COMP 235
Natascha Müller
Index of Names 271
Index of Subjects 277
Preface
On the Initial States of Language Acquisition
Jürgen M. Meisel
University of Hamburg
The contributions to this volume represent the major part of the results obtained
over the last three years in a research project studying the grammatical
development of bilingual children who are acquiring two first languages
simultaneously, French and German. It is the second volume published by the
members of the research team DUFDE; the first appeared as J. M. Meisel (ed.)
(1990). Two First Languages - Early Grammatical Development in Bilingual
Children (= Studies on Language Acquisition, 10). Dordrecht: Foris.
The DUFDE research group (Deutsch und Französisch - Doppelter
Erstspracherwerb/German and French - Simultaneous First Language
Acquisition) has been operating at the University of Hamburg since 1980. From
1986 until 1992, it was generously supported by a research grant from the DFG
(Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to the author of these lines. We have also
benefitted from material assistance from the University of Hamburg. This
support, both from the DFG and from the University, is hereby gratefully
acknowledged.
A number of individuals have also been most helpful. In fact, without them
the authors of the following chapters would not have been able to do their work,
and we therefore want to thank them sincerely. This is addressed, first of all, to
the children whose language development we have been studying and to their
parents. I gladly repeat what I have said before, namely that knowing them has
been a most rewarding experience for us. Nobody who has not lived through this
experience can imagine the kind of inconvenience it represents in the daily life
of a family to have two people with video equipment invading their homes every
second week for four, five, and more years. We can only hope that our work will
2 JÜRGEN MEISEL
turn out to be useful for other bilingual families — and perhaps even for those
who we studied. Merci infiniment.
Berthold Crysmann, Axel Mahlau, Gesche Seemann, and Martina Wulf have
contributed to the studies published in this volume by helping in analyzing the
data and by discussing the results with us. Without the help of Thomas Westphal,
computers would not only be those mysterious beings which they are, they would
even be frightening. Thanks to all of them. We are especially grateful to Susanne
E. Carroll, Peter Jordens, Tom Roeper, and the anonymous readers recruited by
the series editors for reading and commenting on earlier versions of the chapters
in this volume.
Let me finally mention that all authors are or have been affiliated with the
University of Hamburg and the research group DUFDE, except Peter Jordens
(Free University, Amsterdam) who accepted our invitation to introduce us to the
reader. I want to thank him and all other contributors for their cooperation.
Jürgen M. Meisel
Universität Hamburg
Romanisches Seminar
Acquiring German and French in a Bilingual Setting
Peter Jordens
Free University Amsterdam
play a major role in the organization of the mental lexicon. The internal structure
of the lexicon is accounted for through the relations between the schemas that
particular items belong to.
In her analysis of plural formation and gender attribution in Ivar (1;5 - 5;0),
Koehn provides evidence for the adequacy of schema theory. In the acquisition
of plural formation in German and French, there is first a stage (from 2;2 to 2;6)
in which Ivar uses deux and zwei without number marking on the noun, as in
zwei kind, to refer to two or more objects and ein and un with nouns to refer to
single objects.
Evidence for the functioning of schemas in the acquisition of the grammati
cal notions of number and gender can be found in Ivar from 2;7 to 5;0. In
French, Ivar learns the plural and singular forms of the article system before
number distinctions on nouns. In German, on the other hand, number marking
is learned first with nouns. With respect to number marking on nouns, there are
two stages to be discriminated. First, there is a stage in which the plural and
singular forms themselves are produced correctly but often used incorrectly:
plural forms are used with singular reference while singular forms are used with
plural reference. At this stage, the child appears to use particular schemas.
Depending on the cue strengths for plural which are based on saliency,
frequency, and reliability, the child discriminates between allomorphs that are
more or less typical of plural morphology. See Table 1.
polysyllabic -s Autos 0
polysyllabic -en Katzen 15,4
polysyllabic -e Füße/Schuhe 18,2
polysyllabic -er Kinder/Räder 33,3
umlaut Mütter 50%
Then, from 3;5, allomorphs that were determined as plural forms are
overextended. In nouns such as tischen, keksen, tigern, büchern, fwschen,
schuhen, händen -en is overgeneralized. Overgeneralization of -s only occurs
ACQUIRING GERMAN AND FRENCH IN A BILINGUAL SETTING 5
with nouns ending in -er. Ivar has a schema in which -er is a cue for a singular
form and, furthermore, for him plural forms apparently have to be different in
shape.
In her analysis of gender attribution in definite articles, Koehn shows that
in child French nouns ending in a nasal or -o are treated as masculine: le train,
He main', le garçon, He maison', le manteau, He photo. In child German, nouns
ending in -er and -en are masculine: der tiger, der räuber, *der ufer, *den
zimmer; der wagen, der besen, *der mädchen, *der essen', and nouns ending in
-e are feminine: die sonne, *die hase. Application of these schemas even leads
to the creation of target deviant forms such as *der off, *die plakate.
In her study Gender and number agreement within DP, Natascha Müller
observed Caroline and Ivar. In the early grammars of Caroline (1;5 - l;9/2;0)
and Ivar (1;6 - 2;4), number and gender are semantic concepts. As far as the
concept of singular vs. plural is concerned, numerals are used referentially
correctly. Hence, deux schuhe 'two shoes' and deux paket 'two parcel' refer to
two objects and anot schuhe 'another shoes', un autre zu 'another shoe', un autre
zamono (animaux) 'another animals' to one object. However, as Müller points
out, these number distinctions are used "irrespective of the gender and number
specification of the co-occurring nouns." The same holds for gender. Caroline
uses das 'this' to refer to non-animates, and Ivar uses aman 'ein Mann' for
animates such as 'a man', 'a woman', 'Ivar's mother', 'a cowboy' and 'a snake'.
Summarizing, initially the grammatical features of number and gender are absent.
Furthermore, Müller notes that as far as NP syntax is concerned there are two
positions available. Consequently, prenominal elements such as numerals,
adjectives, and the presyntactic elements [ë], [dë], [a] are used in a mutually
exclusive way.
With Caroline at l;10/2;0 - 2;11 and Ivar at 2;4 - 2;8, indefinite and
definite articles are introduced into the children's grammars. Syntactically,
however, these articles are part of different systems. Indefinite articles behave
like numerals. They have a referential meaning and do not enter into an
agreement relation with nouns. Therefore, ein schwein 'a pig' or ein schweine 'a
pigs', ein kuh 'a cow' or ein kühe 'a cows', and un autre zenfant 'another
children' are used with singular reference, zwei kind 'two child' or zwei kinder
'two children' and zwei off 'two monkey' or zwei affe 'two monkeys' are used
with plural reference. Definite articles, on the other hand, are analyzed as
functional elements. They agree with nouns. In German der and die - in NPs
such as die puppe 'the doll', die tasche 'the bag' - and in French lella are always
used with singular nouns. Hence, noun phrases such as *der schweine 'the=sg
6 PETER JORDENS
pigs', Hella zamono 'the=sg animals', *lella chevaux 'the=sg horses' or *ce
zamono 'this animals' do not occur. This means that singular nouns are
systematically used for singular reference. Plural articles die and les also agree,
as in die tiere 'the=pl animals', les poupées 'the=pl dolls', ces zamono 'these
animals' and diese deckel 'these covers'. However, they may be used with plural
and singular reference. Interestingly, the same holds for bare plurals such as
kinder 'children', schuhe 'shoes' and zoreilles 'ears', which can be used with
both singular and plural reference, whereas schuh 'shoe' and kind 'child' are
only used with singular reference. Given the fact that plural NPs can be used
with either singular or plural reference and that the finite verb form is the
unmarked option, children produce utterances such as où Vest les poussettes
(sing.ref.) 'where they is the baby carriages', und eh schiffe (sing.ref.) paßt 'and
eh boat fits', les poupées (plur.ref.) va pas manzer 'the dolls will=sg not eat', and
oui les poupées (plur.ref.) elles arrivent 'yes the dolls they arrive'.
As far as gender is concerned, again the definite article has the wrong form
only with a few nouns. In French le is used with nouns that have a nasal vowel,
such as main 'hand', dent 'tooth', maison 'house', maman 'mother'; in German
der and dieser are used with monosyllabic words, such as zahl 'number', tür
'door'; dach 'roof', bett 'bed', loch 'hole', schiff 'ship', boot 'boat', bein 'leg',
and die is used with words ending in -a or -e, such as die opa 'the grand-pa', die
papa 'the daddy', die sofa 'the sofa'; die hase 'the bunny'. The indefinite article,
however, is frequently used with the wrong gender. Both indefinite articles can
often be used with the same noun.
In his study Finiteness, agreement and tense in early grammars, Jürgen
Meisel claims that there is no reason to believe that children have access to
hierarchical X-bar structure before the age of 2;0. With Bickerton (1990), Meisel
believes that around this particular age UG, and with it the properties of X-bar
structure, become available through neurological maturation. This means that
before children have access to UG principles, early multi-word utterances are
organized according to pragmatic principles. As soon as X-bar structure has
become available with UG, however, certain options are given with respect to the
architectural development of functional categories. What is of crucial importance
for the acquisition of the hierarchical structure of a particular language is the
discovery of syntactic categories. A major role is given to the acquisition of
finite verb forms. According to Meisel, they "enable the learner to identify verbal
elements and distinguish them from other predicates." This certainly holds for
French. As soon as children are able to identify verbal elements, their grammars
have VPs structured as in Figure (1).
ACQUIRING GERMAN AND FRENCH IN A BILINGUAL SETTING 7
(1)
(2)
acquisition of subject clitics, which are relevant for person and number marking.
Here, the 3rd person singular clitics (il 'he', elle 'she', on 'one') are acquired
two to three months before the 1st and 2nd person singular clitics (je T and tu
'you'). Evidence for tense distinctions in German is the use of present tense
forms alongside auxiliary and past-participle constructions, the use of the verb
war 'was', and the use of predicates with a modal and a non-finite verb form.
Meisel's analysis, first, shows that tense is acquired significantly later than
agreement morphology. Furthermore, it turns out that the phenomena that are
evidence of movement are acquired simultaneously with 1st and 2nd person
singular morphology, but before tense distinctions. Hence, Meisel concludes that
finiteness and, therefore, INFL as a position that the finite verb can be moved
to, is acquired due to the acquisition of agreement. According to Meisel
"agreement alone is sufficient as an instantiation of finiteness." Another
interesting finding is that 3rd person singular morphology is used before the
acquisition of INFL. Interestingly, a similar observation has been made by
Clahsen (1986), who attributes it to the semantico-pragmatic function of
low-transitivity. Meisel, however, claims that these early 3rd person singular
markings within VP are evidence of an elementary version of agreement. It
marks the syntactic specifier-head relation between two elements without the
sharing of features. Hence, it is representative of the default agreement value
which is used when other options are not yet available.
Having implemented IP, Meisel's subjects end up with structures without
CP. At this point in the children's development, French and German child
grammars differ only with respect to headedness within VP. Due to the lack of
CP, German child grammar is not yet a true V2 language. One may ask if
German/French bilingual children are any different from monolingual German
children in this respect.
In More about INFL-ection and Agreement: The acquisition of clitic pronouns
in French, Georg Kaiser investigates the acquisition of subject and object clitics
in Pascal and Ivar learning French. For adult French it is assumed that both
subject clitics, as in Jean il mange 'John he eats' and il mange Jean 'he eats
John', and object clitics, as for example in Marie le lui a donné le livre à Jean
'Mary it to him has given the book to John', are to be seen as agreement
markers. However, subject and object clitics have a different linguistic status.
Subject clitics are generated in INFL and object clitics are base-generated in V.
Given this analysis and assuming that functional categories are lacking initially,
Kaiser expects subject clitics to become available as soon as children have access
to functional categories.
ACQUIRING GERMAN AND FRENCH IN A BILINGUAL SETTING 9
From the analysis of Pascal's and Ivar's data it can be shown that within one
or two months, the 3rd person singular clitics il/elle 'he/she' and somewhat later on
'one', je T' and tu 'you' are acquired. Interestingly, on, formally a 3rd person
singular clitic which functions semantically as a 1st person clitic, as in ici, on peut
dormir 'here we can sleep', is acquired simultaneously with je and tu. With respect
to object clitics, Kaiser observes that these were not used productively during the
time that subject clitics were acquired. Kaiser argues that subject clitics also
function in acquisition as agreement markers. Evidence is, first, the productive
use of subject clitics simultaneously with the acquisition of the morphological
distinction between finite and non-finite verbs (Meisel, this volume). Secondly,
Kaiser observes that Pascal never uses a subject clitic in combination with a
non-finite verb form. Finally, both children use subject clitics together with
subject NPs or subject pronouns, as for example in la grand-mère elle est là 'the
grand-mother she is here' (Pa 2;3) and Ivar i répare 'Ivar he repairs' (Iv 2;5).
In particular cases clitics are absent. This can also be seen as evidence that
clitics are used as agreement markers. Firstly, clitics are absent in sentences with
être 'be', avoir 'have' and aller 'go'. Examples are est pas là 'is not here' (Pa
2;10); ai mal oreille(s) avant 'have [1st person sg] bad ear(s) before' (Pa 2;9); ai
bien ai bien souri 'have well have well smiled' (Iv 2;10); va va après manger
'will will afterwards eat' (Iv 2;8). Kaiser argues that this is what should be
expected. Verbs such as être, avoir and aller have complex inflectional morpho
logy and, therefore, clitics are not needed as agreement markers. Furthermore,
sentences with intransitive verbs such as dormir 'sleep' and tomber 'fall' and
sentences with modals verbs such as vouloir 'want' and pouvoir 'can' are used
without subject clitics too. Examples are dort bébé 'sleeps baby' (Iv 2;0); tombé
berg 'fallen mountain-[Germ.]' (Iv 2;4); veux roir[-voir] aussi 'will see too' (Pa
2;9);peut avec l'auto aussi 'can with the car too' (Pa 2;11); veux courir 'will run'
(Iv 2;6); peut peut pas rouner [rouler] 'can can not go' (Iv 2;7). Kaiser claims
that this is because the intransitive verbs dormir and tomber are used like
impersonal verbs such as falloir 'have to', paraître 'appear' and y avoir 'there
be' in faut mett(re) des petites 'have to put some little ones' (Pa 2;6); y a rien
'there is nothing' (Iv 2;9). He argues that in sentences in which there is no
thematic subject, agreement does not apply. Here, it should be pointed out that
this holds for modal verbs too. In Hoekstra & Jordens (1993) it was shown that
in Dutch child language modals such as kunnen 'can' and mogen 'may' are first
used non-thematically the same way as in the adult language. Adult French
should have this option too. I would argue, therefore, that for peut avec l'auto
aussi 'can with the car too' (Pa 2;11) and peut peut pas rouner [rouler] 'can can
10 PETER JORDENS
not go' (Iv 2;7) a similar analysis is possible. Summarizing, Kaiser's study
provides sound evidence that subject clitics in French are acquired as agreement
markers and, hence, the acquisition of subject clitics is evidence that children
have access to INFL.
Achim Stenzel analyses German and French data from Pascal (1;8 - 4;10)
and Annika (2;0 - 3;10) in Case assignment andfunctional categories in bilingual
children: Routes of development and implications for linguistic theory. This study
investigates what determines the acquisition of case marking or, put differently,
what triggers abstract case. Theoretically, case marking is related to the category
INFL. As illustrated in Figure (3), INFL is a prerequisite for structural case
because it licenses NPs at the level of S-structure.
Furthermore, both INFL and DET are functional categories. That is, INFL
functionally selects a VP and DET functionally selects an NP. In other words,
VP is the complement of the functional head INFL, while NP is the complement
of the functional head DET. As Stenzel argues, this structural equivalence
corresponds to a semantic similarity as well: Determiners specify the reference
of an NP, while tense, as a property of INFL, locates a particular event in time.
The structural equivalence of DPs to IPs can be inferred from a comparison of
an IP structure such as in (3) and a DP structure such as in Figure (4).
(4) DP in German and French
ACQUIRING GERMAN AND FRENCH IN A BILINGUAL SETTING 11
(5)
Figure (5) illustrates that structural case is licensed by DET, while semantic
features are assigned within NP. This explains why in early child grammars
without functional categories Genitives are used without the syntactic context of
a possessor-possessed construction, as in das meins 'that one's mine' (Pa 2;1)
and mamas [picking up the earrings]: 'mummy's' (An 2;0). For examples such
as these, Tracy (1986) has claimed that the Genitive suffix only serves to
indicate the semantic feature of possession. Hence, at the relevant stage she also
found overgeneralizations of the Genitive suffix to Dative contexts involving
possession, as in das gehört Maltes pointing to some object: 'that belongs to
Malte's GEN ' (Ma 2;6).
Another observation discussed in Stenzel's study is the fact that in the
domain of a preposition Pascal overgeneralizes the dative to accusative contexts,
as in und nur noch für dir 'and still for youDAT' (Pa 2;6). Furthermore, Stenzel
argues that although she is able to encode syntactic features, Annika applies a
morphological avoidance strategy until she has to use the dative and the genitive
in order to be able to meet her communicative needs.
12 PETER JORDENS
In her paper NP-movement and subject raising, Regina Köppe discusses the
question of the availability of NP movement in child language. More particularly,
the aim of her study is to investigate whether or not the acquisition of subject
raising is linked to the emergence of IP. Since IP is a functional category that
provides a landing site for NP movement "most authors assume that if verb
raising to INFL is possible, subject raising to SpecIP follows automatically." In
Pierce (1989) and Deprez & Pierce (1991), however, a different view is given.
There, it is claimed that children acquiring French have verb raising to INFL
without subject raising. This would explain Deprez & Pierce's finding that in the
initial stages lexical subjects occur in postverbal position, as in pas manger la
poupée 'not eat the doll'; assis la poupée 'seated the doll'; est froid le camion 'is
cold the truck'; travaille papa 'works papa'; bois peu moi 'drink little me' (Pierce
1989:32,33).
Given the fact that subject raising requires INFL to provide SpecIP as a
landing site and that initially child grammars do not have INFL, Köppe's
investigation focuses on the developmental stage, at which there is evidence that
INFL becomes part of child grammar. In the early stages of German, children
have OV order, therefore, SVO order is evidence for both INFL and subject
raising. In French, however, word order may not provide clear evidence. This is
because IP and VP order is the same for transitive and intransitive verbs. Only
with ergative verbs, as in il arrive Pierre 'he-comes Pierre', the subject does
originate in postverbal position. Ergative verbs, however, are not reliable either,
because it is possible that subjects are simply adjoined to the right of VP, as in
il mange une pomme Pierre 'he-eats an apple Pierre'. Hence, for subject and verb
raising another criterion has to be found. Köppe decides on the position of the
subject and the verb with respect to sentence-internal negation. Both subjects and
INFL are judged to be raised if they occur before sentence-internal negation.
Furthermore, subject raising can also be identified independently. Subjects are
raised to SpecIP if they precede a finite verb.
In Köppe's analysis of the data from Pascal and Ivar, two stages appear to
be relevant. Initially, there is no evidence for the availability of IP. Regarding
the acquisition of French this is illustrated with utterances such as ouvrir
chaussures 'openinf shoes' (Pa 1;10) and mouton sauter 'sheep jump inf ' (Iv 2;2).
From about 2;2 (Pascal) and 2;4 (Ivar) there is evidence for INFL and subject
raising: margarine tombe pas 'margarine falls not' (Pa 2;0) and teddy tombe pas
'teddy bear falls not' (Iv 2;4). Re-analysis of Pierce's data reveals that the
finding of a decreasing number of postverbal subjects is an artifact of the way
in which the data were analyzed. In German, Pascal and Ivar have early cases
ACQUIRING GERMAN AND FRENCH IN A BILINGUAL SETTING 13
of verb and subject raising: papa mach diese 'daddy make these' (Pa 2;0), ich
will nich 'I want not' (Pa 2;0), das nimm en deddi 'this takes a teddy bear' (Iv
2;3) and kommt das (nich) 'comes this not' (Iv 2;3). However, systematic
evidence of utterances in which both subject and verb precede sentence-internal
negation occur from about 2;2 (Pascal) and 2;4 (Ivar).
Köppe observes that in the French data ergative verbs are the first that have
verb and subject raising, whereas in the German data it is the transitive verbs
that have verb and subject raising first. For Köppe this is reason to advance the
interesting speculation that "the recognition of structural differences in the
ordering of verbs and their complements at the level of VP might serve as a
trigger for the development of the functional projection IP"
In Parameters cannot be reset: Evidence from the development of COMP,
Natascha Müller clearly distinguishes two phases in the use of functional
categories in German and French. First, there is a phase in which the category
C is absent. In the early grammars of Ivar (at 2;4), Caroline (at 2;1) and Pascal
(at 2;2), INFL, AGR and German V2 patterns are present. Evidence for the
unavailability of the C-system is the fact that there are no complementizers of
any kind and no subordination. Examples are guck mal - ich hab, hab ich 'look
I have, have I' (Ca 2;6), kannst du ihn k-trag k-hast du auch ...so ein haus ne?
'can you him ask have you such a house?' (Iv 3;4), and demander maman - là
il est 'ask Mommy there it is' (Iv 2;6). Furthermore, in French there is no
inversion in root interrogatives. One example is où il est (le) nounours? 'where
it is the teddy?' (Iv 2;6). As has been pointed out by Weissenborn (1990) for this
type of inversion in French, the C-system is also required.
The absence of the functional category COMP implies that there are no
embeddings with wh-elements either. At the relevant stage, however, main
clauses can be introduced by wh-words, as in wo is der auto? 'where is the car?'
(Iv 2;8). This can be explained by the syntactic difference between a lexically
selected wh-specification in embedded clauses occurring in COMP and a
non-selected wh-specification in main clauses occurring in INFL.
In the second phase, Ivar appears to acquire the C-system in German and
French around 2;11, Caroline at 2;6 in French and 3;1 in German, Pascal at 2;5
in French and 2;9 in German. With respect to the integration of COMP in
French, Müller observes that inversion in root sentences is acquired simulta
neously with the use of complementizers in embedded sentences.
In German, Pascal and Caroline follow a route different from Ivar. As soon
as Pascal and Caroline use complementizers, embedded clauses also have the
verb-final pattern. The presence of a complementizer prevents the finite verb
14 PETER JORDENS
from moving to the V2 position. Hence, it can be concluded that both finite
verbs and lexically selected wh-constituents are assigned to the same syntactic
position. The data from Ivar show, however, that he does not analyze comple
mentizers as functional categories, unlike Pascal and Caroline. Firstly, he uses
only complementizers such as weil 'because', als 'when', wenn 'if' which cannot
occur as moved wh-specifications, unlike was 'what', wo 'where', wie 'how'.
Furthermore, he seems to develop COMP out of a lexical category. Evidence for
this is the use of für in f[o] de f[o] de reiten komm du 'for it ride come you' (Iv
2;9), and das ist für der rauch geht hoch, in das hau 'this is for the smoke goes
up, in the house' (Iv 3;4). The fact that lexically selected WH and F are
distributed across different categories in Ivar's grammar explains V2 effects in
subordinate clauses as in erst wenn wir sind fertig mit das 'just when we have
finished with it' (Iv 3;4) about 3;2. At later stages of acquisition, Müller has
found evidence that Ivar learns to use verb-final in embedded sentences for each
lexical C-element separately. It demonstrates her hypothesis that as soon as a
parameter has been set, resetting is impossible.
References
Bickerton, Derek. 1990. Language and Species. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Clahsen, Harald. 1986. "Verb Inflections in German Child Language: Acquisition of
agreement markings and the functions they encode." Linguistics 24.79-121.
Deprez, Viviane & Pierce, Amy. 1991. "Negation and Functional Categories in Early
Grammar." Paper presented at the GLOW meeting, Leiden, March 1991.
Hoekstra, Teun & Peter Jordens. 1993. "From Adjunct to Head." Paper presented at the
GLOW meeting, Leiden, March 1991.
Jordens, Peter. 1990. "The Acquisition of Verb Placement." Linguistics 28.1407-1448.
Pierce, Amy. 1989. On the Emergence of Syntax: A crosslinguistic study. Dissertation,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Tracy, Rosemarie. 1986. "The Acquisition of Case Morphology in German." Linguistics
24.47-78.
Weissenborn, Jürgen. 1990. "Functional Categories and Verb Movement in Early
French and German." Paper presented at DFG-colloquium in Nijmegen, 1990.
The DUFDE Project
Regina Köppe
University of Hamburg
1. Introduction
their linguistic development has been studied in the DUFDE project. The speech
of Pierre, Caroline, Christophe, François, and Ivar has been analyzed in the
contributions in Meisel (ed.) (1990). The present volume is concerned with
various aspects of the grammatical development of Pierre, Caroline, Ivar, Annika,
and Pascal.
Aline 0;11,19-2;02,14
Gerlinde 1;03,11-1;06,04
Claire 1;05,21-1;08,04
Fabrice l;06,13-2;06,22
Maxime 2;02,17-2;06,02
Lena 3;01,15-5;02,26
Pierre l;00,21-9;00,28
Caroline l;01,28-5;00,06
Christophe 1 ;10,02-5;00,01
François 1;10,13-6;06,01
Ivar l;05,24-6;03,03
Annika 1;04,12-5;07,01
Pascal 1:05,21-5:05,16
3. Data Collection
In our experience, in most of the cases, this recording situation did not
influence the child's behavior and linguistic production, as the assistants were
generally regarded by the child as being friends, and the video equipment was
seen as an integral part of the play situation.
4. Transcriptions
At least one recording per month has been transcribed; i.e. every second
session taped. The transcriptions contain both linguistic and nonlinguistic
interactions as well as the relevant contexts. In general, the person who
interacted with the child was responsible for transcribing the recording, if
possible immediately after the session, so that details of the situation which
might have been important for its interpretation were more easily remembered.
The remaining recordings of the period in question were transcribed and analyzed
especially during crucial phases of development, or if a specific hypothesis
needed to be tested on further material.
18 REGINA Köppe
MLU values have been computed for at least every second transcription.
Their calculation is based on the number of morphemes, not of words. This is
to say that dies-e Kind-er 'these child-ren' is counted as four morphemes. Once
a lexical item appears in different forms in a child's speech, corresponding to
contrasting inflectional morphemes (e.g. suche - suchst 'search ISG' - 'search
2SG'), these morphemes are considered to be used productively by the child and
THE DUFDE PROJECT 19
are counted when computing the MLU values. If, for example, the child uses the
pronouns ich T and du 'you', each pronoun is awarded two points. No form is
given more than two points. Although this is an arbitrary restriction, it avoids
extreme discrepancies between German and French MLU values, in view of the
fact that German has a richer inflectional system and an abundance of poly-
functional forms. Since overt markings are sometimes lacking in French, when
compared to their German equivalents, it would be impossible in principle to
reach the same values in French as in German. Simple answers like ja/oui 'yes'
and nein/non 'no' are calculated only once per transcription; formulas and direct
imitations as well are assigned only one point.
We are, of course, aware of the fact that MLU values are problematic as
indicators for linguistic development, for increasing length of utterance need not
necessarily correspond to increasing complexity. To mention only some of the
problems, it may be difficult to establish utterance boundaries, different persons
may calculate formulas or imitations differently, and the first appearance of two
forms of a word need not mean that a morpheme is used productively. Most
importantly, the difference between paratactic and hypotactic constructions is not
captured at all. If used in combination with qualitative analyses, MLU values
may, nevertheless, serve as a possible measure of the developmental level
reached by the child, and it enables one to establish an approximate means to
compare children's linguistic achievements at given points.
6. Computer Analysis
The transcriptions have been entered into a computer, using the database
dBase III+. Each utterance represents a separate entry which receives specific
codings. The coding system is based essentially on Clahsen's profile analysis
(Clahsen 1986) and on the program developed by Clahsen to calculate the
"Profile Chart", although the program has been adapted for our purposes.
The system allows one to code different kinds of morphosyntactic
information, e.g. the number of constituents, MLU values, the type of sentence
structure, inflection of nominal, adverbial, and verbal elements, as well as
negation, question, case marking, gender, etc. Attention has been paid to separate
codings of form and function, in order to gain insights into how the child maps
one onto the other. The program used also permits us to relate different kinds of
information to each other, e.g. word order and inflectional markings, thus
20 REGINA Köppe
7.1. Caroline
7.2. Pierre
Pierre (= P) is a second child; he usually speaks French with his sister who
is three years older. At the age of 2;8 he began to attend a French kindergarten.
Since their mother works in a shop the family owns, a young woman frequently
looks after the children in the afternoon. Pierre and his sister speak German with
their babysitter, and they communicate in French with their mother. Every year,
the family spends approximately six or seven weeks in France or in the
French-speaking part of Switzerland. During this time, they speak German only
with their father. Pierre's linguistic development is generally somewhat slower
than that of the other children, by at least three months, when compared to Ivar,
Pascal, Annika, and Caroline.
22 REGINA Köppe
7.3. Ivar
Ivar (=Iv), a boy, is a first child. His younger brother was born when he was
4;2. Ivar's parents use French as the language of communication. Ivar's mother
takes him to France to see his grandparents and other relatives about twice a
year. She also makes considerable efforts to ensure that he has sufficient
opportunities to speak French by maintaining contact with French-speaking
friends in Hamburg. Up to the age of 4 years, Ivar was looked after by a German
sitter three times a week. Beginning at the age of 3;0, he also participated in a
German-speaking playgroup; from 4;0 up to 4;9 he attended a French kindergar
ten three to four times a week before he returned to a German kindergarten.
Finally, Ivar began to attend a German preschool.
Ivar's two languages have always been well in balance, except for a short
period at age 2;3, when, according to our analyses, his French was weaker. His
linguistic development is average, when compared to other children studied by
our research team.
THE DUFDE PROJECT
7.4. Annika
Annika (=A), a girl, is a first child. Her younger brother was born when she
was 2;9. Annika's mother, a French and Malagasy bilingual herself, stayed home
to take care of the children until Annika was 4;0. Annika's parents speak
German with each other, but her mother insists on being addressed in French by
the children. In addition, Annika speaks French with French friends in Germany
and during stays in France or Madagascar (approximately six weeks every year).
From the age of 2;11 onwards, Annika spent weekday mornings in a German
daycare center.
Concerning Annika's linguistic development, both languages initially seem
to have been well developed. Already before age 2;0, she clearly followed the
one-person-one-language principle. After age 2;6, German began to be the more
dominant language, and her German vocabulary expanded quickly. From about
3;0 onwards, we observed that Annika began to develop different avoidance
strategies helping her to cope with increasing problems of vocabulary in French
during later phases of development.
24 REGINA Köppe
7.5. Pascal
Pascal (=Pa), a boy, is the younger of two children. His mother has
remained in the home to care for her children. With his sister, who is two years
older, Pascal speaks French as well as German. At the age of three, he started
going to a bilingual French-German daycare center. The family goes to France
twice every year.
Pascal always used both languages, although, initially, French has been
somewhat dominant, whereas later on German apparently began to be the slightly
preferred language.
THE DUFDE PROJECT 25
Notes
1. DUFDE = Deutsch und Französisch — Doppelter Erstspracherwerb (German and
French — Simultaneous Acquisition of Two First Languages), a research project made
possible by several research grants (1986-1992) by the Deutsche Forschungs
gemeinschaft to Jürgen M. Meisel. During the period when the contributions to this
volume were written, the researchers in this team were Caroline Koehn, Regina Köppe,
Natascha Müller, and Achim Stenzel. Students collaborating as research assistants were
Cornelia Hußmann and Christophe Bresoli.
2. I would like to thank Suzanne Schlyter for her permission to use parts of her
presentation of the DUFDE project in Schlyter (1990) as the basis of this chapter.
Special thanks also go to Susanne E. Carroll who has lent me her competence as a
native speaker.
3. The age of the children is given in years;months,days. Note that, in this volume,
sometimes only years and months are indicated, whereas in other cases, the precise age
is given. This is done in order to identify specific recordings, e.g. when two recordings
made in the same month are analyzed.
4. The base for calculations is indicated only if it is lower than 100.
26 REGINA Köppe
Bibliography
This bibliography, in addition to listing the titles quoted in the foregoing text, contains
a number of unpublished studies which have been carried out by the following students
and researchers working in the DUFDE project: Berkele, Dieck, Jekat, Kaiser, Klinge,
Koehn, Köppe, Meisel, Müller, Parodi, Schlyter, Veh, and Williams.
References
Clahsen, Harald. 1986. Die Profilanalyse: Ein linguistisches Verfahren zur Sprach
diagnose im Vorschulalter. Berlin: Marhold.
Grosjean, François. 1982. Life With Two Languages: An introduction to bilingualism.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Meisel, Jürgen M. (ed.). 1990. Two First Languages: Early grammatical development
in bilingual children (=Studies on Language Acquisition, 10.). Dordrecht: Foris.
Ronjat, Jules. 1913. Le développement du langage observé chez un enfant bilingue. Paris:
Champion.
Schlyter, Suzanne. 1990. "Introducing the DUFDE project." Meisel 1990, 73-84.
DUFDE studies
Berkele, Gisela. 1983. Die Entwicklung des Ausdrucks von Objektreferenz am Beispiel
der Determinanten: Eine empirische Untersuchung zum Spracherwerb bilingualer
Kinder (Französisch/Deutsch). "Staatsexamen"-thesis, University of Hamburg.
Dieck, Marianne. 1989. Der Erwerb der Negation bei bilingualen Kindern (Französisch
- Deutsch): Eine Fallstudie. Masters thesis, University of Hamburg.
Jekat, Susanne. 1985. Die Entwicklung des Wortschatzes bei bilingualen Kindern
(Französisch - Deutsch) in den ersten vier Lebensjahren. Masters thesis, University
of Hamburg.
Jekat-Rommel, Susanne. 1992. Zeitkonzept und Zeitreferenz bei bilingualen Kindern
(französisch/deutsch) in den ersten fünf Lebensjahren. Dissertation, University of
Hamburg.
Koehn, Caroline. 1989. Der Erwerb der Pluralmorphologie durch bilinguale Kinder
(Französisch/Deutsch): Eine empirische Untersuchung. Masters thesis, University of
Hamburg.
Köppe, Regina. 1990. Code-switching: Strategien und Funktionen der Sprachwahl bei
bilingualen Kindern (Französisch-Deutsch) im Vorschulalter. Masters thesis,
University of Hamburg.
THE DUFDE PROJECT 27
Caroline Koehn
Therapiezentrum Burgau
1. Introduction
In the acquisition of gender and number at least four different tasks have to
be faced. First, the child has to develop the underlying semantic concept for
number, namely the distinction between one and more than one. Furthermore, the
child has to recognize that gender and number are systematically encoded on
specific syntactic categories, i.e. the corresponding grammatical features have to
arise. In addition to this, the appropriate morphological realizations of these
features have to be acquired as well as the related agreement phenomena. For the
acquisition of agreement phenomena within NP as a syntactic phenomenon, I
refer the reader to Müller (this volume, chap. 3). The main interest of my paper
will be the acquisition and representation of morphologically complex forms,
which I suppose to be a matter of the lexicon. For this purpose, only nouns and
articles will be considered.
Concerning the acquisition of morphological markings, I will show that the
schema model, initially put forward by Bybee and Slobin (1982),1 can provide
an explanation for the development of both number and gender.
termed rules. On the other hand, the term is meant to cover the regularities that
can be observed in the morphological system of a particular language. In the
following, the distributional patterns of allomorphic variation will be referred to
as regularities. The term rule will be reserved for the process adding inflectional
morphemes to base forms of words. I will argue, however, that mechanisms
different from RULES are involved as well in the processing of morphological
information (cf. the section on schemas below).
Traditional models of plural formation and of morphology in general
postulate separate components for rules and representations. The most popular
among these has been the Item and Process (IP) model (cf. Hockett 1954). This
approach assumes one underlying form for each morpheme to be stored in the
mental lexicon. The difference between alternating allomorphs is described as a
feature changing Process that derives the different surface forms from the
underlying Item. The various inflected forms of a given base are explained by the
Process of suffixation. Irregular plurals are supposed to be stored as such in lists
of exceptions.2
A crucial characteristic of this model is that it assumes the morphological
realization of grammatical categories to be either categorically regular or
arbitrarily exceptional. In the description of the model I will use for my own
analysis (see below), I will show that no such sharp distinction can be drawn
between rules and representations, but that they rather constitute the extreme
poles of a continuum.
According to the Item and Process approach, the acquisition of plural
morphology is conceived of as learning of forms (plural allomorphs) and rules.
Consequently, errors observed during the acquisition process are usually
explained as omissions of particular allomorphs or as non-applications of
determined rules respectively (cf. Berko 1958).
The results of an elicitation task carried out by Bybee and Slobin (1982)
indicate that the omission of a morphological ending depends on the base form
of the item to which it should have been added rather than to concern determined
allomorphs or rules. Bybee and Slobin asked preschool children to provide the
past-tense forms of regular as well as of irregular verbs. One of their findings
was that the children showed a significant tendency not to add the past-tense
affix ({/ed/}, {/d/} or {/t/}) to verbs ending in /t/ or /d/ respectively. This means
that the children tended to leave verbs like e.g. want unchanged, accepting them
GENDER AND NUMBER IN NP 31
The basic assumption made by this approach is that relations do not only
exist between base-forms and derived ones in terms of affixation-rules but that
generalizations can be formulated with respect to the phonological properties of
the product-class, i.e. of plural-forms, as well. Central notions of the model are
lexical strength and lexical connection. Lexical strength is an index of word
frequency. The lexical strength of a stored form is reinforced whenever it is
phonologically and semantically matched by an input form, or produced
successfully; i.e., repeated processing of a word strengthens its mental representa
tion. In case of a partial match, a lexical connection is established for the
corresponding parts. Lexical connections may concern semantic or phonological
features. Morphological relations consist of parallel semantic and phonological
connections. They may refer to stems as well as to affixes (cf. example).
These assumptions imply that affixes in general are not stored independently
of the stems with which they occur and that the internal structure of morphologi
cally complex forms is recognized by comparison with other forms containing
the same elements. This is quite conceivable seen the fact that in language
32 CAROLINE KOEHN
employed for reference to several objects and vice versa (for exemplification, see
the application of the model to German plural formation below).
Köpcke (1988) has applied the model to the system of plural-inflection in
German nouns. He organized form-classes of nouns on the basis of several
criteria on a scale. A modified version of this scale is given in Figure 2.4
singular plural
3.1 Markings
in the present article, the description of the target systems will be limited to these
categories. The declension of articles is to be found in Table la.
A peculiarity of the French gender system is that if a function word
precedes a noun beginning with a vowel, the function word will be either elided
(e.g. l'image 'the picture (f)' instead of Ha image) or a form ending in a
consonant (predominantly the masculine form) will be chosen regardless of the
gender of the noun (e.g. mon image 'my picture' instead of *ma image).
As far as number is concerned, in these cases fusion of the final (plural-)
{/s/} of the determiner with the following vowel is to be found, a phenomenon
called liaison. The masculine definite article agglutinates with a preceding
preposition, i.e. de+le ('of the') fuse as du and à+le ('to the') fuse as au. In the
written language, number distinctions are generally marked by suffixation of
{/s/} which, however, is pronounced in the cases of liaison only (see above). A
variant of the plural morpheme occurs in forms ending in /al/ or /ail/, changing
these final clusters into {/aux/}. Some of the nouns have separate plural forms.6
Thus, in French, for nouns no systematic overt number distinctions are
provided. If we assume that a child acquiring a language needs a certain amount
of positive evidence to perceive a given grammatical dimension, this implies that
the acquisition of number in French is strongly dependent upon the acquisition
of the target-like determiner system.
Table la. Declension of definite and indefinite articles in French
definite/indefinite articles
singular plural
masculine feminine
D/I D/I D/I
and the possessive pronoun in its adjectival use, the masculine gender paradigm
is almost identical with the neuter gender paradigm. In rapid and colloquial
speech the German articles are shortened, for example, auf 'n/ein Baum klettern
corresponds to auf einen Baum klettern ('to climb a tree').
Table lb. Declension of definite and indefinite articles in German
definite/indefinite articles
Case singular plural
masculine feminine neuter
D/I D/I D/I D/I
nominative der/ein die/eine das/ein die
accusative den/einen die/eine das/ein die
dative dem/einem der/einer dem/einem den
genitive des/eines der/einer des/eines der
3.2. Regularities
This part is concerned with the analysis of Ivar's acquisition data. The
age-period studied covers the time-span of 1;5 to 5;0. In what follows, I will
refer to results of Müller's (1990) and my own research (cf. also Koehn 1989).
Gender. Ivar does not make productive use of determiners until the age of 2;5,
except for the numerals un and ein. In both languages, these forms are used with
nouns of all genders. No systematic contrastive use of un/ein vs. 0 can be
observed. Adjectives mostly appear without any inflectional markings during the
period discussed. Thus, up to this age, no gender distinctions are made.
Number. As for number, two different forms are used for a few of the German
nouns without, however, any systematic number distinction. This is evidenced
by the following observations:
GENDER AND NUMBER IN NP 39
II. Even in those cases where Ivar does know two different forms of a noun,
he mainly makes use of one of them — independently of its number-
specification, whereas the other one is used only once or twice.
III. There is no noun two different forms of which are employed contrastively
to indicate a difference in number.
One possibility to explain the lack of systematic grammatical markings
could be to say that the supposedly too complex underlying semantic concept is
not mastered at this point of development. There exists evidence, however, that
at age 2;2,21 at the latest the underlying semantic concept of singularity vs.
plurality is recognized. From 2;2,21, in both languages, Ivar starts using the
numerals zwei and deux respectively. This numeral, for the time being, is used
as a sort of indeterminate plural marker, i.e. it is used with nouns referring to
two or even more objects — irrespective of the number-specification of the noun.
On the other hand, the forms of the indefinite article ein and un respectively,
which are homophonous with the corresponding numerals, are used exclusively
with nouns referring to single objects. Again, the number specification of the
noun is not considered. This is to say that the numerals un/deux and ein/zwei
respectively are used adequately with respect to the number of objects referred
to. This clearly indicates that the relevant semantic concept is present at this
point of development. We are thus faced with a situation where the child has
mastered the underlying semantic concept, on the one hand, and where he does
40 CAROLINE KOEHN
employ different forms for some of the nouns, on the other. The fact that these
forms are nevertheless used unsystematically with respect to number, seems to
indicate that the corresponding grammatical feature is not yet available.
With French nouns no number markings occur even with those nouns for
which different forms for plural and singular are provided in the target-language.
In sum then, we may conclude, that by the age of 2;2,21, Ivar has
recognized the semantic concept of singularity vs. plurality whereas the
grammatical category number is not available until about 2;6.
(6)
(Aa) C:guck fü. ein fuß. ein fuß hat hindern (Rsg) (2;6,6)
'look, a/one foot. a/one foot has children-PL/DAT'
GENDER AND NUMBER IN NP 41
There is evidence that in both languages the grammatical notions of number and
gender are available now. I will show that errors concerning the morphological
realization can be explained by the — partly improper — application of schemas.
Number. In French, at this stage, Ivar acquires the plural form of the indefi
nite article des (2;8,15) which is used target-like from the beginning. In
combination with what has been said in the preceding section on the use of the
definite plural article, this amounts to saying that the French article system is
mastered at this point of development as far as number is concerned. Number
42 CAROLINE KOEHN
distinctions on French nouns do not occur until at least 3;5, i.e., only one form
is used even for those nouns which have different forms for singular and plural.
As far as number marking on German nouns is concerned, phase II may be
subdivided into two substages at about 3;6. The first of these substages (IIA) is
characterized by the occurrence of product-oriented errors while overextension
of determined allomorphs can be observed during the second period (IIB). I will
describe both substages successively.
At 2;6,27, Ivar for the first time uses two forms of a noun contrastively and
both adequately with respect to their number-specification. From now on until
3;5,7 all but four instances of deviations in reference occurring with plural nouns
concern nouns of which Ivar never uses the corresponding singular-form.
Target-deviant associations, either singular or plural, occur at the longest until
a second form of the respective noun has been acquired. The few (systematic)
exceptions will be discussed below. This indicates that the child, at least when
he has acquired two different forms of a noun, is — from 2;6,27 onwards —
able to associate them with their target-like number-reference. The observed
behavior concerning the acquisition of the German system of plural marking can
be accounted for within the schema-model: Once the child has acquired both the
singular and the plural form of a noun, he is able to associate each — on the
basis of schemas — with its target-like function. However, for the time being,
the child is not able to productively create new (plural- or singular-) forms on
the basis of stored items. This is evidenced by the fact that until about 3;5 no
target-deviant forms12 are used by Ivar, i.e. no overregularizations occur. If we
consider the relative rates of error (cf. Table 3) we can observe the following
rank order: {/0/}-{/әr/}-{/ә/}-{/(ә)n/}-{/s/} (for types). Except for {/(ә)n/} and
{/s/}, this rank order meets the predictions made by the scale in Figure 1.
There are only four nouns for which a plural form is used to refer to a
single object, at a point of development where the corresponding singular form
has already been acquired:
GENDER AND NUMBER IN NP 43
Here {/or/} is affected three times (types), {/0/} once (cf. examples in (7)). Note
that {/or/} is an allomorph with low cue strength for plural. Thus, the target-
deviant uses may be explained by the fact that the child associates these forms
with a singular schema organizing forms ending in {/әr/} to a (form-) class and
for this reason tends to use them with reference to one object.
For the second substage (IIB, 3;6-5;0) mainly two observations can be
made. The first is that errors in reference constantly decrease, cf. Table 4.
* Percentages given in this table refer to the morphological markings of nouns only.
Slightly different results are obtained if we consider full NPs, i.e. if we account for
the specification of determining elements such as numerals and other quantifying
elements as well. Cf. Koehn (1984:104) and Müller (this volume, chap. 3) for this
matter.
† The basis referred to are all plural nouns used during the period indicated.
‡ The basis referred to are all obligatory contexts for a plural during the period
indicated.
44 CAROLINE KOEHN
The second observation concerns the fact that at age 3;6 a new type of error
occurs: The appearance of target-deviant forms indicates that Ivar begins to make
productive use of the plural-allomorphs of the German target-language. We find
double-marking as well as substitution of target-like allomorphs. The second
substage may again be subdivided into two parts at about age 4;0, which are
characterized by overgeneralization of {/(ә)n/}13 and {/s/} respectively, cf. Table 5.
b. -o (M)
target-like target-deviant
le cacao le photo
le manteau le moto
le marteau
constitute a separate nominal class but rather has the status of a "subgender"16
representing a subclass of the masculine. As an explanation she points out that
in the target-language the neuter and the masculine gender paradigm are partially
identical. Another factor could be the child's bilingualism i.e., the described behavior
could reflect the tendency to transfer the French two-class-system to the German
language. For the time being, no decision can be made about what the reasons are
for the wrong classification of neuter nouns. However, there exist many patterns in
the target-language which do not associate an ending with either masculine or neuter
gender but which dissociate a given ending from feminine gender. Consequently,
it seems plausible to suggest that attribution of masculine gender to neuter nouns
within the child's two class system reflects rule-governed behavior.
In the target-language, /on/ is associated with masculine gender and /әr/
exists as a masculine suffix. Examples for target-deviant use of the masculine
definite article with nouns ending in these clusters are given in (9) (a) and (b).
a. -әr (M)
target-like target-deviant
der busfahrer der wasser (N)
der tiger der ufer (N)
der anhänger den zimmer (N)
der laster den fenster (N)
der räuher den Wohnzimmer (N)
der Verkäufer den feuer (N)
den gitter (N)
b. -әn (M)
target-like target-deviant
der wagen den Häuschen (N)
der boden der küken (N)
der besen der mädchen (N)
der rennwag en der essen (N)
der faden der hühnchen (N)
der männchen (N)
den märchen (N)
der pferdchen (N)
In the case of /ә/ a schema — according to which nouns ending in this sound are
likely to have feminine gender — apparently even leads to the creation of
target-deviant forms (cf. (9c)).
48 CAROLINE KOEHN
(9) c. -ә (F)
target-like target-deviant target-deviant forms
die sonne die hase (M) der aff
die hose die plakate {das plakat)
die puppe
die brücke
die küche
This seems to indicate, that schemas are a useful device in (the acquisition of)
gender-attribution, as well.
5. Conclusion
Notes
1. Cf. also Bybee & Moder (1983), Bybee (1985) and Bybee (1988).
2. For a more detailed description of this model see Hockett (1954).
3. For further discussion of early processing of morphologically complex forms cf.
MacWhinney (1978) and Peters (1983).
4. Köpcke (1988) used the form of the determiner as a further indicator of grammatical
number: If a given form of a noun is used with either der or das, it has to be singular.
To include the form of the article as a criterion implies that either noun forms have to
be stored together with their corresponding article forms in the mental lexicon or that
the model is one that is able to explain the perception but not the production. The first
assumption is disproved by the fact that errors occur concerning the choice of the article
(cf. Müller 1990). A closer look reveals that the test carried out by Köpcke is indeed
designed as a decision task where subjects have to decide whether a given NP (definite
article + noun) is marked for plural or not. For this reason, I have excluded the form
of the article as a criterion in the scale and considered nominal endings only. In addition
to this, I have integrated the {/s/}-allomorph, which has been omitted in Köpcke's scale.
5. Umlaut refers to the vowel changes [a, o, u] > [e, o, y], an originally (Old High
German) phonologically conditioned assimilation process, which in Middle High
German has become a morphological rule.
6. Cf. oeil-yeux ('eye/s').
7. We find generalizations referring to the structure of the whole word, patterns based on
final, medial or initial sounds respectively and, finally, generalizations defining the
gender of monosyllabic nouns on the basis of relations between final/medial/initial
sounds.
8. For a more detailed description of phonologically based patterns see Tucker et al.
(1977) for French and Köpcke (1982), Köpcke & Zubin (1983), Mills (1986) for
German. The calculations for Tables 2c and 2d have been carried out by Müller (1990).
9. C is meant to indicate any type of consonants.
10. Cf. Mugdan (1977).
11. This does not necessarily imply that the attributions are target-like as well.
12. There are some instances of apparent overgeneralizations of {/(ә)n/} at 2;6 (e.g. fußen,
hindern, händen). However, all the forms used have in common that they could be
target-like dative plural-forms and thus do not necessarily have to be productively
created by the child. The fact that these forms are used with reference to one as well
as to several objects seems to indicate that this is indeed not the case.
13. Most of the resulting forms (except for froschen) correspond to target-like dative plural
forms and thus do not necessarily have to be created productively (cf. note 12).
However, the fact that these forms are not used for reference to single objects any more
seems to indicate that {(ә)n} has been recognized as a plural allomorph by now.
50 CAROLINE KOEHN
14. Up to the age of 5;0 we find one occurrence of the form den in a plural NP (4;7,24).
However, the form is employed in an accusative context, where die should be used.
15. There are only a few occurrences of demonstrative articles which however fit into the
system evidenced by the attribution of definite articles.
16. Cf. Corbett (1989).
References
Natascha Müller
University of Hamburg
1. Introduction
The following paper discusses the issue of the emergence of the grammati
cal features "gender" and "number" in the grammar of two bilingual children
(German/French). The focus will be on the syntactic consequences of choices
made with respect to the lexical specifications of heads.
I start from the assumption that noun phrases in adult German and in adult
French contain at least one functional projection above NP which is the position
of the inflectional features of nominals. There hardly seems to be any doubt that
these features are not available in early child grammar. This relates to the
hypothesis made by researchers like e.g. Clahsen, Eisenbeiß & Vainikka (1994),
Guilfoyle & Noonan (1988), and Radford (1990) which states that the nominal
functional category is not available from the very beginning of language
development. I will try to argue, among other things on the basis of distributional
facts, that this assumption is plausible for the early grammar of the two bilingual
children I studied. Furthermore, I will outline the process by which the
grammatical features number and gender are integrated into child grammar and
how the child arrives at a near-target-like representation of noun phrases.
Researchers like Abney (1986), Bhatt (1990), Felix (1990), Löbel (1990a,b),
Olsen (1991) and others argue, in what has been labelled the DP-hypothesis, that
determiners should be identified as the lexical realization of the nominal
54 NATASCHA MULLER
(1)
The grammatical features of DET percolate from DET up to DP. Thus, if DET
contains the feature [+sg], the whole DP will be characterized as [+sg]. There are
at least two kinds of grammatical features discussed in the literature,
AGR-features and inherent features which are not mutually exclusive. Gender,
for instance, is an inherent feature of N and an AGR-feature of DET (cf. further
below). There must be an agreement relation between the AGR-features of DET
and the lexical features of N.
This agreement cannot arise through percolation since DET, D' and NP are different
syntactic categories. It arises by virtue of the functional selection relation between DET
and NP. (Olsen 1989:41)
(2)
Bhatt (1990) argues that German ein- is a homonym which may function as
an indefinite determiner and as a quantifying adjective. Among other things, this
is lent support by the observation that there are languages such as English where
the indefinite article is a and the numeral one; cf. also nominals like das eine
buch 'the one book' where the form eine is interpreted as a quantifying adjective.
As an indefinite article, ein is positioned in DET, as a quantifying adjective in
the position where the adjective is base-generated.2
The issues of how many nominal functional categories one needs and how
they are specified as well as the categorial status of elements like indefinite
articles are far from being settled.3 It seems to be impossible to make a final
decision for one analysis at this point of time, since the arguments the
researchers advance in favor of their analyses are based on quite different
properties of the respective languages, i.e. on distributional and on inflectional
facts, to name just two criteria. Note that the existence of competing (perhaps
also complementary) analyses may also reflect the fact that noun phrases are not
structured similarly across all natural languages (cf. e.g. Fukui & Speas 1986).
Much research still has to be done in this domain of the grammar.
The grammatical feature "gender" is a feature which is part of the lexical
entry of nouns. One has to distinguish nouns that have gender as an inherent
feature and words that get gender by agreement, such as adjectives, for instance.
The inherent, invariable characteristic of nominals will be called gender-
attribution, in contrast to the variable characteristic of modifiers which is defined
as gender-agreement (cf. Carroll 1989). It has been argued that the process by
which a particular gender feature is paired with a particular noun in gender
GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT WITHIN DP 57
attribution is subject to restrictions (cf. Köpcke 1982; Köpcke & Zubin 1983;
Tucker, Lambert & Rigault 1977), i.e. we are not dealing with a completely
arbitrary process. Those regularities which underlie gender-attribution are
discussed in Koehn (this volume); cf. also Müller (1990c). Within the
DP-framework, gender-agreement is accounted for in the following way. The
gender feature is inserted as part of the particular noun from the lexicon into
syntax, triggering agreement among the different modifying elements (the
masculine noun hund 'dog' triggers the appearance of the masculine form of the
definite article der under DET for example). This amounts to saying that DET
agrees with the gender feature of N.4
In contrast to gender, number may be chosen freely by the speaker. The
grammatical feature "number" is similar to gender in that it depends on a
semantic feature of N, namely [acountable] which has to be listed for every N
in the lexicon. Those nouns which have the feature [-countable] are inherently
specified for [+singular].
Since nouns with the feature [-countable] behave like nouns in the singular,
Löbel (1990a) assumes that [+singular] represents the unmarked realization of the
feature "number" in German. The same is valid for French.
The source of the grammatical feature "number" is far from being clear. To
my knowledge, the question has not even been raised in the recent literature.
There are at least two possibilities: DET or N.5 If singular and plural nouns are
stored separately in the lexicon, then number is a lexical property of N, similar
to gender; cf. Koehn (this volume) for a discussion of this assumption for adult
and early child grammar. Since number is marked among other things on
determiners, DET agrees with the number feature of N. Again, one needs to
distinguish number as an inherent feature and as an AGR-feature.
Noun phrases used by very young children differ in crucial ways from their
respective adult counterparts. They lack number, gender and case markings and
they do not consist of more than two elements. A plausible assumption would be
that nominal functional categories are not available in early grammar, i.e.
functional categories undergo some development (for further discussion of this
issue with respect to the category COMP, cf. the contributions in Meisel (ed.)
(1992) and Müller, this volume, chap. 9).
Researchers like Clahsen (1990), Gawlitzek-Maiwald, Tracy & Fritzenschaft
58 NATASCHA MULLER
(1992), Meisel & Müller (1992), Penner (1990) and Roeper (1992) argue that
child grammar may contain underspecified functional categories during some
developmental phases. This amounts to saying that even at the point of
development where there is evidence for functional categories in child grammar,
these differ from their adult counterpart (cf. Müller this volume, chap. 9 for
further discussion).6
In what follows, I will present evidence in support of the claim that the
nominal functional category DET undergoes some development. More
specifically, DET does not seem to be available from the onset of language
acquisition (cf. Clahsen, Eisenbeiß & Vainikka 1994). Furthermore, I want to
show that DET in early child grammar differs from DET in adult language.
4. The Analysis
The subjects of this study are a boy — Ivar — and a girl — Caroline. The
language use of both children has been analyzed for the acquisition of number
by Koehn (1989a,b; 1991) and for gender by myself (Müller 1990a,b,c) for the
age range from 1;5 to 5;0 (Caroline) and 1;6 to 5;10 (Ivar). The acquisition of
gender and number is much intertwined. It is possible to treat the topics
separately if one assumes a morphological and a syntactic perspective,
respectively. In what follows, I will present the results of Koehn's and my
studies under a syntactic perspective. The age period investigated in this paper
covers the age span from 1;6 to 3;0 in Caroline and from 1;5 to 3;0 in Ivar (for
a description of the research project, MLU-values and further information about
the children see Köppe, this volume, chap. 2).
5.1. The Non-Availability of the Grammatical Features "Number " and "Gender "
RSg (Iv;l;9,28)
(29) kind 'child'
RP1 (Iv;l;9,28)
RSg (Ca;l;11,4)
(30) oma 'grand-ma'
RP1 (Ca;l;11,4)
RSg (Iv;l;9,28)
(31) kinder 'children'
RP1 (Iv;l;9,28)
RSg (Ca;1;11,4)
(32) schuhe 'shoes'
RP1 (Ca;l;7,9)
These observations confirm that the grammatical features "number" and
"gender" are not available in child grammar during this developmental phase.
The question arises how to account for the nominal constructions which the
children use during this early stage. A possible structure would be the one in
(33) where XP is realized as a numeral (un, deux, ein, zwei, un autre), as an
adjective (petit, grand, klein, groß) or as a presyntactic element.
(33)
By assuming (33), one can account for the observation that the choice of the
numeral and of the adjective is dependent on properties of the object referred to
but not on properties of the syntactic category N. If the grammatical features
gender and number (and case; cf. Stenzel this volume) are not available, then
there is nothing to agree with.
One prediction that follows from a structure like the one in (33) is that
examples for constructions such as ein groß haus 'a big house', un petit garçon
'a little boy' where both a numeral and an adjective are realized should not be
attested in the children's speech, which is also the case, i.e. they do not occur
(cf. also Clahsen, Eisenbeiß & Vainikka 1994 and Mills 1985). The reason for
the absence of such constructions may be that the prenominal elements used are
generated in the same syntactic position and thus are mutually exclusive.
It is not clear whether numerals and adjectives are lexical realizations of the
same syntactic category, Adj, or whether they belong to different categories, Q
and Adj respectively. Note that the numerals ein and un for instance may be
GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT WITHIN DP 63
compared with the adjectives groß/grand and klein/petit, in that they do not have
a grammatical but a referential meaning in the children's grammars. I want to
leave open the question of the categorial status of these elements, because it does
not directly bear on the issue under discussion. Crucially, the children position
these elements in the same syntactic position.
Another question which arises with the structure (33) is whether early
nominal constructions conform to X-bar theory. Related to this is the question
as to why numerals and adjectives are located in a Chomsky-adjoined position
to N' and not in the specifier position. Since these issues are far from being
settled (cf. the contributions in Meisel (ed.) 1992), the structure given in (33) is
rather preliminary.
6.1.1. Number
tasche, puppe, küche (cf. the plural nouns schuhe 'shoes', tiere 'animals', kühe
'cows') may lead the child to the assumption that these nouns are plural forms.
Interestingly enough, neither child ever uses singular noun phrases with a plural
shape like die sandale in order to refer to more than one object. The child will
make use of the plural noun phrase die sandalen in this case. This is true for
other die+singular noun combinations as well such as die uhr 'the watch', die
polizei 'the police' which always have singular reference.
In sum then, singular forms as well as elements determining plural, i.e.
quantifying expressions and possessives, are always referentially correct, with the
exception of die/les in combination with plural nouns which are used in order to
refer to a single object and to more than one object. Thus, number (singular vs.
plural) is marked on determining elements in an adult-like way, except for the
plural definite articles die/les. The observation that the combination die+singular
noun, but not die+plural noun is always referentially correct may be accounted
for by assuming that [+singular] represents the unmarked feature, as opposed to
[-singular]. This amounts to saying that die+N and les+N seem to be analyzed
as a singular noun phrase in the first place, until evidence suggests that this
analysis is wrong. Under this approach, errors in reference should occur in one
direction only which in fact seems to be the case. I will elaborate this last point
further below.
Koehn (1989a) shows that the choice of nominal forms which are used
without determiners does not always correspond to the target-language.18
Caroline uses tonne 'cask' and tonnen 'casks' at 2;5,18 in order to refer to one
cask, for instance. Ivar refers to one arm with the forms arm 'arm' and arme
'arms' and to one boat with the forms schijf 'boat' and schiffe 'boats'. 19 The use
of bare nominal forms (these nouns are used without determining and without
modifying elements) seems to be subject to the same restrictions that have
already been observed with die+singular noun, as opposed to die+plural noun.20
Plural nouns may refer to more than one object as well as to a single object. The
complete lists of examples are found in (5) to (8) in the appendix.
Table 2. Reference of bare plural nouns
The reference of bare singular nouns, on the other hand, is nearly always
target-like. In Caroline's data, the last example for the use of a singular noun for
plural reference is at 2;0,09 schuh 'shoe' which, however, may also be a
self-correction: schuh schuhe de de da 'shoe shoes there'. Ivar uses buntstift
'crayon' at 2;6,6 in order to refer to more than one object. Note that these are
the only exceptions. The systematic usage of singular nouns for singular
reference represents a further step in the children's development, since these
nouns had singular and plural reference during the preceding developmental
stage, as compared to plural nouns. One may account for this new step in
development by claiming that nouns are now specified for number and that
[+singular] is the unmarked specification (cf. further below).
Apart from the observation that referentially inadequate usage is restricted
to die/les+plural noun combinations and to bare plural nouns, there is more
evidence to suggest that noun phrases such as die pferde 'the horses' which have
singular reference are syntactically specified for number, namely for [+singular].
For those referentially inadequate nominals which are subjects of finite clauses,
the verb shows up with singular morphology. Examples for this are (des) manner
kommt (RSg) 'the men comes' (Iv;2;4,9), und eh schiffe paßt (RSg) 'and eh boats
fits' (Iv;2;6,27), die hasen die will gucken (RSg) 'the bunnies they wants to look'
(Iv;2;ll,7), macht da die tiere (RSg) 'does there the animals' (Iv;2;ll,21), da's
die sessel (=ist) 'there's the arm-chairs' (RSg) (Ca;2;10), où Vest les poussettes
(RSg) 'where they is the baby carriages' (Ca;2;l,26).
Meisel's (1986, 1990) analysis of subject-verb agreement in Caroline and
in Ivar clearly shows that the verbal functional category INFL is available in the
grammar of both children during this developmental stage. In addition, he
concludes that subject-verb agreement with respect to the feature [aperson] is
target-like almost from the very beginning, i.e. when the children start using
finite verb forms (at approximately 2;4 in Ivar and at approximately 2;1 in
Caroline). Koehn (1989a) observes some agreement errors with respect to the
feature [αnumber]. The comparison of these studies shows that, again, errors are
systematic. Those noun phrases which contain an element that has been identified
as having singular reference by the child, e.g. der/le/la+noun and ein/un+noun,
show up with a singular verb form. In contrast to this, referentially adequate
plural nominals are sometimes used with a singular verb form, although the
corresponding contrastive verb form has already been acquired; und [he] schiffe
paßt 'and boats fits' (Iv;2;6,27), wir macht ein haus 'we makes a house'
(Iv;2;6,27), les poupées va pas man[z]er... (=manger) 'the dolls will+SG not eat'
(Iv;2;8,15), da is noch noch no viele noch viele noch 'there is still still many still
68 NATASCHA MULLER
many still' (Ca;2;6,8), regarde il fait pipi tous les trois 'look he/they pees all
three of them' (Ca;2;10) where schiffe, wir, les poupées, viele, and tous les trois
are referentially correct.22 Note that referentially correct plural nominals also
show up with a plural verb form; a[n]e männer könn' runterfalln (=alle) 'all men
can-SG fall down' (Iv;2;8,15), wolln wir nich 'want-SG we not' (Iv;2;6,6), oui les
poupées elles arrivent 'the dolls they arrive' (Iv;2;8,15), wir schaukeln 'we
swing' (Ca;2;5,18), die schlafen erst (die=two dolls) 'they sleep first' (Ca;2;6,8).
These observations suggest that nominals such as die pferde (RSg) 'the horses',
les cacaos (RSg) 'the chocolats', as well as der teddy, le nounours, 'the teddy'
are not unspecified for number, but instead have the feature [+singular]. They
also indicate that the verb agrees in cases where the subject has the feature
[+singular]. On the other hand, the verb does not always seem to agree with a
referentially plural nominal in subject position.23
To conclude, number specification on nouns and determiners is nearly
target-like in both languages, except for les/die+plural noun and bare plural
nouns, which are used for both singular and plural reference. As for plural nouns,
Koehn (1989a) argues that schemas play a decisive role in the process of how
plural nouns are associated with their correct number specification in the lexicon.
I argued in support of the assumption that plural nominals used for singular reference
are specified as [+singular], until evidence suggests that this choice is wrong.
The plurifunctionality of die and most of the nominal endings in adult
German (cf. above) which serve the function of a plural allomorph indicating
plural and that of an integrated part of the lexical item may be the reason for the
use of die+plural noun with singular reference in child language use. If
plurifunctionality were a plausible explanation, then it would remain an open
question how target-deviant usages of les+plural noun can be accounted for.
Here, plurifunctionality may only explain why plural nouns have singular
reference in child speech (cf. chev[o] (=chevaux) 'horses' — bat[o] (=bateau)
'boat'; [z]animaux24 (=animaux) 'animals' — [z]èbre 'zebra'). Note that in adult
French, the majority of nouns are not even marked (in speech) for number. The
French article system, however, provides different forms for the singular (lella)
and for the plural (les). Why should it be then that the children use les+plural
noun for singular reference?
I want to suggest that definite articles are analyzed as functional elements
by the children (Ca at 2;0, Iv at 2;4) and that the grammatical feature "number"
is treated as an inherent property of N, which is based on the phonological shape
of the noun, excluding le [zamono] and der schweine, for example. The child
does not seem to know that there is a plural form for each singular form. I will
discuss this issue further below.
GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT WITHIN DP 69
Note that the corresponding contrastive singular form is already used by Ivar;
e.g. vogel 'bird', kuh 'cow', fuß 'foot', aff/affe 'monkey', klotz 'brick', enfant
'child'. More importantly, most of these singular forms are combined with
einleine as well during the age period from 2;5 to 2;11,28, 29 even within one
recording and sometimes in episodes such as the following:
(51) A: is das ein kleiner oder ein großer vogel?
'is this a small or a big bird?'
I: ein (grau) vogel/ ein gro vögel
'a grey bird/ a big birds'
(52) ein schwein 'a pig' — ein schweine 'a pigs' (Iv;2;5,21)
(53) ein hase 'a bunny' — ein häse 'a bunnies' (Iv;2;5,21)
(54) ein junge 'a boy' (Iv;2;5,21)
— ein jünge 'a boys' (Iv;2;6,6)
(55) ein vogel 'a bird' — ein vögel 'a birds' (Iv;2;6,6)
(56) ein kuh 'a cow' — ein kiihe 'a cows' (Iv;2;6,6)
(57) ein fuß 'a foot' — ein füßen 'a feet' (Iv;2;6,6)
(58) ein graf vogel (=groß) 'a big bird'
— ein gro vögel 'a big birds' (Iv,2;6,6)
(59) ein affe 'a monkey' — ein affen 'a monkeys' (Iv;2;7,17)
(60) ein klotz 'a brick' (Iv;2;9,5)
— eine klötzer 'a bricks' (Iv;2;11,7)
The same type of variation that can be observed with ein/eine+N obtains in
cases where a referentially plural noun phrase contains a quantifying expression
such as alle 'all' or zwei 'two'. 30 Note that these expressions always refer to
more than one object.31 There are no examples for this usage in the data from
Caroline (she does not use these elements prenominally).
(61) zwei freunde 'two friends' (Iv;2;5,21)
(62) zwei hindern 'two children' (Iv;2;6,6)
(63) zwei kind 'two child' (Iv;2;6,6)
(64) zwei kinder 'two children' (Iv;2;6,6)
(65) alle kinder 'all children' (Iv;2;8,l)
(66) alle männer 'all men' (Iv;2;8,15)
(67) zwei kanal 'two channel' (Iv;2;11,7)
(68) alles tiere 'all animals' (Iv;2;ll,21)
(69) drei töcker (=Stöcker) 'three sticks' (Iv;2;ll,21)
GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT WITHIN DP 71
6.1.2. Gender
cf. Müller 1990c; for Ivar's data cf. Müller 1990a,b).37 The phonological shape
as well as semantic properties of the respective noun influence the choice of the
definite article. Both children, for example, combine nouns ending in a nasal
vowel with the masculine definite article le, even in cases where adult French
requires the feminine article, i.e. main 'hand' FEM, dent 'tooth' FEM, maison
'house' FEM, maman 'mother' FEM are used with le. Other regularities are
discussed in Müller (1987, 1990a,b,c) (cf. also Koehn, this volume).
Patterns in the German data resemble those in French if one considers only
feminine and masculine nouns. Ivar chooses the wrong form of the definite
article with 3 nouns (types) up to the age of 2;11 (9 up to 5;10) and Caroline
with 8 nouns38 (types) up to the age of 2;11 (15 up to 5;0). Gender marking of
feminine and masculine nouns with respect to definite articles is thus not a
problem in German either. There is evidence that the children have discovered
gender regularities. In Ivar's data, monosyllabicity clearly is associated with the
masculine definite article. Thus, feminine nouns like zahl 'number' and tür
'door' (and many neuter nouns such as dach 'roof', bett 'bed', loch 'hole', schijf
'boat', boot 'boat', brot 'bread', bein 'leg') are combined with the masculine
definite article der. The observation that the form der never shows up with plural
nouns (cf. above) is also relevant here. Choice of der with monosyllabic nouns
may be interpreted as a clear indication of their status as singular nouns. Note
that monosyllabicity is associated with the singular in adult German as well; cf.
Köpcke (1988). Another regularity concerns the ending -a. Caroline combines
nouns with this ending with the feminine definite article die', die opa 'the
grand-pa' MASC, die papa 'the daddy' MASC, (later at 4;2,16) die sofa 'the sofa,
NEUT'. Following Köpcke (p.c.), this kind of association also exists in adult
German. Another important regularity concerns the very frequent schwa-ending.
Both children associate nouns with this ending with the form die. Ivar uses die
hase 'the bunny' MASC as a target-deviant noun phrase. Caroline uses French
nouns like conen[ә] (=coccinelle) 'ladybug' and port[d] (=porte) 'door' with the
form die. Interestingly enough, Ivar leaves out the schwa-ending with the target-like
noun affe 'monkey' MASC and then chooses the masculine definite article der; der
aff
To conclude, "gender" (or some aspect of adult grammatical gender) has
been discovered by the children. It seems to be interpreted as an inherent
property of N. Gender marking on definite articles is nearly target-like in both
languages. I will discuss the issue of whether we are dealing with adult-like gender
classification at the very beginning of this developmental phase further below.
Unfortunately, demonstratives are used infrequently by both children,
GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT WITHIN DP 73
Ivar and Caroline use une in combination with French nouns ending in a nasal
vowel and ein with German nouns ending in schwa. Examples of this usage are:
(72) une pu[n] (=pullover) 'a sweater' MASC (Iv;2;4,23)
(73) une pont 'a bridge' MASC (Iv;2;6,27)
(74) ein puppe 'a doll' FEM (Iv;2;5,21)
(75) ein katze 'a cat' FEM (Iv;2;6,6)
(76) une avion 'a plane' MASC (Ca;2;2,23)
(77) une gens 'a person' MASC (Ca;2;7,20)
(78) ein tonne 'a cask' FEM (Ca;2;5,18)
(79) ein katze 'a cat' FEM (Ca;2;7,20)
It would, however, be premature to conclude that Ivar and Caroline wrongly
associate le with une and die with ein. Note that it is not evident why the child
should make wrong associations, for they never occur in the child's input.
Interestingly enough, mostly up to the age of 2;8 in Ivar's data and up to 2;11
74 NATASCHA MÜLLER
in Caroline's data, French nouns ending in a nasal vowel and German nouns
ending in schwa occur with both forms of the indefinite article. Many instances
of the use of both indefinite articles in combination with the same noun are
found in both children within the same recording.
(80) un dame — une dame 'a woman' FEM (Iv;2;6;6)
(81) un pont — une pont 'a bridge' MASC (Iv;2;6,27)
(82) eine rage (Iv;2;6,6)
— ein garage 'a garage' FEM (Iv;2;6,27)
(83) ein affe (Iv;2;7,17)
— eine affe 'a monkey' MASC (Iv;2;ll,21)
(84) une avion (Ca;2;2,23)
— un avion 'a plane' MASC (Ca;2;3,ll)
(85) un gens (Ca;2;7,20)
— une gens 'a person' MASC (Ca;2;8,19)
(86) eine katze (Ca;2;5,4)
— ein katze 'a cat' FEM (Ca;2;7,20)
(87) eine brille — ein brille 'glasses' FEM (Ca;2;8,5)
Furthermore, the wrong form of the indefinite article is used not only in
combination with nouns ending in a nasal vowel or schwa, but also with other
nouns which systematically show up with the correct form of the definite article
in both languages, e.g. (Ivar) le nounours — une nounours 'teddy' MASC, la
poupée — un poupée 'doll' FEM; die eisebahn — ein eisebahne 'train' FEM, der
schijf9 — eine schijf 'boat' NEUT; (Caroline) le pied — une pied 'foot' MASC, la
tête — un tête 'head' FEM; die ampel — ein ampel 'traffic light' FEM, der bär —
eine bär 'bear' MASC.
The variation of both forms of the indefinite article occurs with nouns other
than those ending in a nasal vowel or schwa as well. Some examples for this
kind of variation are:
(88) un chèvre (Iv;2;5,21)
— une chèvre 'a goat' FEM (IV;2;6,6)
(89) une nounours (Iv;2;6,6)
— un nounours 'a teddy' MASC (IV;2;9,5)
(90) ein lego — eine lego 'a lego' MASC (IV;2;6,6)
(91) ein schiff— eine Segelschiff 'a boat' NEUT (IV;2;6,27)
(92) une abeille — un abeille 'a bee' FEM (Ca;2;2,9)
GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT WITHIN DP 75
6.2. The Nature of the Grammatical Features "Number" and "Gender" in Child
Grammar
I want to suggest the following structure for the children's noun phrases
during the developmental phase under discussion.40
76 NATASCHA MÜLLER
With respect to number, the child seems to interpret the grammatical feature
"number" as an inherent and formal property of N, as compared to
gender-attribution based on phonological properties of nouns. S/he has to learn
that it depends on the number of the objects referred to. Furthermore, the child
seems to determine the number specification for each nominal separately. I have
suggested that all nominals are (inherently) specified as [+singular] in the first
place. The children then have to learn whether nominals are specified as
[-singular]. Thus, the reference for each plural N is determined in an
item-by-item fashion. These observations indicate that the adult grammatical
feature "number" (or plural) emerges step-by-step.
With respect to the grammatical feature "gender", I have argued that it is
interpreted as well as an inherent property of N (based on phonological shape
and semantic properties) by the children. It is difficult to draw a clear line
between the inherent gender feature and gender agreement. In adult language,
having masculine, feminine, or neuter gender means that the noun may be
combined with several particular function words which are related in gender
paradigms, e.g. masculine nouns occur with both un and le in French. In Müller
(1990c) I tried to show that Caroline starts out with word-specific paradigms
from approximately 2;6/2;7 onwards in both languages.41 She associates, among
other things, die tasche 'the bag' with eine tasche 'a bag' and le champignon 'the
mushroom' with un champignon 'a mushroom', for instance, without knowing
that all nouns which are used with le are used with un as well. First word-
specific gender paradigms can be observed in Ivar at the age of approximately
2;6/2;7 in both languages as well. It seems to be the case that the adult gender
feature also emerges step-by-step. It is first learned in combination with
particular lexical items.
In structure (96), definite articles are positioned in DET, which is specified
for the grammatical features "number" and "gender". The formal regularities that
have been observed with definite articles may be interpreted as the
morphological reflex of the agreement relation between DET and N' encoded by
GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT WITHIN DP 77
Appendix
IVAR
CAROLINE
IVAR
CAROLINE
Acknowledgements
Notes
6. Cf. Demuth (1992) for the assumption that null elements are replaced by phonological
material.
7. There are five instances of the spontaneous use of adult-like determiners other than
einlun during this phase: le lait 'the milk' (Ca;l;8,6), 'ne oma 'a grand-ma' (Ca;l;11,4),
la moto 'the motorbike' (Iv;l;10,12), la gi (=guitarre) 'the guitar' (Iv;2;2,7), Veau 'the
water' (Iv;2;3,5). I refer to productive usage of a particular form in cases where it
appears with some regularity in the data, i.e. more than only once per recording and/or
in subsequent recordings.
8. As young children are likely to think of moving objects as animates, this conclusion is
very preliminary.
9. MASC denotes masculine gender, FEM feminine gender, NEUT neuter gender in the adult
language. SG denotes singular, PL plural.
10. häuse is an imitation. Ivar's mother uses this target-deviant form as the plural of haus.
11. RSg denotes singular reference, RP1 plural reference.
12. The demonstrative is infrequent in the data from both children in both languages.
13. Other plural possessives do not appear. French nos 'our' begins to be used at 3;2,14 by
Ivar. It is referentially adequate (cf. Koehn 1989a).
14. Caroline does not use these elements prenominally. Pronominal usage is not as frequent
as in Ivar, but it occurs in subsequent recordings and more than once per recording.
15. She does not use plural possessives such as unser 'our' yet.
16. Since plural marking on nouns is very rare in French, this mainly relates to the German
data.
17. The usage of "liaison" -s as part of the noun indicates that Ivar has wrongly segmented
adult French les animaux 'the animals' into [le] [z]animaux.
18. Koehn (1989a) observes that the French data from Ivar contain only very few examples
of the use of bare plural nouns. Caroline does not use bare plural nouns in French at
all. However, the same restrictions that can be found in German with respect to the
reference of bare plural and singular nouns can be observed in Ivar's French. Therefore,
I want to suggest very tentatively that the generalizations made for German are also
valid for French.
19. Cf. also [zamono] (=animaux) which is used for singular and plural reference by Ivar
(cf. Koehn 1989a).
20. This also applies to Ivar's French.
21. The pronouns il 'he' and ils 'they' are phonetically non-distinct.
22. Cf. also the following example from Caroline at a later age (3;3,17): nee die kinder
darfen nur, das die kinder, die kinder, [n] darf das nur 'no the children are allowed only,
this the children, is allowed only this'.
23. For the exact number of agreement errors, see Koehn (1989a) and Meisel (1990).
84 NATASCHA MULLER
24. This refers to the language use of the children under investigation.
25. The following list of examples is exhaustive.
26. The only examples after 2;11 are: 3;2,14 ein balle 'a balls', 3;3,12 ein [z]omme 'a men',
3;8,1 an katzen 'a cats', 4;0,4 ein bücher 'a books'.
27. The forms häse, jünge, füge do not exist in the target language. As they have a plural
shape and Ivar also knows the corresponding singular forms, he may have analyzed
them as plural nouns.
28. There is only one example for this type of variation after 2;11, namely 3;8,1 eine katze
'a cat' — 3;8,1 an katzen (=ein) 'a cats'.
29. The list of examples is exhaustive.
30. The list of examples is exhaustive.
31. This type of variation does not completely disappear after 2;11: 3;2,14 drei gabel(n)
'three forks', 3;2,14 drei gabel 'three fork', 3;2,14 dreikrokodil 'three crocodile', 3;3,12
drei cowboy 'three cowboy', 3;4,23 alle käfig 'all cage', 3;4,23 viele löwe 'many lion',
4;0,4 alle kerze 'all candle', 5;0,25 zwei stuhl 'two chair', 5;1,8 zwei gefängnis 'two
prison', 5;2,28 zwei flugzeug 'two plane'; cf. also the self-correction at 4;1,15 unser drei
[s]iff-segel[s]iffe 'our three boat-sail-boats'.
32. Roger Andersen pointed out to me that many natural languages do not mark number on
nouns which are preceded by a numeral or a plural quantifier. Quechua and Papiamento
are two such languages.
33. Below I will discuss the issue whether we are actually dealing with adult-like
agreement, i.e. feature sharing.
34. It may also be suggested that number agreement is sensitive to the feature definiteness.
Then, we would be able to explain why noun phrases containing a demonstrative behave
in the same way as those with a definite article. As demonstratives are very rare in the
data, this assumption clearly is speculative.
35. "Subgenders are agreement classes which control minimally different sets of
agreements, that is, agreements differing for a small proportion of the morphosyntactic
forms of the controller (typically a single one), not including the most basic form
(usually the nominative singular)" (Corbett 1989).
36. For Caroline's difficulties with the article la up to the age of 2;2, cf. Berkele (1983).
37. For a discussion of the notion of gender rule cf. Koehn (this volume).
38. I included those uses of definite articles which I think are due to other factors than
wrong association on the basis of formal properties of nouns. Caroline chooses the form
die irrespective of formal properties of the noun, if the noun phrase occurs in a syntactic
environment requiring a non-nominative determiner, i.e. if preceded by a preposition.
If we exclude these assignments, we are left with 5 nouns which are combined with the
non-adult-like form of the definite article.
39. Neuter nouns initially are used with masculine definite articles (e.g. der, den) by Ivar.
GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT WITHIN DP 85
40. I want to leave open the question of whether AP is adjoined to N' or whether it is
positioned in SpecNP since the focus of this paper is not the development of the
agreement relation between adjectives and nouns.
41. The first noun which is combined with a definite and with an indefinite article form is
at 2;2,23 mouton 'sheep' and at 2;0 bär 'bear' in Caroline.
42. Note that adjectives do not seem to be allowed in this position. Constructions similar
to ein der teddy do not occur with adjectives. This suggests that the children distinguish
adjectives and numerals on the one hand and that they locate them in different syntactic
positions on the other. These positions modify N and DET respectively. Since the
children also use noun phrases such as les deux poupées 'the two dolls' and der ein
schlumpf 'the one smurf' at the end of the developmental phase under discussion, it is
conceivable that quantifying expressions (except for the universal quantifier all) are also
allowed in a position modifying N. Evidence for the assumption that QP agrees with
N at later stages are examples from Ivar like 4;0,4 allem teilem 'all parts', 4;0,18 alle
teile 'all parts', 4;5 alles mögliches 'all possible', 3;5,7 viele luft 'much air' FEM, 4;4,14
viele kraft 'much power' FEM, 4;8,17 viele arbeit 'much work' FEM.
43. Errors such as die pullover and die sessel (cf. also in the data from Caroline at 3;6,16
die puppenkarren 'the doll carriage' and in the data from Ivar at 3;0,19 die führer 'the
driver') where the shape of the plural noun does not vary from the singular form in
adult German, may also be interpreted as plural noun phrases with singular reference.
44 Ivar uses the form des in front of the noun männer. However, it is not clear whether des
is a determiner in this case.
References
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syntactic analysis of the acquisition of Case marking." Language Acquisition
Studies in generative Grammar(=Language Acquisition and Language Disorders,
8), ed. by Teun Hoekstra & Bonnie D. Schwartz, 85-118. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Corbett, Greville G. 1989. "An Approach to the Description of Gender Systems."
Essays on Grammatical Theory and Universal Grammar, ed. by Doug Arnold,
Martin Atkinson, Jacques Durand, Claire Grover & Louisa Sadler, 53-89.
Clarendon Press: Oxford.
Demuth, Katherine. 1992. "Accessing Functional Categories in Sesotho: Interactions
at the morpho-syntax interface." Meisel 1992, 83-107.
Diesing, Molly. 1992. Indefinites (=Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, 20). Cambridge,
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Dolitsky, Mariene. 1983. "The Birth of Grammatical Morphemes." Journal of
Psycholinguistic Research 12.352-360.
Felix, Sascha W. 1990. "The Structure of Functional Categories." Linguistische
Berichte 125.46-71.
Fukui, Naoki & Margaret Speas. 1986. "Specifiers and Projections." MIT Working
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Gawlitzek-Maiwald, Ira, Rosemary Tracy & Agnes Fritzenschaft. 1992. "Language
Acquisition and Competing Linguistic Representations: The child as arbiter."
Meisel 1992, 139-179.
Giusti, Giuliana. 1991. "The Categorial Status of Quantified Nominals." Linguistische
Berichte 136.438-454.
Guilfoyle, Eithne & Máire Noonan. 1988. "Functional Categories and Language
Acquisition." Paper presented at the B.U. Conference on Language Development,
Boston University, October 1988.
Koehn, Caroline. 1989a. Der Erwerb der Pluralmarkierungen durch bilinguale Kinder
(Französisch/Deutsch). Eine empirische Untersuchung. Masters thesis, University
of Hamburg.
——. 1989b. "Zum Numeruserwerb bei Caroline." Manuscript, University of
Hamburg.
——. 1991. "Zum Numerus- und Genuserwerb bei Ivar, Caroline und Pascal."
Manuscript, University of Hamburg.
Köpcke, Klaus-Michael. 1982. Untersuchungen zum Genussystem der deutschen
Gegenwartssprache (=Linguistische Arbeiten, 122.). Tübingen: Niemeyer.
——. 1988. "Schemas in German Plural Formation." Lingua 74.303-335.
Köpcke, Klaus-Michael & David A. Zubin 1983. "Die kognitive Organisation der
Genuszuweisung zu den einsilbigen Nomen der deutschen Gegenwartssprache."
Zeitschrift für germanistischen Linguistik 11.166-182.
GENDER AND NUMBER AGREEMENT WITHIN DP 87
Levy, Yonata. 1983. "The Acquisition of Hebrew Plurals: The case of the missing
gender category." Journal of Child Language 10.107-121.
Löbel, Elisabeth. 1990a. "D und Q als funktionale Kategorien in der Nominalphrase."
Linguistische Berichte 127.232-264.
——. 1990b. "Zur kategorialen Bestimmung der Possessiva in der NP/DP:
Possessiva als adjektive." Arbeiten des Sonderforschungsbereichs 282: Theorie des
Lexikons, University of Düsseldorf.
Meisel, Jürgen M. 1986. "Word Order and Case Marking in Early Child Language.
Evidence from simultaneous acquisition of two first languages." Linguistics
24.123-183.
——. 1990. "INFL-ection: Subjects and Subject-Verb Agreement." Meisel 1990,
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——ed. 1990. Two First Languages: Early grammatical development in bilingual
children {-Studies on Language Acquisition, 10.). Dordrecht: Foris.
——. 1991. "Early Grammatical Development: Verbal functional categories."
Manuscript, University of Hamburg.
——. ed. 1992. The Acquisition of Verb Placement: Functional categories and V2
phenomena in language development (=Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics,
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Child Grammars: Evidence from simultaneous acquisition of French and German
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Acquisition. Vol. I: The Data, ed. by Dan I. Slobin, 141-254. Hillsdale, N.J.:
Erlbaum.
—. 1986. The Acquisition of Gender: A study of English and German. Berlin:
Springer.
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Hamburg.
—. 1990a. "Der Genuserwerb bei Ivar I (Determinanten und Adjektive)."
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—. 1990b. "Der Genuserwerb bei Ivar II (Determinanten und Adjektive)."
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88 NATASCHA MÜLLER
Jürgen M. Meisel
University of Hamburg
1. Introduction
language(s) they are acquiring. And since, in these cases, UG allows for different
solutions, one can, in fact, expect the child to explore the range of variation de
fined by parameterized options of UG. These parameters, however, relate
primarily to the non-substantive elements of the lexicon, see Chomsky (1989),
and this is the reason why it is particularly fascinating to study the development
of functional categories. As has been suggested by Radford (1986, 1987, 1990),
Guilfoyle & Noonan (1988), and others, they may initially be lacking altogether,
and the children have to discover which functional categories need to be
implemented and what their position is in the grammar of the language they are
acquiring.
In what follows, I explore some of the options which can be derived from
assumptions of this kind, focusing on the category INFL and categories which,
more recently, have been argued to replace it, i.e. AGR, TENSE, and FINITE-
NESS. I will show that of these three grammatical notions, agreement is the
earliest to develop, tense coming in significantly later; my suggestion is that
developmental order reflects the hierarchical order of the respective phrases in
sentence structures. I will further argue that "finiteness" should be defined as
depending on the presence of agreement and tense and that, in child as well as
in mature grammars, one of these two may be sufficient to count as an
instantiation of finiteness. Finally, this analysis raises the question whether AGR
should be analyzed as the head of an independent maximal projection AGRR
French, the finite verb can only be moved to COMP in exceptional cases, i.e. in
so-called inversion constructions (see Rizzi & Roberts 1989).
Note that two features are largely responsible for the differences between the two
languages. One is that headedness is specified differently for INFL in French
(head-initial) and in German (head-final). Another difference concerns the
position of [±finite]. Platzack & Holmberg (1989) suggest a finitenes s parameter
which specifies the placement of the operator [+F], either in INFL, as in French
and English, or in COMP, as in German. According to their analysis, it is the
position of this operator which determines whether a language exhibits V2
phenomena or not.
The theory of grammar predicts that important aspects of the necessary
92 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
knowledge need not be learned, in the usual meaning of the word. Rather, this
knowledge has to be triggered by the input data; see Carroll (1989) for a useful
discussion of the difference between learning and triggering. Crucial parts of
X-bar grammar and the existence of Move-α, probably also its instantiations as
WH-movement, NP-movement, head-to-head movement, etc. are, indeed, not
learned, if these assumptions are correct. But our brief description of the adult
system refers to a number of other notions, some of which, at least, need to be
learned; for others, the parameterized options of UG, input data must trigger their
implementation into the particular grammar to be acquired. Leaving other
problems aside, we may say that the following issues are part of the developmen
tal problems the child faces:
(3) a. The existence of notions like agreement and finiteness.
b. The presence of functional categories (e.g. I, C) in the particular
grammar.
c. The setting of the finiteness parameter.
d. The choice between the headedness options for all projections
of X-bar structure.
e. Language-specific overt markings for agreement, finiteness, etc.
In what follows, I will address these issues in inverse order, beginning with
the phenomena which are most easily accessible in the input, i.e. overt markings.
It is obvious from structures like (1) and (2), above, that sentences are VPs
dominated by a set of functional categories. Although the main goal of the
present study is to analyze the emergence of these functional categories, it is
useful to begin with a sketch of the linguistic knowledge available to the child
during the phases preceding these developments. My hypothesis is that the
category verb is the cornerstone of first grammatical structures; its identification
by the child should therefore be of crucial importance for early grammars. I will
restrict this to a short exposition of the most crucial hypotheses, illustrating them
with some empirical findings, mostly from one child, Ivar; for more details and
further empirical evidence, see Meisel (1991).
The first question, in searching for syntactic properties of child speech,
concerns the appearance of multiword utterances. In the case of Ivar, there
already exist a few of these during the first recording, at age 1;6 (years;months).
GETTING FAT 93
But it is only at around age 1;10, in French, that the first predicate+argument
constructions1 appear. At the same time, multiword utterances become more
frequent and more productive. Iv, for example, uses [le] 'it is', cassE 'broken',
ça cassé 'that one broken', c'est cassé 'this is broken', maman est là 'mommy is
there'.2 The situation is similar in German where Iv starts using combinations of
"subjects" with verbs and adjectives at age 1;10,30. But the types of combina
tions are still limited. For example, only proper names like mama, papa and
teddy are combined with verbs. All other multiword utterances up to age 2;0
show the pattern S+O or S+Adj. It is, therefore, not justifiable to qualify these
as "subjects" or "objects" at this point of time, since these patterns only consist
of predicates, mostly particles, and adjectives, combined with nominals which do
not yet, however, function as subjects in the technical sense of the term. This is
to say that their morphological form and their placement are not governed by
grammatical principles. Instead, the sequencing appears to be determined to a
large extent by theme-rheme ordering in both languages. Language-specific
patterns can nevertheless already be observed; in German, for instance, predicates
appear consistently in final position, whereas in French, ordering is somewhat
more variable. But these approximations to patterns of the target languages can
be accounted for in terms of the influence the respective input is likely to exert.
Note that this account of very early multiword utterances is not in
contradiction with our assumptions about the role of UG in language acquisition
or with the continuity assumption, mentioned in the Introduction, above.
Knowledge about surface order and even that about certain D-structure ordering
regularities, see (3d), needs to be extracted from the input, as is obviously also
the case for morphological forms. With respect to the continuity of grammatical
development, the quote from Pinker (1984), above, states quite clearly that it
refers to the nature of the child's grammatical rules, which are claimed to be of
the same type as those of adult grammars. This leaves open the possibility that
during an early phase children may not have access to grammar at all, although
they are clearly able to use semantic-pragmatic principles to organize the form
of their speech. This is, indeed, what I believe is happening here, i.e. early
multiword combinations do not exhibit syntactic properties. To the extent that
one finds a preferred word order, e.g. "V-final" for Ivar, this order varies from
child to child, even with the same lexical elements. Where the children deviate
from the preferred order, this seems to depend on pragmatic factors.3 To mention
one example, the element on which the child is focusing is placed in final
position by Iv. Context and intonation suggest, for example, that in teddy donne
'teddy give' Iv insists that he be given the toy, whereas in donne+X 'give X' he
94 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
focuses on the particular object; see Meisel (1991) for further details.
My claim is that early multiword utterances represent what Bickerton
(1990a, b) calls "protolanguage", that is, they are not organized according to
morphosyntactic principles; in fact, at this stage, no structure at all can be
detected beyond what is evidenced by linear sequences. According to Bickerton,
neurological maturation makes UG available to the child, and this happens
around age 2;0, approximately. This is, I want to argue, where the principle of
grammatical continuity comes into play: once grammar is accessible, categories
and rules of child grammars are of the same type as those in their mature
counterparts. The emergence of these categories and rules is an autonomous
process, independent of the child's pragmatic competence; grammatical
development thus does not rely crucially on the grammaticization of semantic-
pragmatic principles.
One way to decide from which point onwards grammatical principles
determine the use of child language is to determine when the child is capable of
identifying syntactic categories. According to current linguistic theory, X-bar
structure is not learned. Consequently, if the child is able to recognize specific
syntactic categories, e.g. verbs, s/he should also be able to project them to the
X" level, i.e. to VP.
As far as Iv's linguistic development is concerned, it is important to note
that no finite forms appear in his early multiword utterances. In fact, N+Adj
sequences are significantly more frequent at this time than S+V or V+O
constructions. More precisely, except for dodo 'sleep', only adjectives are
combined with "subjects" before age 2;0, and forms like parti 'gone', cassé
'broken', collé 'glued', are also adjectival elements; see Meisel (1985). At
around 2;0, more productively as of 2;2, present tense forms begin to emerge in
French. Looking for finite verb forms combined with nominal elements in subject
position, one finds that "subjects" are still extremely rare. The first unambiguous
subject-verb constructions appear at age 2;0,2, with the same French verb, dort
'sleeps'.
(répare) '(I) fix (it)', dort 'sleeps', coule 'runs' are combined with nominal
subjects. Note that the subject has been placed in final as well as in initial
position, with a certain preference for the latter; as of 2;2, however, it appears
consistently in preverbal position.
In sum, then, before age 2;0, I find no reasons to assume that the child has
access to a grammar which assigns hierarchical syntactic structures to concatena
tions of predicates and nominal arguments. Only after 2;0 or 2;2 do we have
empirical justification for the claim that grammatical knowledge is indeed
available. A crucial fact is that finite forms emerge. Assuming that formal
properties of this type enable the learner to identify verbal elements and to
distinguish them from other predicates (adjectives, particles), and supposing that
properties of X-bar structure need not be learned by experience, one may
conclude that the discovery of syntactic categories now makes structures like (6)
(for French) available where nominal categories function as verbal arguments.
In German, similar developments can be observed at roughly the same time.
Early verb forms which are not yet marked for agreement often also lack subjects
preceding them. At age 2;0,2, presentative das ist 'this/that is' sequences appear.
Simultaneously, uses of presentative das+Adj/N are frequently attested, but das
is not yet combined with main verbs.
Note that it is hardly possible to decide whether the children have set the
headedness parameter correctly in German as soon as such structures emerge.
The reason for this uncertainty is that normally only one of the verbal arguments
is realized, yielding mostly SV or OV patterns. Yet since in the majority of the
utterances verbs are placed in final position, see Clahsen (1982), it is very likely
that structures like (7) are discovered quite early. The few precocious SVO-
patterned utterances are probably rote-learned expressions since they are usually
of the type das ist N(P) 'that's N(P)'. But because of the scant empirical basis
for these assumptions, the possibility cannot be ruled out that early German
structures resemble those in French, as in (6) or that children oscillate, for some
time, between (6) and (7); of the children studied here, this applies at least to Iv.
Early sentence structures are thus VPs, with the subject originating in
Spec-VP position. This is, indeed, a solution offered by UG; see Kuroda (1988)
and others who argue that sentential subjects are base-generated as external
arguments of the verb, that is in Spec-VP. According to Kuroda (1988:10),
languages are parameterized as to whether agreement is forced or not. "Agree
ment" here refers primarily to Case assignment, but it also includes gen
der/number agreement between nouns and their specifiers as well as subject-verb
agreement. These assumptions lead to a number of consequences, one being that,
in languages like English, the external argument of VP in finite clauses has to
move to Spec-IP position to be assigned Case by AGR in INFL; in contrast, in
unforced agreement languages like Japanese, mechanisms independent of Case
Theory license the Spec-IP position.4 Kuroda's proposal has a number of
interesting implications for the role of functional categories in early grammars.
One is that children, led by principles of UG, can assume that agreement is
optional; hence, they may initially construe a grammar without any kind of
verbal functional category, analyzing the sentence as a projection of the verb,
with the subject in Spec-VP position.
GETTING FAT 97
The question now is when and how verbal functional categories come in and
whether they all appear simultaneously or in a specific chronological order. If the
order of emergence reflects the hierarchical order in sentence structures, one
should expect INFL to appear first. The split-INFL hypothesis leads to the
further problem of the developmental order of agreement, finiteness, and tense.
In a Pollock (1989) framework, AGR is the first candidate. This also follows
from Kuroda's (1988) claims about forced and non-forced agreement as crucial
distinctions between languages like English and Japanese. And this is precisely
what happens. In other words, I want to claim that agreement is acquired before
tense. In what follows, I will first summarize some facts about the acquisition of
agreement and then address briefly the question of what the role of tense could
be. This will lead to a discussion of how to define "finiteness" in developing and
in mature grammars. Finally, I will consider some of the consequences of the
findings of this study for the architecture of sentence structure.
to say want
sagen inf -n wollen -n
During a first phase, all the target forms which code the 3rd sg (i.e., 0, and
-t) appear within approximately three months. Towards the end of this period,
one also encounters forms of the 1st sg modal; it is difficult to decide whether
these already represent productive6 uses since they are identical to 3rd sg modals,
both being zero markings. All other suffixes (i.e., markings for 1st sg, 2nd sg,
and 1st and 3rd pl: -0, -st, -e and -en) emerge during the next phase, which also
lasts for about three months. Some so-called irregular forms tend to make their
appearance later, and forms of the 2nd pl are not attested at all during the period
under investigation.7 Leaving details aside, one can say that all suffixes are
acquired within a rather short period of time:8 C l;ll-2;5, Iv 2;0-2;8, and P
2;7-3;3. This period is really even shorter since the first occurrences, usually
some isolated examples of 3rd sg forms, cannot be regarded as productive uses;
see Meisel (1990, 258ff.). Productive uses emerge at ages 1;11 for C, 2;1 for Iv,
GETTING FAT 99
and 2;9 for P. Verbal inflection markings for person and number thus make their
appearance in the children's speech within the following periods: C l;ll-2;5; Iv
2;l-2;8; P 2;9-3;3. In other words, a period of approximately six months is
sufficient for the whole inventory of forms to be acquired.
It may be useful to remember that more forms than those just mentioned
have been acquired by the children at this point of development since they also
use non-finite forms (i.e., infinitives and past participles) which are morphologi
cally marked, as well. In addition, the children also make appropriate use of the
imperative. In sum, then, I conclude that inflectional markings on verbs are
acquired during a limited period of time, lasting for approximately six months,
early in the children's grammatical development. Consistent with this conclusion
is the fact that MLU values rise from 1.75-2.25 during our phase I, and from
2.25 to approximately 3.5 during our phase II.
The question now is whether these forms do indeed represent agreement
markings. In order to decide on this, it will be necessary to look briefly at the
use of subjects. My assumption here is that if the verb agrees with the subject
correctly in form and if the respective verb form is used productively, one can
argue that the children are able to encode an abstract grammatical relation by
means of agreement markers. Following these guidelines, the analysis of our data
in Meisel (1990) leads to the conclusion that the children are using the 3rd sg
form productively as of ages 1 ; 11 (C), 2;1 (Iv), 2;9 (P); this corresponds in all
three cases to the period when the utterances reach an MLU value of approxi
mately 1.75-2.0. The fact that these utterances normally also contain a subject
with which this verb form agrees is a clear indication that a grammatical
phenomenon is emerging. The most crucial fact here is that agreement errors are
virtually non-existent. To be more precise, I have shown (Meisel 1990) that one
may find a few examples which might be interpreted as errors in number
agreement but errors in person agreement do not exist. This observation is
theoretically relevant. Platzack & Holmberg (1989) have demonstrated that
whereas the loss of number agreement in historical change does not affect other
grammatical properties of the language, losing person agreement entails
significant reorganization in other areas of grammar. Consequently, agreement
should primarily be understood in terms of person agreement; number agreement
may be added to this, but it is apparently not a necessary criterion in defining
this grammatical relation.
Facts concerning agreement of forms thus confirm our claim according to
which verb inflection is already used by the children during this early phase to
code grammatical agreement. This hypothesis9 is further corroborated by findings
100 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
(a limited number of so-called irregular verbs such as aller 'to go', savoir 'to
know') and on auxiliaries. Let me add that because of the scarcity of overt
markings, the finite/non-finite distinction is particularly important, since
infinitives and participles are marked unambiguously in most cases. But although
these two forms differ phonetically from finite forms10 with -er verbs as well,
they cannot, in this case, be distinguished from each other. The first examples
of verb forms appear at ages 1;3 (P), 1;4 (C), and 1;5 (Iv), but it is obvious that
they cannot be classified as productive uses yet. I interpret them as rote-learned
forms.
From the observations made above, it follows that variation of verb forms
will be rather limited in French. In analyzing the German data, a major criterion
had been that at least two forms of the same verb should be present in the data.
This may be too strong a requirement in French. As an example, let us briefly
look at C again. The first verb of which two forms are documented in the data
shows up at age 1;10: monte-montE. At 2;0, va and allez 'go' appear, but these
might still be rote-learned forms. A little later, at 2;1, there can be no doubt that
C uses different verb forms productively, e.g. tombe, tomber, tombé. If, however,
one looks at the total range of different forms, across various types, it becomes
clear that the child makes use of verbs and of verb inflection earlier than that.
At age 2;0, the following forms have been recorded:
(8) (C 2;0)
Infinitives: à boire, coucher
Imperatives: attends, tourne, allez, assieds-toi, écoute.
ferme, descends, couchE, regarde
participles: parti, fini, ouvé (-ouvert), tombé, cassé, monté
present tense: va, est, a/as, met, monte, ferme, pique, saute
The variety of forms as well as the fact that some of them are used creatively
(ouvé, 'opened'), suggest quite strongly that C has begun to use verbs and verb
inflection productively.
Applying the same criteria to P's data yields the following result: he starts
using various verb forms at age 2;7; finite as well as non-finite forms are present
then. If one applies the more rigid criterion of formal variation, however, one
will have to conclude that verb inflection emerges at around age 2;9-2;10. As
of 2;11, P already uses various irregular verbs in the present tense and with the
infinitive (3;0).
As far as Ivar is concerned, one finds that present tense forms begin to
appear at age 2;0, more regularly at age 2;2. It is difficult to decide whether
102 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
during the following period, age 2;2-2;4, verb inflection is already used
productively. On the one hand, no verb appears in more than one form. On the
other hand, the same verb is used together with what looks like a subject, and
also in isolation, that is, the elements in preverbal position are not chunked
together with the verb. And infinitival forms are not combined with a nominal
element in subject position, except for three instances where the infinitive serves
to express an imperative.
suffixes have already been acquired successfully, except for so-called "irregular
forms".
In German, the acquisition of TENSE seems to be related to the emergence
of perfect tense constructions. At first, the only "finite" elements in the data are
present tense forms. Since these do not stand in opposition to other tensed forms,
they can hardly be interpreted as representing a morphosyntactic tense system.
The same conclusion is inevitable from a semantic point of view, since these
verb forms do not yet express temporal notions; see Meisel (1985). When the
children finally begin to use forms of the perfect tense, the notions expressed are
semantically still not equivalent to the corresponding tenses in adult grammar,
but they do allow the expression of temporal reference [+anterior], and they
make available a second form class. As of this point, it appears to be plausible
to speak of grammatical tense being part of the children's grammars. This
amounts to saying that TENSE begins to appear around age C 2;7-8 and P 3;1-3,
at the earliest. Note that it is somewhat difficult to determine more precisely
when this happens. C, for example, uses one auxiliary+past participle construc
tion in German at age 2;6, and then again at age 2;8. Even more strikingly, Iv
never uses perfect tense in German during the period investigated, i.e. up to age
3;0.
There is, however, another possible clue for when TENSE is acquired in
German, namely the use of war 'was'. During the period under consideration, it
appears once during the recordings with C at age 1 ; 11 and then again at 2;7; P
uses it as of 3;1, albeit very rarely. If one is ready to accept an argument based
on such infrequent occurrences and if one also ignores the isolated example at
C 1;11, these data do support the hypothesis concerning the time of acquisition
of TENSE.
Table 6. German verb forms
Forms Age MLU
C P C P
Two further comments seem to be appropriate at this point. The first is that
during the period analyzed, up to age 3;6, no other verbal tense markings emerge
in the data of the two children. This includes the observation that no future tense
form is attested, although they do use temporal adverbials referring to future
events in both languages, e.g. demain 'tomorrow', après, später 'later', jetzt
'now' = in this instant' = [+posterior], all referring to the immediate future. The
second point is that the interpretation suggested here is in conflict with most of
what one normally finds in the literature on time and tense in early child
language. Usually a much later age is given.
The acquisition of tense and aspect in French is, again, more difficult to
evaluate because of the scarcity of inflectional markings. As far as TENSE is
concerned, one has to rely on the form of the verb itself. Past participle forms
are precocious in French, but they do not serve to encode the [±tense] distinction.
Instead, they are used much like adjectives in the adult language. This claim is
supported by the fact that early uses of aux+participle constructions only contain
être 'to be', not avoir 'to have', indicating that one still has to do with adjectival
uses. In sum, then, there is no conclusive evidence for when TENSE emerges in
early French grammar. But the available data suffice to show that, as in German,
the [±tense] distinction comes in later than subject-verb agreement.
The findings for both languages thus support the hypothesis that agreement
precedes tense in the children's developmental chronology. In the following
section, I want to address the problem of how to define finiteness in view of
these results, and what its role in early grammars might be.
6.1. German
SVX patterns, i.e. not XVS sequences with the verb preposed before the subject;
third, one does not yet find constructions with the verb preceding the negative
element. The second and the third point refer to the most reliable criteria
indicating whether or not movement has taken place. Another observation points
in the same direction: one also finds a few VO utterances, i.e. where the subject
has been omitted, some with non-finite verb forms. Since not a single un-
ambigous case of movement of non-finite verbal forms is attested, neither in our
data nor in the literature on child German, it is safe to conclude that verbs
preceding objects or adverbials cannot have been moved into this position.
Without assuming verb movement, and if one does not want to regard them as
rote-learned patterns, these examples seem to indicate that the headedness
parameter has not yet been set and VO and OV orders are still both possible.
This is, in fact, exactly what Ouhalla (1991) predicts. Developing in some detail
the research program suggested by Chomsky (1989) and others, he argues that
parameterization is restricted to functional categories. Consequently, determining
head-direction is impossible before the implementation of functional categories
in the child's grammar; see the next section below. Assuming that functional
categories are still lacking during the period of development under discussion,
see structures (6) and (7) above, the order of elements within non-functional
phrases like VP is not fixed by syntactic principles.12
Let me add that the emergence of modals in the children's speech may also
serve as evidence indicating the existence of a category dominating VP, since
modals inevitably have to be placed in this position, with the infinitival form of
the main verb remaining in VP. In Ivar's data modals appear at the age of 2;5.13
The use of mod+V constructions in the data of the other children is attested at
age C 2;5-6 and P 3;0, respectively; see Table 6, above.
It thus appears that in developing grammars of German, effects of finiteness
emerge at more or less the same age14 (C 2;3-4, Iv 2;4-5, P 2;11-3;0) namely the
time at which children begin to use agreement markings other than those of the
3rd person. They appear, in fact, slightly earlier for C and Iv; see Table 3, above.
This confirms that the estimations given above have been quite conservative. I
therefore want to claim, answering the question raised at the beginning of this
section, that agreement alone is sufficient as an instantiation of finiteness, tense
clearly coming in later than the phenomena discussed here. Yet agreement only
produces these effects once it involves more than one grammatical person. It is
at this point of development, I want to conclude further, that a category
subcategorizing VP, e.g. IP, must be present in the children's grammars.
110 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
6.2. French
combining the auxiliary avoir with past participles and modals with infinitives.
It may also be worthwhile to note that during the period before agreement
develops, MLU values oscillate between 1.6 and 1.8, whereas they jump to 2.93
at age 2;5, and they stay well over 3.0 from then on. And this is also the case
with the other children; i.e. soon after the acquisition of agreement, a dramatic
increase of MLU values, rapidly exceeding 3.0, can be observed.
The analysis of child language data thus reveals that, in German as well as
in French, syntactic phenomena normally attributed to finiteness are present in
early grammars as soon as person agreement has been developed. To be more
precise, these acquisitional achievements seem to require the ability to distinguish
formally between grammatical persons, whereas a differentiation between
singular and plural, as far as subject-verb agreement is concerned, is not a
necessary prerequisite. This amounts to saying that [+AGR] is the crucial
property defining finiteness.
It is appropriate, I believe, to comment on this in a little more detail, for in
recent debates on related issues, e.g. the role of verbal inflection for the licensing
of null subjects, or the split-INFL hypothesis, a number of alternative and also
conflicting suggestions have been put forward. Some authors indeed view AGR
as the essential defining property of finiteness, whereas others attribute a similar
importance to TENSE. Although this is obviously not the place to try to
disentangle the confusion, I want to argue that the contradiction is, to a large
extent, due to differences in terminology rather than reflecting truly opposing
views. What seems to be uncontroversial is that finite verbs, at least in languages
like French, German, and also English, contain the features [+AGR,+T]; see von
Stechow & Sternefeld (1988:389). In addition to the fact that finite verbs are
usually agreeing elements as well as tensed ones, the morphological encodings
of these two syntactic properties are frequently conflated. Thus, German -t and
English -s express 3rd person singular as well as present tense. For these
languages, tense is the more salient syntactic property: in tensed clauses of
non-pro drop languages empty subjects are not allowed, in non-tensed clauses
they are PRO; tensed clauses are not accessible to grammatical operations in the
same way as non-tensed clauses are,15 etc. Summarizing current generative
treatments of this problem, von Stechow & Sternefeld (1988:115) suggest a
generalization which postulates that INFL must contain AGR if it contains [+T],
but not vice versa. This, I suspect, is the reason why finiteness is sometimes
112 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
identified with TENSE; Chomsky (1989), for example, equates INFL = Tense =
[+finite].
Yet although syntactic properties usually attributed to finite verbs, or, to be
precise, to INFL (in a pre-Pollock analysis), normally require that both TENSE
and AGR be present, this is not necessarily the case. Nor is it generally true that
the defining properties of finiteness depend on the presence of TENSE. Even
among Indo-European languages, one finds evidence against such assumptions.
In Celtic languages, for example, TENSE without AGR seems to serve similar
purposes as [+AGR,+T] in most other Indo-European languages. According to
Stenson (1989), INFL in Irish contains T, but not AGR; and Stump (1989)
argues that [+T,-AGR] is a governing category. In Portuguese, on the other
hand, the opposite is true: infinitives can even be marked overtly for subject-
agreement, and only these "personal infinitives" license nominative subjects, as
opposed to bare infinitives (see Raposo 1987).
I thus conclude that "finiteness" may be defined in terms of agreement
and/or TENSE. In other words, although it may be characterized as mentioned
above, i.e. as [+AGR,+T], its featural composition is a parameterized option of
UG. In other words, UG allows for the possibility that one of the two features
suffices to characterize verbs as "±finite".16 As a consequence, the finiteness
operator, [+F], see Platzack & Holmberg (1989), attracts an element specified as
either [+Agr,+T],[+Agr], or [+T], depending on how the parameter is set in a
given language. This, in turn, means that developing grammars may operate in
the same fashion, i.e. the child may work on the assumption that verbs
containing only one of these features behave syntactically like finite elements.
I would like to add a few remarks on two language acquisition studies
which arrive at apparently contradicting conclusions. The first is one by Aldridge
(1986). She found that modals in early English only occur in finite clauses
whereas to occurs exclusively in non-finite clauses. She (1986:50) concludes that
"I(NFL) contains the feature [±FINITE], with a finite I being filled by a modal,
and a non-finite I being filled by infinitival to." She further claims that, at the
same time, tense and agreement markings are still lacking. As far as agreement
is concerned, this conclusion seems to be unwarranted. The motivation for her
claim is that 3rd sg -s is systematically lacking at this age, indicating that the
children have not yet acquired agreement. Yet it seems that this result only
reflects particularities of English where overt agreement markings are limited to
this one form. The analysis of German child language, where the target system
exhibits a richer morphological repertoire, shows that agreement is indeed crucial
for the definition of finiteness in developing grammars. As far as tense is
GETTING FAT 113
concerned, however, the present study corroborates the claims put forth by
Aldridge (1986).
Verrips & Weissenborn (1990), on the other hand, regard "finite AGR as
an innate category." Studying German and French monolingual children, they
argue that "the category 'finite' is present in the child's grammatical system from
the beginnings." Note, however, that, following general practice, they do not
distinguish between [+finite] and [+Tense], nor between finiteness and
agreement. In other words, their definitions of the terms lead them to the
conclusion that the systematic use of agreement markings is evidence for
finiteness. More precisely, agreement morphology together with the word order
phenomena mentioned above are interpreted as indicating the presence of
finiteness in grammars. I therefore believe that the differences between their
conclusions and the hypotheses presented here are largely the consequence of
differences in terminology. Both studies concur that agreement is part of
developing grammars from very early on.
later, albeit still clearly before TENSE. Most importantly, verbs then move out
of VP, but subjects still precede them in surface order; see Köppe (this volume,
chap. 8). It is this kind of evidence which unambiguously argues in favor of the
existence of the projection of a functional category above VP. Consequently, at
least two questions need to be answered: 1) How can one account for the earliest
indications of the presence of grammatical agreement? 2) What is the nature of
the first functional category — AGR, INFL, F?
With respect to the child data, arguing along the same lines, one finds that
although the specifier is present (subject-NP within VP), what is still lacking is
"agreement as a property of INFL". As a consequence, the relation between the
verb and its specifier gets marked by the default value, 3rd sg. This corresponds
to the analysis of Scandinavian languages proposed by Platzack & Holmberg
(1989:70). They distinguish between languages with and without AGR.
According to their approach, some languages, for example the Norwegian dialect
of Hallingdalen, have neither AGR nor V-movement, yet the verb carries overt
inflection, restricted, however, to number agreement. They argue that this is a
result of Spec-head agreement in VP.
One can thus hypothesize that a similar situation is evidenced in developing
grammars. The first grammatical notion which surfaces in early grammars as
morphological encoding on the verb is the specifier-head relation within the VP,
marked by the default value. That 3rd sg forms do indeed represent the default
value is generally accepted, e.g. Platzack & Holmberg (1989:58). Grammars
usually resort to it if no thematic nominal element is available in the specifier
position, e.g. with expletive or with empty (pro) subjects, but also with
impersonals; or if the element in this position is not a nominative thematic NP,
e.g. German ihrer wurde gedacht 'of them+GEN was+3rd sg thought = they were
remembered', rather than *ihrer wurden gedacht 'of them+GEN were+3rd pl
thought'.
These observations raise the question whether default markings may indeed
be regarded as instances of agreement. In order to be able to address this
problem, it is helpful to clarify the meaning of this concept. Syntactically,
agreement can be understood as a process or as the result of a process by which
two elements come to share a number of syntactic features. Feature sharing is
possible if the two elements stand in a specifier-head relation or if they are
coindexable.17 Subject-verb agreement indeed requires both conditions to be met,
since the element in subject position and the verb need to be coindexable by
superscripting. In early child grammars, the structural configuration is already
present, namely as a specifier-head relation within VP. The fact, however, that
only default markings are used is a strong indication that feature sharing is not
yet possible. This would also explain why some children, e.g. Iv and P,
occasionally use "stem forms", i.e. forms lacking any kind of inflection; see
below. What is not yet available, I suspect, is the mechanism which executes
co-superscription. Exactly how superscripting works, however, is not clear,18
except for the fact that it happens at D-structure level (Chomsky 1981:259).
Without a more elaborate theory of agreement it is difficult to gain a deeper
116 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
than resulting from a feature sharing process, how can it be that there are no
agreement errors in early speech? Put differently, why do we not find 1st and
2nd sg subject pronouns in combination with verbs marked for 3rd sg?21 The
following observations may help to shed some light on this problem. First of all,
third person markings are more frequent in the input than those for 1st and 2nd
person since all non-pronominal subjects — in addition to 3rd sg pronouns —
require this type of agreement. Secondly, it is conceivable that during a period
when only a few subject-verb constructions are used, less frequent items may be
missed during one-hour recordings. Remember that the second person pronoun
is used rather infrequently; as has been mentioned before, the plural form is
never attested during the period under investigation, and the singular form is
quite rare in the children's speech in both languages. As for the 1st sg pronoun,
some children initially refer to themselves by using their proper names, and this
further reduces the number of occurrences of 1st sg pronouns during an early
phase. Thirdly, the possibility cannot be excluded that the preference for 3rd
person subjects is, to a certain degree, enhanced by general constraints on what
children of that age are able and willing to communicate about and also by the
specific play situations created during the recordings. Two-year olds tend to
accompany verbally the actions performed during the game, telling what
someone is doing or should be doing; third person is most likely to appear here.
They also tell their interlocutors what to do, using imperatives or infinitives. And
they state their own intentions, wishes and needs; in these instances, however,
modals show up in the vast majority of cases: ich will.../je veux... 'I want...'; see
Table 2 above, which reveals that these uses emerge more or less simultaneously
with 3rd sg on main verbs. In sum, then, for reasons like the ones alluded to
here, 1st and 2nd person pronouns are less likely to occur, and low frequency
items may not be caught during the recording sessions.
But this cannot be the whole truth. One finds, for example, that infinitives
or imperatives are used in contexts where one would expect pronouns other than
3rd sg to appear, e.g. C at age 2;0 Alfred gucken 'Alfred look at/watch+inf',
probably meaning that C is watching or wants to watch what Alfred, the cat, is
doing. Note that C already uses the imperative of the same verb, guck, as of age
1;9. Furthermore, it is probably not an accident that it is precisely the 1st sg
pronoun which is omitted most frequently at a time when the number of null
subjects of other types has decreased dramatically; see Meisel (1990). A last
observations concerns the so-called "stem forms". Iv, during a period ranging
from age l;11-2;3, normally omits the subject in utterances where these forms
surface. The four verbs (types, not tokens) used in this way are mach 'make',
118 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
nimm 'take', giess 'pour', and schwimm 'swim'. An example from C's speech
is nein, Oma setz (=OV) 'no, granny seat (=put)', at age 2;2, after the adult
interlocutor had suggested putting the mouse into the car. What these uses
indicate, it appears to me, is that the lack of 1st and 2nd person subjects,
together with finite verb forms, cannot be explained by means of the above
mentioned external factors alone. There clearly exist contexts where they could
have been employed, but in these cases, the subject is frequently omitted and/or
the verb appears as a non-finite form, i.e. as an imperative, infinitive, or not
inflected at all.
In sum then, there are reasons to believe that the default option is used
because other ones are not available yet. The empirical evidence, however, is not
conclusive. It would be more convincing if one found 1st and 2nd person
subjects in constructions with verbs marked for the 3rd sg. Such cases are not
attested in our data, but following my hypothesis, I expect them to be possible.22
Let me now turn to the second of the questions raised above: What is the
nature of the first functional category implemented in child grammars? The
answer will, once more, be a tentative one, and this is again due to the
insufficiency of the knowledge available about corresponding features of mature
grammars. In the preceding section, I argued that with the appearance of
phenomena related to finiteness, there is abundant evidence that a functional
category above VP must now exist in the children's grammars, i.e. soon after the
emergence of agreement, structural positions must be available to which heads
(e.g. verbs), topicalized maximal projections, etc. can be moved. But this only
constitutes evidence in favor of the claim that some kind of (functional) X max
must be part of the child's grammar; it does not tell us which one it is.
Following the definition of finiteness in terms of [+AGR] and/ or [+T], and
given that agreement appears first, the most likely candidate for the category in
question appears to be AGRP. Yet there exist serious doubts whether it is at all
possible to justify the existence of a category AGR with its own prosection
AGRP. This is, quite obviously, a problem which cannot be solved, en passant,
in a study on early grammars. I will therefore limit the following remarks to a
brief review of those aspects for which developmental facts could possibly
provide evidence helping to decide in favor or against the existence of AGRP.
Remember that the standard assumption, before Pollock (1989) suggested
the split-INFL hypothesis, had been that INFL consists of AUX and (optionally)
GETTING FAT 119
AGR; see, for example Chomsky (1986). According to this hypothesis, AUX
contains minimally Tense, possibly also Aspect and Modality; AGR had been
assumed to contain the so-called phi-features. The appeal of the split-INFL
hypothesis, as far as I can see, is mainly due to two of its properties: it creates
an additional landing site for verb movement and it "eliminates the odd
dual-headedness of INFL in earlier treatments" (Chomsky 1989).
The former, however, does not adequately motivate the need for a separate
Xmax. This has been demonstrated quite convincingly by Iatridou (1990), even
though she does not offer satisfactory alternative solutions herself for the
problems in question, i.e. the position of adverbials. And again: even if one
wanted to retain a landing site for "short movement", it is by no means clear that
this would have to be AGRR Note that AGR is claimed to contain infinitives
with "generally vacuous" agreement and that it is deletable at LF since it does
not play any role there; see Chomsky (1989). This contrasts sharply with the
properties of the elements formerly contained in INFL's twin head AUX: Tense
is needed at LF, and although Aspect and Modality have not, in the recent
literature, received the attention they deserve, there can be no doubt that this is
true for them, as well. What I want to say is that the "movement" argument at
best demonstrates the need for more than one verbal functional category above
VR But AGR need not be one of them. In fact, Tense, Modality, Aspect, and of
course COMP, are more likely candidates.
As for the dual-headedness of INFL, one may wonder whether AGR ever
had to be interpreted as a head, in the first place. Remember that INFL, the head
of IP, used to be rewritten as "(AGR) AUX". The oddity of this treatment of
INFL consists in the non-justified assumption that a syntactic head should
dominate other syntactic categories, i.e. elements other than those which are part
of its morphological structure. Yet if the picture outlined above is correct, the
so-called phi-features are assigned to INFL, rather than being contained in an
element base-generated in INFL. At any rate, I do not see any justification for
the claim that the presence of the "phi-features" or of their morphological
spell-outs should justify the existence of an additional Xmax. What seems to be
uncontroversial is that an element is needed which assigns nominative Case and
which triggers subject verb agreement, i.e. [+agr], see above. The problem of its
precise nature cannot be pursued any further in the context of the present paper.
Suffice it to say that it could be part of the featural composition of INFL, and
its phonological realization will have to be affixed or cliticized to a verbal head
moved into INFL.
Adopting a strategy suggested by Occam's razor, one should try to avoid a
120 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
make explicit why just this form should be the crucial one, completeness of the
repertoire of forms is apparently meant to be the explanation since, according to
Clahsen (1986, 1988), 2nd sg is the last agreement affix to be learned. Yet this
is empirically not correct. Table 2 shows that both C and Iv use 2nd sg before
1st forms. This is why, throughout the present paper, I have argued that
availability of forms for two of the three grammatical persons appears to be
sufficient as a criterion for successful acquisition.
Verrips & Weissenborn (1990), studying French and German monolingual
children, arrive at a similar conclusion. They demonstrate quite convincingly that
verbs are moved out of VP before 2nd sg markings are acquired, contradicting
explicitly the claims by Clahsen (1986). My interpretation of these developments
differs from the position taken by Verrips & Weissenborn (1990), however, in
so far as I explain the earliest forms as default markings on verbs still placed in
VP, whereas they contend that IP is present right from the beginning. Note that
Verrips & Weisssenborn (1990) find that two of the three French children who
they studied already use "finite verbs" at a point of development when verbs do
not yet move into the head of IP. They suggest that this indicates that the
children are having problems with verb movement in French because it's effects
are frequently invisible in surface word order. Although this is certainly a
possibility, a conjecture of this kind would require additional supporting
evidence. It may turn out to be rather difficult to distinguish empirically between
a hypothesis claiming the non-existence of IP and one according to which IP is
existent but cannot be used. The analysis suggested in this paper, i.e. that early
"finite" verb forms are default markings during a phase when IP has not yet been
implemented in the children's grammars, would have to be preferred for reasons
of parsimony.
The second empirical observation which needs to be matched against the
claims about the architecture of grammatical structures concerns verb placement.
Note that our claim that the finite verb is moved to INFL yields adult-like
structures for French but not for German, as a look at structures (1) and (2) at
the beginning of this chapter will easily reveal. German IP exhibits head-final
order; consequently, a verb raised to INFL still appears in clause-final position,
but this is normally not the case at this point of development in child speech.
Note that postulating an AGRP does not solve the problem either, for it would
have to be head-final. At first sight, these facts appear to indicate that not only
IP but also CP have developed and that the verb is moved to C, as in adult
grammar. Alternatively, one might entertain the idea that some other (head-
initial) Xmax has been added to the children's grammar. Yet it can be shown that
122 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
the observed facts are easily accounted for, assuming that IP in child grammars
is ordered head-initially. The finite verb is thus moved to the head position of
INFL and remains there, rather than being raised to the head of CP. Both
features of developing grammars are explained and justified in Müller (1993) and
in Meisel & Müller (1992) and need therefore not be discussed here in more
detail.
Consequently, I want to maintain that it is sufficient for early grammars to
make two positions available for verbs in German as well as in French; they may
remain in VP where they can appear in the 3rd sg (default) form, an option not
tolerated by the mature grammar, or they are moved to the head of IP.
Interestingly enough, there is some empirical evidence suggesting that these
options may indeed exist simultaneously in early grammars. One finds
constructions in which the same verb appears twice, in exactly these two
positions.
(18) a. und macht bourn macht (Iv 2;06,06)
and goes bang goes
'it goes bang'
b. macht [s]eiße der macht (Iv 2;09,18)
makes shit he makes
'he makes a mess'
What seems to be happening in such cases is that the children copy the verb
where adult grammar requires a trace to be left after movement. Copying of this
kind is, in fact, predicted by Roeper (1990).
To sum up, then, I have argued that the earliest grammatical structures lack
functional categories and resemble, therefore, adult VPs; see (6) and (7), above.
With the emergence of subject verb agreement, verb and NP movement out of
VP, etc., there can be no doubt that a functional category has been implemented
in the children's grammars.
This has been shown to happen at the following ages: C 2;3-2;4, Iv 2;4-2;5,
P 2;ll-3;0 in German, and C 2;4-2;5, Iv 2;4-2;5, P 2;ll-3;0 in French. MLU
values, at about this age, increase significantly and stay above 3.0, from then on.
Grammatical structures, at this point of development are claimed to be those in
(19) and (20), for French and German, respectively.
GETTING FAT 123
Note that I do not commit myself to a specific structural position for the
negating element. It could be adjoined to VP, but this is not crucial for the
present discussion. Subject NPs are raised from Spec-VP to Spec-IP position.
This is where they are assigned NOM Case by [+agr] in Infi. Verbs are raised
to the head position of IP where they form a unit with [+agr]; the latter will be
realized as an affix in German and as a subject clitic in French.
Comparing these structures with those generated by mature grammars, see
(1) and (2), one finds that some major differences still prevail. One is that
developing grammars at this point still lack a CP. From this it follows that in
German, SVO sequences are not yet true V2 structures since these require the
placement of finite verbs in the head position of CP, attracted by [+F] which, in
adult German, is also placed in C. In addition, IP should be head-final in
German. A number of observations suggest that the children's grammars indeed
do not yet possess a complementizer system at a point of development where IP
is clearly established; see Müller (1993) and Meisel and Müller (1992). In other
words, German child grammars still differ in significant ways from their mature
counterparts, even though this variation falls within the range of what UG
principles and parameters tolerate. The structure of French sentences, on the
other hand, is basically the one required by the adult grammar, except for the
missing CP. The question what will happen in the course of further develop
ments in German, is studied in detail by Müller (1991, 1993).
124 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
8. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
1. The term "predicate" refers to elements which, in adult grammar, are categorized as
verbs, adjectives, and verbal particles (e.g. German ab 'off, away, gone').
2. The capital -E is used in order to avoid having to decide between infinitive -er and
past participle -é.
3. However, as has been pointed out to me by Susanne Carroll, this might actually be
explicable in terms of the phonology of focus, in other words as a grammatical rather
than a pragmatic phenomenon.
4. "With the introduction of forced and non-forced Agreement, we have to distinguish
between the notions "Agree with a position" and "Agree with a category". ... If the
language is a forced Agreement language, the position must be occupied by an
appropriately marked ("Agreed with") maximal category, but if the language is not a
forced Agreement language, the position may be left vacant or may be occupied by a
maximal category devoid of the expected Agreement (Case-marking). This is the
meaning of forced Agreement" (Kuroda 1988:11).
5. Note that P is very slow in his linguistic development, following behind by approxi
mately six months the average of the children studied by our research group. He
eventually catches up with the others, however, between age 3;0 and 4;0. The slowness
of his earlier developments explains perhaps why, in his case, the emergence of some
of the forms attributed to the second phase overlap with the appearance of forms of the
first phase.
6. A form is regarded as being used productively when it appears with more than one verb
(type) and in several subsequent recordings.
7. 2nd pl verb forms are non-existent or extremely rare in other corpora, as well. I suspect
that this is due to the fact that the child, during the recording sessions, usually interacts
with only one person.
8. I assume that one of the two variants for 1st sg marking may be regarded as sufficient
to say that 1st sg marking has been acquired.
9. It will be slightly modified below.
10. The 2nd pl -ez = [e] may be ignored, here, since it does not exist in the data.
11. Schlyter (1990) reached similar conclusions studying three other bilingual children,
including Iv.
12. Note that even if this explanation failed, the worst case scenario, as far as the time of
emergence of finiteness is concerned, would be that finiteness is available earlier than
suggested, i.e. at age 2;3 for Iv.
13. Auxiliary+past participle constructions, however, do not appear until much later in
Ivar's speech, i.e. not until age 3;2. I have no explanation for this late acquisition.
126 JÜRGEN M. MEISEL
14. In the case of C and Iv, this seems in fact to happen slightly earlier. Remember,
however, that I opted for a "conservative" estimate when discussing agreement; there
existed indeed some scattered evidence earlier than at the times mentioned above.
15. Cf. attempts to formulate generalizations of this type as the "tensed S condition".
16. Note that according to this hypothesis, finiteness is a derivative notion, i.e. there is no
need for a feature [±finite], since it is defined in terms of [+T] and/or [+AGR],
17. At this point, I am only concerned with subject-verb agreement. Other relations seem
to allow for agreement within DPs or between objects and verbs.
18. von Stechow & Sternefeld (1988:300) state that it happens "per conventionem".
19. The fact that both depend on the same condition is captured by the well-known
observation that nominative Case assignment is subject to the agreement requirement.
20. As for the latter, however, Clahsen claims that they are inserted directly into the head
of INFL and are not subject to movement. I will not go into this, at this point.
21. Note that the same kind of problem arises for every hypothesis trying to explain the
chronological precedence of such forms. Clahsen's (1986) account, for example, predicts
lst/2nd sg subjects could occur productively together with 3rd sg verb forms in
constructions of "low transitivity".
22. This hypothesis is empirically equivalent to what one would predict to happen if one
were to follow Clahsen (1986).
23. Remember that this discussion only refers to categories which have been suggested to
replace IP. No claims are made about other functional categories proposed recently, e.g.
DP, NumP.
References
Aldridge, Michelle. 1986. "A First Stage in the Acquisition of INFL." Research Papers
in Linguistics 1.39-58.
Bickerton, Derek. 1990a. Language and Species. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
—. 1990b. "Syntactic Development: The brain just does it." Manuscript,
University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
Carroll, Susanne E. 1989. "Language Acquisition Studies and a Feasible Theory of
Grammar." Canadian Journal of Linguistics 34.399-418.
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa lectures
(=Studies in Grammar, 9.). Dordrecht: Foris (19843).
—. 1986. Barriers (=Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, 13.). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
GETTING FAT 127
Weissenborn, Jürgen & Maaike Verrips. 1989. "Negation as a Window to the Structure
of Early Child Language." Manuscript, Max Planck Institut für Psycholinguistik,
Nijmegen.
More about INFL-ection and Agreement
The Acquisition of Clitic Pronouns in French
Georg A. Kaiser
University of Hamburg
1. Introduction
The emergence and role of functional categories in child language has been
the subject of a number of recent acquisition studies in several languages. While
some researchers assume that functional categories are present in child language
from the very beginning, others contend that they appear later in children's
grammars, probably due to maturational factors.1
In the present study, I will deal with agreement phenomena in French child
language and with the development of the functional category INFL. To be more
precise, I will investigate the acquisition of French clitic pronouns. After
considering their very special properties and behavior, I will argue that they are
agreement markers. I will assume that subject clitics are generated under the
INFL node. Consequently it is predicted that their acquisition should be
intimately related to the emergence of INFL. Data from two bilingual boys,
Pascal (Pa) and Ivar (Iv), will be analyzed to show that this prediction is correct.
The emergence of subject clitics corresponds to what has been found by Meisel
(1990) and others concerning the development of INFL. They emerge very early
and suddenly in children's speech and precisely at the point when INFL is
presumed to become available. In contrast to subject clitics, I will assume that
object clitics are base-generated under the V°-node making them appear to be
part of the lexical category verb. Since lexical categories, in particular verbs, are
assumed to be present in child grammar from early on, one might expect that
object clitics should also appear early and that their acquisition should not
depend on the emergence of a functional category. However, the acquisition data
show that they occur much later than subject clitics. In addition, like subject
132 GEORG A. KAISER
clitics, they emerge suddenly and are mastered within a short period of time.
In what follows, I will give a short description of the properties of French
clitic pronouns and provide an analysis within the framework of the Theory of
Principles and Parameters (cf. Chomsky 1981, 1989). I will then demonstrate
that the acquisition data are consistent with the proposed analysis of clitic
pronouns.
precise, I adopt a 'weak' version of the continuity hypothesis which does not
require that children initially have access to all grammatical principles and
categories which are part of the adult grammar. On this view, children might lack
certain kinds of linguistic knowledge in the early stages. Thus, child grammar is
in principle of the same nature as adult grammar, but specific child grammars
differ from their respective adult grammars since the child still has to decide
which parameterized options of universal grammar are instantiated in the
grammar of the language to be acquired.
In accordance with this weak version, it has been argued that functional
categories are lacking or underspecified in early grammars (Guilfoyle & Noonan
1988; Radford 1986; Müller 1993, this volume, chap. 9). Under this assumption,
the subsequent emergence of elements such as verbal inflectional markers or
conjunctions is explained by the fact that children have developed access to
functional categories.
If this view is correct, we can then make the following predictions about the
acquisition of French clitics. Given the assumption that subject clitics are
inflectional prefixes and, as such, generated under INFL, one should expect the
appearance of subject clitics in child language only when INFL is available to
the child. Prior to this, subject clitics should only appear sporadically or not at
all. However, once the functional category INFL has emerged, we should observe
a sudden increase in the use of these clitics. Different predictions apply to the
acquisition of object clitics. According to the analysis proposed above, object
clitics are generated in the VP. Therefore, if early child language is characterized
MORE ABOUT INFL-ECTION AND AGREEMENT 137
The acquisition of clitics in French has received little attention so far. There
exist several analyses studying the null subject phenomenon in child language
where the use of subject clitics, especially in comparison to lexical subjects, has
been taken into account (Hulk 1987; Pierce 1989; Meisel 1990).10 However, the
emergence and the development of subject clitics in child language generally has
not been examined. The same observation applies to research on the acquisition
of object clitics.11 Studies on this issue mostly deal with the problem of word
order (e.g., Nuckle 1981; Haverkort & Weissenborn 1991) and merely report that
object clitics are acquired fairly late (Clark 1985:714).12 They generally agree
that the placement of object clitics presents few problems for young children;
preverbal object clitics normally appear in their appropriate position. Only in
positive imperatives, where object clitics have to appear postverbally in French,
do children make mistakes, during a first stage, by using object clitics in
preverbal position (Haverkort & Weissenborn 1991). Problems also arise when
more than one object clitic occurs. In this case, the order of the clitics is
sometimes reversed, or one clitic is simply dropped (Nuckle 1981).
In the following analysis of the acquisition data of the two bilingual boys,
Pa and Iv, I focus on the question of emergence and development of subject and
object clitics and discuss related phenomena such as the development of word
order and agreement markers and the use of lexical arguments.
The first examples in Pa's and Iv's data containing a possible subject clitic
form are utterances with ce and with ça. Both forms appear from the very
beginning in the data of both children. However, there can be no doubt that ce
138 GEORG A. KAISER
is rote-learned and is not yet analyzed as a clitic since it is always used as part
of the formulaic c'est construction (see also Meisel 1990:278):
(6) a. (c'est) mal (Pa 1;10)
'this is bad'
b. c'est kaputt (Iv 2;3)
'it's broken (=Germ.)'
During this early acquisition phase, i.e. until 2;1 (for Pa) and 2;2 (for Iv),
the only subject clitic forms other than ce or ça are found in utterances which are
imitations of adult speech, as shown in (9):
(9) a Ad.: où elle est
Pa: où elle est (Pa 1;11)
'where is she?'
b. Ad.: je le connais pas encore
I him know not yet
:
Iv.: (je) connais pas (Iv 2;1)
'I don't know'
MORE ABOUT INFL-ECTION AND AGREEMENT 139
Thus, both such imitated forms and the early ce and ça cannot count as evidence
for the beginning of productive use of subject clitics since they must be
interpreted as initially representing unanalyzed forms (see also Meisel 1990:279).
Tables 2a and 2b display the emergence of subject clitics in the speech of
the two children:13
je (1) 3(3) 11 6
tu KD (1) 5(2) 5
il/elle (5) (3) 2(1) 2 12(2) 35 28(2) 7
on (2) (1) 2(1) 1 10
nous/vous
ils/elles 1 (1) 7
je 24 8 30 17 14
tu 3 1 10 3 2
il/elle 28 17 23(1) 43(1) 20
on 7 8 9 8 5
nous/vous
ils/elles 2 9 1
As can be seen in Table 2a, the first clear examples in Pa's data of subject
clitics in non-imitated and non-formulaic utterances are found at the age of 2;1:
(10) a. maman elle est là (Pa 2;1)
Mommy she is here
'Mommy is here'
b. où l'(=elle) est maman (Pa 2;1)
where she is Mommy
'where is Mommy?'
Pa continues using these clitic forms, for two months, combining them
exclusively with the copula être 'be':
140 GEORG A. KAISER
je 1 4 2(1) 10 30
tu 1 1 4 10
il/elle 3(1) 15 6 31 37
on 6 3 13 20 24
nous/vous
ils/elles 1 15 1 1
clitic forms used by Pa are all 3rd person clitics. Until the age of 2;3, only one
clear example appears of the use of clitics other than il(s) or elle(s), namely the
2nd person clitic tu:
(13) t'as raison (Pa 2;3)
'you're right'
One month later, one can observe the emergence of 1st person clitics:
(14) a. moi j'ai (tout) mangé (le) fromage (Pa 2;4)
me I have all eaten (the) cheese
'I have eaten the whole cheese'
b. on va voir (Pa 2;4)
'we will see'
c. c'est comme çaqu on joue (Pa 2;4)
it's so that we play
'it's like that that we play'
Note that in adult French, although semantically a 1st person clitic, on
behaves like a 3rd person clitic and appears exclusively with 3rd person verb
forms. From the beginning of its use, Pa employs it productively since he already
combines it with different verbs. As for je, he first uses it only in one utterance
— repeated three times — with the auxiliary avoir 'have'. Nevertheless one
month later, je occurs in combination with different verbs:
(15) a. je veux ça (Pa 2;5)
'I want this'
b. je vois pas la tête (Pa 2;5)
I see not the head
'I don't see his head'
At the same age, tu also appears and is used with a variety of verbs:
(16) a. turnets (Pa 2;5)
'do you put (it)?'
b. tu veux (Pa 2;5)
'do you want?'
As far as Iv's acquisition of subject clitics is concerned, one can observe a
similar development (see Table 2b) (see also Meisel 1990). The first utterances
with clearly non-imitated and non-rote-learned subject clitic forms emerge at the
age of 2;2:
142 GEORG A. KAISER
Pascal Ivar
il/elle 2;3 2;3
on 2;4 2;5
je 2;5 2;5
tu 2;5 2;5
The most striking observation with regard to the acquisition of object clitics
is that both children acquire object clitics later than subject clitics. This can be
seen in Tables 4a and 4b where the emergence of object clitics is documented.
The first object clitic forms used by Pa appear at the age of 2;4, i.e. three
months after he produces subject clitics for the first time:
(22) a. on s' déguise (Pa 2;4)
one himself disguise
'we're going to dress up'
b. veux le rem[ε]-(=remettre) (Pa 2;4)
want it back-put
'(I) want to put it back'
144 GEORG A. KAISER
As can be seen in Table 4a, Pa employs the 3rd person object clitic le (and
later also les and la) quite frequently once he begins using it. Right from the
beginning, he combines it with different verbs, mostly nonfinite ones. Apart from
this clitic, Pa sporadically uses the reflexive se. Although quite rare, it seems to
be used productively from early on for it occurs with different verbs. As far as
other object clitics are concerned, they are totally absent in Pa's data for a long
period of time. Only at age 3;2 does Pa begin to employ object clitic forms other
than le(s)/la or se. From their first appearance on he uses them quite regularly
and in combination with different (finite and nonfinite) verbs. It seems that by
the age of 3;3 Pa has acquired all object clitics in French with the exception of
vous. Examples are shown in (23):
(23) a. il(s) me mange(nt) (Pa 3;2)
'he is (/they are) eating me'
b. il t' a mordu (Pa 3;3)
'did he bite you?'
c. on peut pas lefaire (Pa 3;2)
'you cannot do it-MASC'
MORE ABOUT INFL-ECTION AND AGREEMENT 145
obj. clitic 2;04 2;05 2;06 2;07 2;08 2;09 2;10 2;11 3;00 3;01
me 1
te (1) (1) 3 4(1)
le(s)lla (2) (2) 1 4
luilleur
nous/vous 1
se (1) 13 (1) 2(1) 3 2
me 1 3
te 2 1
le(s)lla 11 12(4) 16 11
lui/leur
nous/vous
se 6 4 2
In Iv's data, there are no regular uses of object clitics until the age of 3;0.
Table 4b indicates that object clitics are almost completely absent up to this age.
Only the reflexive se appears earlier. Note that, at the age of 2;9, se occurs
exclusively in a single construction which seems to be rote-learned, see (24a).
Two months later, it is used, for the first time, in combination with other verbs,
as shown in (24b) and (24c):
implicit assumption that subject clitics are intimately related to finiteness. This
is corroborated by the fact that from very early on, i.e. right from the moment
when they start using subject clitics productively, both children combine subject
noun phrases or subject pronouns with subject clitics in finite sentences. They
employ subject clitics in order to mark morphologically the agreement in
number, gender and person between subject and verb. Examples are shown in
(26) and (27) (compare also the examples in (10a), (14a), (25a) and (33a)):
(26) a. la grand-mère elle est là (Pa 2;3)
the grand-mother she is here
'the grand-mother is here'
b. moi j'ai malade aussi (Pa 2;5)
me I have sick too
T am sick too'
c. toi tu dors aussi (Pa 2;9)
you you sleep too
'you are sleeping too'
d. les rouges ils sont pas les meilleurs (Pa 2;10)
the red ones they are not the best ones
'the red ones are not the best ones'
e. lui il fait pas caca (Pa 2;11)
him he makes not caca
'he doesn't do caca'
(27) a. Ivar i(l) repare (Iv 2;5)
Ivar he repairs
Tvar repairs'
b. les poupées elles arrivent (Iv 2;8)
the dolls they arrive
'the dolls are coming'
c. moi je vais manger dans ma bouche (Iv 2;10)
me I will eat in my mouth
T will eat (it) in my mouth'
d. lui il va dans son lit (Iv 2;11)
him he goes in his bed
'he goes to his bed'
In addition to utterances of this kind, one also finds sentences in which the
subject clitic agrees with a subject in a postverbal position, as shown in (28) and
(29) (compare also the examples in (12c) and (25e)):
MORE ABOUT INFL-ECTION AND AGREEMENT 149
pronounced without any observable pause. In addition, one finds nearly identical
utterances in children's data which differ merely with respect to the position of
the subject:
(30) a. moi je peux abendbwt essen (Pa 2;10)
me I can supper[Germ.] eat[Germ.]
'I can have supper'
b. je peux abendbwt essen moi (Pa 2;10)
I can supper [Germ] eat [Germ] me
'I can have supper'
(31) a. ce[n]ui-[n]à(-celui-là) i[n](=il) est
this one here he is
ma[n]ade(-malade) (Iv 3;4)
sick
'this one (here) is sick'
b. i[n](=il) est ma[n]ade(-malade) ce[n]ui(=celui) (Iv 3;0)
he is sick this one
'this one is sick'
Note that the meaning of each utterance in (30) and (31) remains the same
regardless of whether the subject is in a preverbal or postverbal position.
Moreover, both children mostly employ definite postverbal subjects. This is to
say that utterances with postverbal subject can be regarded as instances of Free
Inversion; the occurrence of postverbal subjects does not involve a semantic
change with respect to a sentence with a preverbal subject nor is it restricted by
the Definiteness Effect.16 Both children, thus, display a typical property of null
subject languages; it seems that they already have set the null subject parameter
to the appropriate value. This is supported by the increase of utterances with
postverbal subjects coincident with the acquisition of subject clitics. This strongly
suggests that the setting of the null subject parameter takes place as soon as the
system of subject clitics has emerged. As shown above, subject clitics are
analyzed from early on as inflectional markers. As a consequence, once the
children have acquired the subject clitics they possess a system in which INFL
is "rich enough" to identify lexically empty subjects. From this moment on,
therefore, they should be able to set the null subject parameter by choosing the
null subject option. This involves, as predicted by the standard parameter theory,
the simultaneous emergence of all typical properties of null subject languages,
such as Free Inversion, without further acquisition (see Meisel, to appear).
Note that on the basis of the assumption that subject clitics are agreement
MORE ABOUT INFL-ECTION AND AGREEMENT 151
markers which are generated in INFL one can account for another striking
observation concerning the acquisition of French subject clitics. As has been
pointed out, both children start using 3rd person clitics first, clitics other than 3rd
person emerge later. Interestingly, this developmental sequence of subject clitics
corresponds to what has been found in several studies on the acquisition of verb
inflections or agreement markers in languages other than French. For example,
studies on the acquisition of German agree in the observation that children
acquire verbal inflections of 3rd person before those of other persons (cf.
Clahsen 1986; Clahsen & Penke 1992; Meisel 1986, 1990, this volume). Ezeiza-
barrena (to appear) reports similar findings from the acquisition of Basque,
observing that the first inflectional marker used by children is that of 3rd person.
In other words, Pa and Iv acquire subject clitics in a way similar to children
acquiring inflectional markers in other languages.
As far as object clitics are concerned, their acquisition also can be explained
if one adopts the analysis given above, according to which they are agreement
markers. It can be observed that both children, Iv and Pa, employ object clitics
in constructions which contain coreferential lexical object nouns as soon as they
use object clitics productively:
(32) a. je vais les prendre les jaunes (Pa 2;8)
I will them take the yellows
'I will take the yellow ones'
b. on peut les manger les poissons (Pa 2;9)
one can them eat the fishes
'we can eat the fish'
(33) a. moi [z]e(=je) le prendí re) [n]e(=le) bus (Iv 3;1)
me I him take the bus
'I'll take the bus'
b. main(te)nant [z]e(=je) les range mes photos (Iv 3;2)
now I them tidy up my photos
'now I am tidying up my photos'
Although these examples are rather infrequent, their existence indicates that
both children have recognized that object clitics function as agreement markers.17
Another observation which supports this assumption is that there are no cases of
errors where clitics occur in the postverbal complement position. This type of
error, however, could be expected to show up in child language if object clitics
were analyzed as base-generated in postverbal NP-position, and therefore not as
agreement markers (see also Weissenborn 1988).
152 GEORG A. KAISER
Note that these results correspond to what one might expect if one adopts
the analysis that object clitics are agreement markers. Recall, however, that based
on this analysis, one might also expect object clitics to emerge earlier than
subject clitics. Given the assumption that object clitics are lexical heads, they
might emerge quite early in child grammar since lexical categories are supposed
to be present in child grammar from early on. The data from language
acquisition, however, show that object clitics are a late development. This seems
to weaken the analysis given for French object clitics. Interestingly, however, in
so-called object agreement languages the acquisition of object agreement markers
resembles the acquisition of French object clitics. In other words, in object
agreement languages, markers for object-verb agreement display a development
similar to French object clitics, i.e. they appear and are mastered later than
markers for subject-verb agreement. This is the case, for example, in Basque, a
language which possesses different verbal affixes for both overt subject-verb
agreement and overt verb agreement with direct and indirect objects. Ezeiza-
barrena (to appear) reports that, for a long period of time, children acquiring
Basque do not mark object-verb agreement while they already make use of
subject-verb agreement markers. The same seems to be true as well for the
acquisition of Hungarian where the agreement between verbs and definite objects
must be marked overtly. Here too, children take a long time to acquire the
relevant agreement markers (MacWhinney 1976). Furthermore, in Romance
languages other than French, where object clitic pronouns also function as
affixes, they emerge later than inflectional markers which serve to mark
subject-verb agreement (see Mahlau, to appear, for Spanish).
This parallelism between French object clitics and object agreement markers
in other languages strongly supports, I believe, the analysis of French object
clitics as agreement markers. What is not explained within this analysis,
however, is their relatively late development. Under the view that object clitics
are lexical heads such a development is surprising. Rather, one should expect
them to arise quite early in child language. In addition, being lexical heads with
a complex morphological paradigm their acquisition should require a long period
of time. Interestingly however, most object clitics are acquired rather rapidly and
within a short period. Note that this resembles the acquisition of subject clitics.
Given the weak version of the continuity hypothesis, this amounts to saying that
the acquisition of object clitics is also related to the emergence of a functional
category. In Müller, Crysmann & Kaiser (1993) it is argued that this functional
category is COMP. Current studies on language acquisition have shown that this
functional category is available only late in child grammar. And indeed at least
MORE ABOUT INFL-ECTION AND AGREEMENT 153
Iv's acquisition data seem to confirm the relationship between object clitics and
COMP. He starts using object clitics productively at the age of 3;0, at the time
when he seems to have developed access to the CP-node (see Müller 1993, this
volume, chap. 9). Thus, the sudden increase of object clitics could be explained
along the same lines as the acquisition of subject clitics for they both depend on
the emergence of a functional category.
6. Conclusion
Acknowledgements
Notes
1. See Meisel (ed. 1992) for a recent collection of studies on this issue.
2. See Zwicky (1977) and Zwicky & Pullum (1983) for a synopsis of the typical
characteristics of clitics; see also Klavans (1982) and Prinz (1991). For a more extensive
discussion of the special properties of clitics in Romance languages see Kayne
(1975:81-92), Strozer (1976:106-113), Kaiser & Meisel (1991) and Kaiser
(1992:29-47).
3. In addition, French has two pronominal clitic adverbs, y and en, which will be not
treated in the present study.
4. In the following discussion of the acquisition of clitic pronouns, I will ignore the
problems the children may have with case marking. On this issue, see Meisel (1986),
Parodi (1990) and Stenzel (this volume).
5. Note that the case form and grammatical function of a clitic pronoun are not necessarily
identical (cf. Hunnius 1991:114; Kaiser 1992).
6. One can add to this table the demonstrative pronouns ce and ça which share all
properties of clitic elements (Morin 1979:22f.; Lambrecht 1981:20).
7. See Hunnius (1977) and Kaiser (1992) for a summary of the debate on the role of
French subject clitics in Romance linguistics.
8. Note that under the view that the subject clitics are agreement markers French displays
a "uniform morphology" which is purportedly decisive for the licensing of lexically
empty subjects (Jaeggli & Safir 1989).
9. In contrast to this, the claim that object clitics are adjoined to V' (Carroll 1982; Di
Sciullo 1990) does not capture this relationship between clitic and verb.
MORE ABOUT INFL-ECTION AND AGREEMENT 155
10. See also Roberge & Vinet (1989) and Carroll & Roberge (1989) for an overview of
some of these studies.
11. There are a few exceptions, e.g., Meisel (1990) who studied the development of
subject-verb agreement and subject clitics or, e.g., Weissenborn (1988) who analyzed
the development of object clitics.
12. Only Weissenborn (1988) observes an early development of object clitics. Unfortunately
he does not provide further details about their frequency or developmental sequences.
Therefore, it remains unclear whether object clitics are used productively from early on.
Thus, it is difficult to compare Weissenborn's results with the results of other studies,
including the present one.
13. The numbers in brackets refer either to clitics appearing in constructions which imitate
a previous adult utterance or to forms which cannot be identified unambiguously as
clitics because they are not clearly audible.
14. Note that 2nd plural forms are scarcely or not used at all in early child language (see
also Meisel 1990).
15. See also Pierce (1989:42f.) who makes the same observation in her study.
16. In contrast to my view, researchers studying clitics or word order in French generally
regard sentences with postverbal subjects as instances of right dislocations, even when
they are analyzing subject clitics as agreement markers (Roberge 1986, 1990; Hulk
1991). As a consequence, in acquisition studies based on this assumption these
sentences are treated in a different way than sentences with preverbal subjects which
leads to slightly different results (Hulk 1987; Pierce 1989; Roberge & Vinet 1989); see
also Köppe, this volume, for a discussion of this problem with respect to the analysis
of Pierce (1989).
17. Weissenborn (1988) also finds early examples for this type of construction. Further
more, he observes that these constructions "show up at the same time in child's
language as other agreement processes like subject-verb agreement" (Weissenborn
1988:17). This observation provides, as he points out, an additional argument for the
status of object clitics as agreement markers.
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Kaiser, Georg A. & Jürgen M. Meisel. 1991. "Subjekte und Null-Subjekte im Franzö
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Mahlau, Axel. To appear. "Orden de palabras y estructura oracional en los niños
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——. 1990. "INFL-ection: Subjects and Subject-Verb Agreement." Two First
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——. 1986b. "On the Status of Subject Clitics in Romance." Studies in Romance
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Languages." Canadian Journal of Linguistics 31.55-79.
——. 1990. The Syntactic Recoverability of Null Arguments. Montréal:
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78.530-547.
Safir, Kenneth J. 1985. Syntactic Chains (= Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 40.).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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linguistique dans les pays de langue romane, ed. by Norbert Dittmar & Brigitte
Schlieben-Lange, 81-85. Tübingen: Narr.
Strozer, Judith R. 1976. Clitics in Spanish. Ph.D. Dissertation (Los Angeles). Ann
Arbor: University Microfilms.
Verrips, Maaike & Jürgen Weissenborn. 1992. "Routes to Verb Placement in Early
German and French: The independence of finiteness and agreement." Meisel 1992,
283-331.
Weissenborn, Jürgen. 1988. "The Acquisition of Clitic Object Pronouns and Word
Order in French: Syntax or morphology?." Manuscript, Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics at Nijmegen.
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Language 59.502-513.
Case Assignment and Functional Categories
in Bilingual Children
Routes of Development and
Implications for Linguistic Theory
Achim Stenzel
University of Hamburg
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Background
For a detailed discussion of the DP in German, see Löbel (1990, 1991), Haider
(1988), Olsen (1988, 1989), and also the relevant section in Müller (this volume,
chap. 4).1
What is the status of abstract Case in a DP framework? In generative
theory, Case is seen as a means to structurally license noun phrases at the level
of S-structure. This is captured in the formulation of the Case Filter that rules out
as deviant any noun phrase with phonetic content that appears in an S-structure
position where it cannot be assigned Case. The Case Filter is conceived as a
constraint on the distribution of DPs.
This idea of ruling out certain categories in certain positions is common to
generative theory, and it is captured in Chomsky's (1986) Principle of Full
Interpretation. This principle states that every node must have a role in the
sentence, and therefore every node must be licensed. In our approach, NPs are
licensed as they are complements of a functional head DET. Abney assumes a
process called functional selection (f-selection), and in phrase structure
representations where VP is first sister to INFL and is immediately dominated
by F, VP is f-selected by INFL. Likewise, NPs are f-selected by DET,2 and
f-selection in general is a relation by which the arguments of functional elements
are licensed in the same way as the arguments of thematic, i.e. lexical elements
are licensed by 6-assignment.3 The Case Filter may be reinterpreted as the
application of the Licensing Condition to DPs:4
The Case Filter assures that DPs appear in certain positions only, and the
relevant criterion is that this position be governed5 by a potential Case assigner.
Abstract Case is the feature that makes categories of a certain type, i.e. DPs,
visible for the grammar (cf. Speas 1990). The standard assumption is that Case
is assigned to the DP, but Emonds (1985) proposed that Case marking is the
projection of some feature of the assigning category onto the assignee. Another
approach suggests that the grammar, being a set of well-formedness conditions,
checks whether a given DP on S-structure bears a Case feature or not; if not, the
sentence is ruled out as ungrammatical.6 The idea that Case is not assigned, but
checked entails that DPs are Case-marked already in the lexicon.
The condition imposed on DPs by the Case Filter is complemented, in Fukui
164 ACHIM STENZEL
& Speas (1986), by a requirement that all features a category has to assign must
be discharged. So a category that can assign Case has to assign its Case to result
in a well-formed structure (cf. Rothstein 1992); Fukui & Speas (1986) call this
the "Saturation Principle".
In languages that allow greater variability of word order, such as German
or Icelandic, different Case assignment relations are spelt out phonologically as
different morphological case categories; in languages that disallow word order
variation other than scrambling or dislocation, e.g. French, Swedish or English,
morphological variation is greatly reduced.
Case is assigned, under traditional assumptions, to the maximal projection
DP and the Case feature percolates to the head D°; the NP f-selected by D° has
to agree. Morphological realization of this agreement is language-specific (see
the section on case marking in German and French). In German and French (and
in English), it is rather more difficult to find evidence for the existence of DET
than it is in the case of INFL. Finiteness and V2 effects are clear indicators in
favor of the presence of INFL in child grammar (see Meisel 1990, this volume;
Meisel & Müller 1992); but neither German nor French display similar cases of
head movement in the case of DET. Therefore, it is interesting to look at the
findings of Demuth (1992). Demuth studied the acquisition of functional
categories in Sesotho, a Bantu language. According to her analysis, Sesotho DPs
have the following underlying structure:
The noun is raised into the DET position where it incorporates the noun class
marker assumed to be heading this category. It is not clear from Demuth's
presentation whether N° is supposed to be head-final or head-initial.7
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 165
* Gender distinctions are neutralized in the plural. The use of the genitive for pronouns
is obsolete and remains only with a few verbs and prepositions.
† I: strong declension; II: weak declension; III: mixed declension.
appear in Case positions and display morphological variation are the relative and
interrogative pronouns qui and que.
What follows from this analysis as far as the acquisition task is concerned?
Obviously, acquisition of clitics depends on a variety of factors: clitics agree for
Case, for gender and number. Case assignment, as we have seen, depends on the
presence of the functional category DET in the grammar. But does the
acquisition of clitics really depend on the presence of DET in the grammar?
Kaiser (this volume) shows that the acquisition of subject clitics, being
agreement markers, is connected with the acquisition of INFL. Thus we might
predict that they appear together with INFL in the grammar. Object clitics on the
other hand are the spell-out of a poorly understood agreement phenomenon (see
Kaiser 1992, this volume). As very little is known about this kind of agreement,
linguistic theory has little to offer for plausible predictions. It rather appears that
the acquisition process might shed light on the nature of grammatical structure.
Another area where Case-assignment is relevant for French is Case-
assignment by prepositions. Indirect objects (other than clitics) in French receive
their Case from a preposition which is very often understood as being semanti-
cally empty and being there only for the purpose of assigning Case to indirect
object NPs.11 Consider the following alternation:
(8) Je donne le livre au professeur
I give the book to-the teacher12
(9) Je le lui donne
I it to-him give
The preposition is used only with lexical or pronominal indirect objects, but not
with the object clitic. The interpretation of this preposition as a semantically
"weak" dummy (prépositions faibles) is supported by Emonds' (1985) suggestion
that indirect objects in German receive their dative case from a preposition that
is phonetically null, yet present in phrase structure to satisfy the Licensing
Condition:
(10) Ich gebe [PP 0 [DP dem Mann]] [DP das Buch]
I give the-DAT man the-ACC book
Clitic doubling is the term for structures where both a clitic and a coindexed
tonic pronoun or nominal argument are found:
(11) Je ne lei connais pas ce filmi
T not it know not that film'
168 ACHIM STENZEL
In between these extremes one finds many different proposals (see Müller 1993,
this volume) stating that some functional categories may be present in early child
grammar, others still lacking, or that there are positions available that are
underspecified as far as their feature specification is concerned, and may be
specified differently depending on the target language.
What consequences would these hypotheses have for the study of the
acquisition of Case marking? If we assume the No Functional Categories
Hypothesis to be correct we should be able to find a stage during which there are
no functional categories in the children's grammar, although other components
of UG are active, especially X-bar syntax since, according to Radford, children's
early utterances are characterized as projections of lexical elements. This means
that there should be no evidence for COMP, INFL or DET, thus no finite verbs,
no Case-marked noun phrases or definiteness effects, no overt complementizers
and, in German, no V2 effects. Presence of determiners should be random since
they are not placed in an obligatory head position, but adjoined to NP in some
way. This suggestion has been made by Roeper (1992).14 He assumes that some
children (but not necessarily all) make use of a so-called "default adjunction
capacity" which leads them to adjoin un-analyzed elements to other, already
identified categories. A clause containing an early complementizer, at a time
when INFL is already accessible, would have the following structure:
(16)
This adjunction structure would be maintained until the "X"-element has been
correctly analyzed and identified, and integrated into the grammar.
The crucial claim of this class of hypotheses is that it presupposes (i) X-bar
type hierarchical structures in these early utterances and assumes (ii) that the
functional categories come in later, and that the Case Filter, being a constraint
on the distribution of a functional category, is not operative. The alternative
would be to claim that the Case Filter would be reformulated after the acquisition
of functional categories, an assumption that is counter-intuitive if we want to see
170 ACHIM STENZEL
the Case Filter as a principle of UG. If the Case Filter is not yet operative (or
rather, applying vacuously since the category it refers to is not yet existent in the
grammar), we should expect children's noun phrases to appear in positions where
they would be ungrammatical in adult language. For example, we should find
prepositionless adverbial phrases because in these phrases the preposition is
needed to assign Case to the noun that expresses place, direction or time. As a
diagnostic tool, this criterion, on the other hand, loses force because the child
might use prepositions not because they are needed for structural reasons, but
because of the local or temporal meaning the convey. Another prediction made
by this hypothesis is that occurrence of determiners would not be accidental, as
the child creates the adjunct position for the purpose to house an element — in
this case the determiner — s/he has extracted from the intonation contour of the
target; or we should find that children do not systematically distinguish between
subjects and non-subjects, although this distinction is required in the target
language.
The opposite position, labeled "skeleton theory" by Müller (this volume),
assumes that the child, as soon as UG as a module of his cognition has matured
or been activated, possesses fully articulated phrase structure representations. The
positions for functional categories are present, but morphologically under-
specified. This assumption suffers from two drawbacks as far as Case and DPs
are concerned: First, the presence of all functional categories in child grammar
from early on would mean that the number of functional categories is universally
fixed, and second and more important, we would have to explain how children's
noun phrases could be interpreted as being DPs and still not be constrained by
the Case Filter.
The subjects of this study are two of the children of the DUFDE corpus, a
boy, Pascal, and a girl, Annika. The children have been studied from 1;8,22 to
4;10,4 (Pascal) and from 2;0,17 to 3;10,26 (Annika). The MLU values and
further details are given in chapter 2 in this volume.
accusative and dative is a second step. For French, developmental steps are not
equally clear, as Case distinctions do not have as obvious effects on the
grammar. Although the development of Christophe displays peculiar features due
to his temporary loss of French, he in part follows the same pattern.
3.2. Pascal
In Pascal's case, it has been possible to make out successive stages in the
development of both French and German that are identified by characteristic
traits.15
3.2.1. German
At the first stage, up to 1;8,22, Pascal uses no pronouns at all except two
occurrences of das (and several of a, which seems to be a variant of French ça
and is used in formulaic expressions):
(17) das ja (Pa 1;8,22)
that-one, yes
As far as determiners are concerned, there is just a sample of forms as ein,
its variants a and 'ne (=eine), or das. These forms occur solely in contexts that
might be classified as nominative, but they are phonetically underspecified, i.e.
undetermined as to their case form:
(18) a. ein/a schijf (Pa 1;8,22)
'one/a ship'
b. ne blum(a/e) (Pa 1;8,22)
'a flower'
The impression one gets from these forms is that the child knows that there is
a position to be filled, but that his phonetic representation to go into this position
is somehow "underspecified" and so he inserts some kind of filler or "shadow"
syllable (Demuth 1992, Peters & Menn 1990) — but see below for discussion.
At the second stage, which spans from approx. 1;9,30 to 2;4,7, the inventory
expands rapidly. Pascal acquires the whole range of personal pronouns except for
es, man and wir, and a number of weak and strong demonstratives. Except for
one stray form at 2;2,6:
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 173
As from 2;4,7 onwards, obviously, the dative has been associated with
prepositions by Pascal, an interpretation that is supported by overgeneralizations
of dative forms to accusative contexts when these are governed by a preposition,
and by the near exclusive occurrence of dative contexts in the governing domain
of a preposition. This association seems to break up after around 2;10, and the
ensuing problems last at least until 4;6.16
(27) a. is- is in mein buch lurchi (Pa 2;10,13)
'is in my book, lurchi'
b. ich springe über du (Pa 2;10,13)
'I jump over you-NOM'
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 177
3.2.2. French
the fact that there are also very few noun phrases, also potential Case assigners,
i.e. verbs and prepositions, are mostly absent. This stage lasts until 1;8,30, which
is, as we shall see, slightly longer than the comparable stage in Pascal's German.
The most frequent pronoun is ça:
(31) a. Adult: on prend celui-là?
'one takes that one?'
Child: celui-là (Pa 1;8,22)
'that one'
b. [sese] ça (=?que c'est ça?) (Pa 1;8,30)
'what is this?'
and there are a few clitics:
(32) on (r)egarde das (Pa 1;8,22)
'one looks at that'
Also Parodi (1990b) and Meisel (1986) have noted that on appears very early.
After that we find increasingly more subject clitics, and the first tonic
pronoun appears at 1;11,28:
(33) a. ça c'est un monsieur (Pa 1;11,28)
'that one is a man'
b. Adult: tu connais le jardin d'enfants toi?
'you know the kindergarten, you?'
Child: moi aussi (=?moi aussi je vais au jardin d'enfants)
me too (Pa 1;11,28)
T go to the kindergarten, too'
Although the first pronominal objects appear at 1;8,22, they remain rare
until 2;4,7 when the frequency of direct object pronouns rises suddenly. A few
weeks before that the frequency of noun phrases with a determiner rises
considerably, though not drastically at 2;0,30. At 2;4,7, there are more changes:
we find that Pascal uses many more subject clitics, tonic subject pronouns, and
more prepositional complements:
(34) a. moi aussi j'aime les maisons (Pa 2;4,7)
'me too, I like the houses'
b. moi j'ai (tout) mangé [d] fromage (Pa 2;4,7)
'me, I have eaten all the cheese'
c. il est là le nounours du/de papa (Pa 2;4,7)
'it is there, the teddy of (the) father'
180 ACHIM STENZEL
What is especially striking is the late appearance not only of indirect object
clitics, but also of pronominal and lexical indirect objects. The first lexical
indirect object is used at 2;10,13:
(35) au(x) petit(s) giraffe(s) (Pa 2;10,13)
'to the small giraffe(s)'
The first indirect object clitic appears at 3;2,23:
(36) mais faut me montrer aussi (Pa 3;2,23)
'but [it] is necessary to show [it] to me, too'
At 3;4,14 we find the first 3rd person indirect object clitics, which differ from
the first and second person clitics as they are not homophonous with their direct
object counterparts:
(37) a. va lui donner (Pa 3;4,14)
go to-him give
'I'm going to give it to them'
b. on va lui donner [saiә]19 (Pa 3;4,14)
'we are going to give [sab] to him'
So I would like to construct a sequence of stages for French that looks like
this:
(38) Pascal:
I [until 1;9] few (deictic) pronouns, few determiners no tonic pronouns
IIa [1;10-1;11] more pronouns, mostly clitics and "others"
inch ça. Transition from IIa to IIb
IIb [2;0-2;2] might be characterized by increase in noun phrases with
determiners
III [2;2-2;9] productive use of subject clitics and tonic pronouns
(IV [2;10 f.] development of indirect objects)
It is quite clear that the development of these forms is not, as in the case
of German, dependent on the acquisition of a morphological paradigm. As Kaiser
(this volume) has shown, one has to distinguish between tonic pronouns on the
one hand and clitics on the other, and, more specifically, between subject and
object clitics. The interpretation of French as a pro-drop-language entails that all
pronouns except the clitics have to appear in Case positions, but not all of these
positions have to be filled with lexical material. The clitics are coindexed with
their respective antecedents and agree in gender, number, and Case.
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 181
3.3. Annika
3.3.1. German
I have examined all those utterances that contain a lexically realized Case
assigner, i.e. a (finite or nonfinite) verb and/or a preposition. In general, Annika's
speech is less conclusive as to the state of grammatical development since she
talks less than Pascal.
At 2;0,17, the only utterance containing a lexically realized Case assigner is:
(39) auch apfel eß (An 2;0,17)
also apple eat
'he shall eat an apple, too'; feeding a toy monkey
It is impossible to tell whether the finite verb in this utterance is really a finite
form or rather a performance "error", since it is still in final position, and both
the determiner of the object noun phrase as well as the subject are missing.21
This word order pattern remains for a long time. At 2;2,22 there are four
utterances with the structure "object-nonfinite verb".
182 ACHIM STENZEL
acquired verb-second by this time and has integrated some functional category
into her grammar to be used as landing-site for moved noun phrases, so we need
not bother much about these nonfinite constructions.24 The following represent
about half of Annika's V2-utterances from this date:
(43) a. es regnet nicht (An 2;6,18)
it rains not
'it is not raining'
b. und caro nimmt das (An 2;6,18)
'and Caro takes that'
c. du behalst (=behältst) das (An 2;6,18)
'you keep that'
d. haare hat [s] haare (An 2;6,18)
'hairs has it(?), hairs'; talking about how
to draw a sun
e. das is gut (An 2;6,18)
'that is good'
f. das is weg (An 2;6,18)
'that is gone'
g. und das is mein (An 2;6,18)
'that is mine' ; possessive pronoun unmarked
for gender, number or case
h. das is grünes (An 2;6,18)
'that is green-one'; adjective inflected as
if indefinite article preceded
i. ja ich mal hier (An 2;6,18)
'yes I paint here'
j. dann mach ich ein haus (An 2;6,18)
'then I make a house'
k. das is ein mund (An 2;6,18)
'that is a mouth'
Note that most of these utterances are SVX, also other structures occur as well.
There are also verb-initial constructions at this age, most of which are
questions. Other utterances are cases where the first constituent has been left out.
With virtually all of these, it is the direct object that is missing:
(44) a. darf man (An 2;6,18)
may one
'one may do that'
184 ACHIM STENZEL
the strictness with which she uses only correctly classified neuter words indicates
that she is fully aware of gender distinctions.26 She makes use of this knowledge
and prefers neuter words in order to circumvent the necessity to apply morpho
logical Case marking. She knows that there is something in the morphology of
masculine and feminine pronouns and determiners that she does not cope with
(or does not want to be bothered with), and goes out of her way to achieve this
aim. This behavior lasts as long as about 3;0 or 3;1. Still I do not want to
interpret these facts as evidence for late acquisition of abstract Case, in analogy
to Pascal where the mastery of the nominative-accusative distinction was
understood in this way.
3.3.2. French
spoken language. Thus not only the utterances in (51), but also some of those in
(50) might be characterized by the lack of subject-verb agreement, i.e. (50f,g,h,k)
The first direct object clitics occur at 2;6,13, and the first tonic direct object
pronouns occurs at 3;9,19. Nominal and pronominal (including ça) direct objects
are present from the first recording. In the earlier stages there is only one
argument realized in each utterance:
(52) a. ça aussi (An 2;0,17)
'this too?'
b. ça encore (An 2;0,17)
'this too'
c. Adult: dans laquelle celle-là ou celle-là?
'into which one, this one or this one?)
Child: celle-là (An 2;0,17)
'this one there'
d. personne (An 2;2,22)
'nobody'; playing with a telephone
e. celui-là (An 2;2,22)
'that one' ; points to object
f. ça aussi (An 2;2,22)
'this one too'
g. ensuite ça
'and then this'; being asked what to play next
Annika uses "transitive" constructions only as late as 2;6,13, but in these the
verb may be omitted:
(53) a. et puis pascale un maison (An 2;6,13)
'and then pascale [makes] a house'
b. a annika aussi un sapin (An 2;9,13)
'has Annika also a fir-tree?'
c. tout tout annika veut, tout [e] (An 2;9,13)
'all all Annika wants, all eh?'
d. Adult: et qu 'est-ce qu'ilfait cet éléphant?
'and what is he doing, that elephant?'
Child: il mange le pont (An 2;9,13)
'he eats the bridge'
e. attends annika fait un un autre pont (An 2;9,13)
'wait Annika makes another bridge'
192 ACHIM STENZEL
What we can note for the time being is that the first direct object clitic coincides
with the frequency rise for subject clitics.
The treatment of ça is rather difficult. In some cases, it behaves syntactic
ally like a tonic pronoun, e.g. undergoes clitic doubling:
(54) a. ça c 'est là (An 2;4,18)
'that, it is there'
b. eh c'est cassé ça (An 2;7,29)
'it is broken, that one'
c. ça c'est le [efa] (-éléphant). maintenant (An 2;9,31)
'that, it is the elephant? now?'
d. c'est [tob] (=tombé?) ça (An 3;0,29)
'it has fallen down, that one'
But in the majority of uses, ça functions as a dummy form, being neutral as far
as gender and number are concerned, and has strong deictic value as it supports
and confirms an accompanying gesture.28 Thus the lack of gender and number
differentiation is compensated by non-linguistic information, i.e. can be gained
from the context. This behavior parallels the overwhelming use of neuter and
plural forms in German.
There are nearly no indirect objects in the French recordings. In the
observation period there is only one indirect object clitic:
(55) (rendre) me ça (An 3;1,26)
return-INF me-OBJ CL that
'return that-one to me'
The related tonic forms appear first at 2;11,27:
(56) c 'est à moi (An 2; 11,27)
'it belongs to me?'
and again at 3; 1,26:
(57) a. non ça rendre à moi ça (An 3; 1,26)
no that-one return-iNF to me that-one
'give that back to me!'
b. non à moi ça là (An 3;1,26)
no to me that one there
'that doesn't belong to me'
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 193
4. Discussion
In Pascal's case, it is justified to say that abstract Case has been acquired
by the time when the child clearly distinguishes nominative and accusative in
German, i.e. no later than 2;4,7. This view is corroborated by a finding by
Meisel & Müller (1992). They state that the functional category INFL is fully
integrated in Pascal's grammar at around 2;2 or 2;3. This is important because,
as we have seen, under the DP approach the Case Filter becomes operative only
after functional categories have been acquired.
Soon after the category INFL is present in Pascal's speech, he develops the
morphological inventory to express Case relations. There is additional evidence
from French: by the time Pascal seems to have acquired two cases in German,
he also enters a new stage in the development of French as he acquires
productive command of subject clitics. As clitics are elements of an agreement
chain, they are governed by the same category that assigns Case to noun phrases.
Subject clitics are part of AGR (in INFL), thus they depend on the acquisition
of that category for assignment to their proper phrase structure representation.
Only after functional categories are present, the agreement relation becomes
productive and systematic.
Where Pascal's data suggest that acquisition of INFL and DET are somehow
connected, Annika's morphological avoidance strategy obscures the facts. On the
one hand, we find that she produces V2 constructions by 2;6,18, and these are
true V2 constructions as she obviously is able to topicalize not only subjects, but
also objects, adverbials, and wh-words. So there is good evidence for two
functional categories above VP in her grammar. Her avoiding overt Case-
marking on pronouns and determiners, on the other hand, by preferring neuter
or plural forms where the distinction is least clear, in my eyes leads the
researcher to the conclusion that the category DET is present in her grammar and
the Case Filter is operative. The problem for Annika is that she has not yet built
up the full inventory of pronouns and determiners, but is aware of these gaps in
her lexicon and tries to circumvent this dilemma (see below for further
discussion).
The shadow determiners in my data indicate that prosody might play a role
in the triggering of functional categories. The child extracts the approximated
intonation contour of determined nouns (cf. Peters 1983; Echols & Newport
1992). At first, these approximations are analyzed and the nominal element is
placed into N°, while the un-analyzed part is assigned to the Roeper-position
adjoined to NP. Evidence for this interpretation comes from the fact that these
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 195
(59)
lexical realizations of a functional category, namely, the category DET. The next
step is that DET is introduced into all nominal projections. Now the surface
distribution of all noun phrases is constrained by the Case Filter, and, in
languages where case categories are distinguished, the morphological paradigm
has to be learnt.
This approach presupposes that noun phrases are specified with respect to
their feature content already in the lexicon and are projected appropriately. As
soon as the Case Filter constrains the surface positions of NPs, syntactic
distinctions have to be expressed morphologically. The acquisition data, or rather
the most plausible explanation of the course of development, thus confirm an
account of Case Checking, rather than Case Assignment. This important role of
the lexicon and the feature specification of lexical entries clearly has consequenc
es for other components of the theory of grammar.
Radford (1990b) has noted that possessive 's is acquired early by English-
speaking children. Clahsen et al. (1990) cite evidence from the so-called Simone-
corpus collected by Max Miller, as well as evidence from the literature, i.e.
Clahsen (1984) and Tracy (1986). These studies indicate that the genitive is
acquired rather early, and in any case earlier than the accusative. These findings
are incompatible with Pascal's data. Pascal does not use the possessor-possessed
construction before 2;8,17, where he omits the inflection:
(60) das is mama platz (Pa 2;8,17)
'that is mummy-NOM place'
The first target-like genitive for him is documented at 3;8,26, long after Case is
acquired:
(61) und mamas ketten sind noch schöner (Pa 3;8,26)
'and mummy's necklaces are still more beautiful'
Pascal instead expresses possession by possessive adjectives:
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 197
It appears that early genitives have been extracted from the input and been
analyzed not as Case-marked NPs, but as NPs denoting possession. Their
function is well understood by Annika, but she uses them as situationally
adequate chunks, not being contained in phrase structure.
Tracy (1986) offers an explanation for the early appearance of the genitive
suffix: she discusses the possibility that this form is not a case form, but one
denoting possession. She has evidence in her data that supports this reading, i.e.
child utterances where the genitive suffix is overgeneralized to dative contexts
when possession is to be expressed:
(65) Stephanie
Father: wem gehört denn die wiege?
'whose crib is this?'
Child: Stephanies-GEN (1;11)
(66) Malte
das gehört Maltes (2;6)
'that belongs to Malte's-GEN'; pointing to some object)
Tracy's explanation for such early genitive-like expressions of possession would
be a problem for Clahsen et al. (1990), who want to employ these early forms
as evidence for early acquisition of DET. In their view the child analyzes the
prenominal possessor nouns as being Case-marked and hence looks for a possible
Case assigner. Finding none, she projects an empty DET element whose AGR
feature is the Case assigner.
There are two problems with this analysis. One hinges on the status of the
genitive in child language as discussed by Tracy, the other concerns the nature
of the bootstrapping operation the child has to perform.
I prefer Tracy's analysis that apparent genitives in early child language
rather are possessives, and the POSS feature is essentially a semantic feature that
has to be assigned within NP.31 Under this view we can account for parallel
structures for VP/IP and NP/DP once more. The genitive in German and other
Germanic languages shares some properties with the nominative. Both cases are
assigned by a functional category, INFL for the nominative and DET for the
prenominal genitive. Both these cases are assigned to the left and they both are
assigned to positions that serve as landing-sites for moved categories:
The positions out of which the nominative and genitive DPs have been
moved32 are the positions where these DPs have been assigned their semantic
roles.33 As the genitive is assigned by DET, it should come in only after DET has
been acquired. Before the acquisition of DET, the possessor NP remains in situ
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 199
where it receives its semantic role. The s-suffix is interpreted by some children
as a marker of the semantic role. Possessive adjectives are not marked, since
they are appropriately specified as possessor expressions already in the lexicon.
In the analysis by Clahsen et al. (1990), the acquisitional relation between
Case and DET is reversed. They assume that the child, noting the morphological
difference between nominative and genitive nouns, analyzes the genitive form as
Case-marked. Consequently, s/he introduces a new functional category, whose
empty head is needed as a Case assigner. This hypothesis suffers from one major
drawback: The concept of structural Case can be introduced into the child's
grammar only after the grammar contains the functional category DET. Yet in
Clahsen et al.'s analysis, the child has to know about Case before s/he acquires
the category the Case Filter is meant to constrain.34
This hypothesis runs into trouble not only because determiners would be
stronger as possible triggers for a functional category, but also because it cannot
apply universally. Remember that the Romance languages do not have prenominal
genitives, and southern German dialects either. It appears as if in Romance
languages, DET cannot house a POSS feature at all, and in the southern German
dialects it has to be phonologically realized, and then assigns the dative:
(68) DP [ DP [
dem Vater]-DATD'[D[sein]NP[ AP[großes] Haus]]]
'the father his large house'
languages like German for which the appropriate parameter settings hold. This
model accounts for Pascal's developmental sequence, and for his problems with
lexical Case assignment.
Pascal's developmental sequence follows the associative pattern in having
each case being assigned by only one category, thus exhibiting a bi-uniqueness
relation.35 Also prepositional Case, seen as inherent in German by some authors
(e.g. Czepluch 1982) falls under this generalization for Pascal.36 He overgeneral-
izes the dative to accusative contexts, although this is explicitly excluded by
some researchers (Clahsen 1984; Clahsen et al. 1990; Mills 1985):
(69) a. für dir und für/von mir (Pa 2;5,5)
'for you-DAT and for/from me-DAT'
b. und noch für dir
'and still for you-DAT'
c. für mir (Pa 2;6,2)
'for me-DAT'
The decisive property of these contexts is that they are in the domain of a
preposition, hence in an environment which is a dative context in the unmarked
case. This overgeneralization is remedied only at 2;9,16 when we find the first
correct use of an accusative governed by a preposition:
(70) ein für dich (Pa 2;9,16)
'one for you-ACC'
It is obvious that this pattern is not universal to language acquisition, else
it would have appeared in the children studied by Mills (1985), Clahsen (1984),
Clahsen, Eisenbeiß & Vainikka (1994) or Tracy (1986), or in others of our
children. Still I want to argue that Pascal's developmental sequence reflects a
very basic correlation between Case assigner and case category, which in adult
German is obscured by other properties of the category P. On the one hand,
Schöler, Kratzer, Kürsten & Schäle (1991) report that some of their dysphasic
children exhibit the same pattern of overgeneralization, on the other hand, I want
to show that there is a non-obvious relation between Pascal's linguistic behavior
and that of Annika.
The first dative contexts are much earlier in Annika's data than in Pascal's,
but they are not as neatly distributed, since some are governed by a preposition,
and some are not, and the most characteristic feature of these earliest datives at
2;0,27 is that in these utterances no forms are found that represent the functional
category DET, thus — since Case marking on nouns, and especially proper
nouns, is nearly absent — they are not morphologically marked for dative case:
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 201
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this paper have been presented at the University of Lund
(Sweden) in September 1991, and at the 16th Boston University Conference on
Language Development in October 1991.I am grateful to the audiences at these
conferences as well as to my colleagues at Hamburg University for the comments
they have provided.
Notes
1. Several authors assume that there are in fact, in some languages at least, at least two
functional categories above NP. This second nominal functional category is generally
assumed to contain some sort of number feature, e.g. Löbel (1990) or Ritter (1991).
2. Felix (1990) assumes a general bi-uniqueness principle to the effect that DET universally
selects NP as its complement, and INFL universally selects VP. But cf. Koster (1987) for
arguments against bi-uniqueness relations in grammatical structure.
3. COMP and P both share properties of lexical and functional categories. COMP is
functional, but selects at the same time another functional projection, P on the other hand
is lexical, but is selected by another lexical category. Abney (1986) argues that P is in
fact a functional category I will not discuss this issue here, but see Müller (this volume,
chap. 9) for the acquisition of COMP by bilingual children.
4. The idea that the Case Filter and 6-theory might be related has already been advanced in
Chomsky (1981).
5. Several accounts of the structural conditions for Case assignment have been proposed.
The traditional constraint is that it is possible only under government. If we assume
nominative case to be assigned by INFL, either the theory of government has to be
extended to include INFL (or AGR), as is in fact done by Aoun & Sportiche (1983), or
the necessary condition for Case Assignment will have to be c-command (or, cf.
Sigurðsson 1989, m-command).
6. Löbel (1992) proposed, similar to Shin (1991), that Case might be a head-level category
that heads its own projection. I have not examined the consequences her proposal would
have on language acquisition. Maybe Case is a separate functional category in some
languages, whereas it is only one of several features of DET in others. Meisel (1991b)
has proposed a similar account for NEG(ation) in Basque, French, and Portuguese;
definiteness might be another candidate for this kind of language-specific representation,
see note 7 below.
7. Some researchers argue that Mainland Scandinavian languages display the same kind of
head movement in the DP; the argument runs as follows: The indefinite 'a house' would
be rendered as ett hus in Swedish, whereas the definite 'the house' would turn out as
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 203
huset. In the case of the indefinite article, the noun remains in situ, in the definite phrase
it has been raised and incorporated into D°. I would want to question this analysis on the
basis of modified noun phrases: If the noun phrase contains an adjective, the respective
structures would be ett stor hus and det stora huset. So, when there is an adjective present,
we have an unbound article in both cases, and the adjective is inflected differently.
Obviously, at least in Standard Swedish, nouns (and adjectives) agree with their functional
governors not only in Case, gender, and number, but also in definiteness. In the case of
the unmodified definite noun, the determiner may be left empty as the Φ-features are
realized morphologically on the nominal head, Emonds' (1987) Invisible Category
Principle being satisfied.
8. Cf. Sigurðsson (1989) for similar relations in Icelandic. Sigurðsson states that Case
assignment by prepositions in Icelandic is either fixed, i.e. lexically determined, or
semantically predictable.
9. For a study of the acquisition of gender and number in bilingual children, see the papers
by Koehn (on morphology) and Müller (chap. 4, on agreement) in this volume.
10. Kaiser & Meisel (1991) argue that colloquial French on the one hand, and standard
French on the other hand constitute two distinct systems, and standard French is not a
pro-drop language.
11. This use of a preposition can be compared to the more well-known phenomenon of
English of-insertion.
12. In French, the prepositions à and de may fuse with a following masculine or plural
definite article. Thus, à + le e.g. gives au, or de + les gives des. See Koehn (this volume)
for details.
13. See Meisel (this volume) on verbal agreement in child language.
14. A similar proposal by Peter Jordens and Teun Hoekstra, made in a GLOW talk (cf.
Hoekstra & Jordens 1994), has come to my attention only after this manuscript had been
completed.
15. The acquisition of pronouns in French by Pascal has been studied by Kaiser (this
volume).
16. In the majority of the examples in (17), it is, due to the phonological similarity of
nominative and accusative endings in colloquial German, not clear whether Pascal uses
accusative or nominative forms. What indeed is clear is that the forms he uses are not
dative.
17. The difference between dative and accusative is far more salient in the plural than in the
singular, since the two forms use different stems: ihnen vs. sie.
18. This notion of "stage" in language development clearly implies that Universal Grammar
is not a production model (and the term "generative" quite misleading), but a model of
the constraints that constitute a speaker's linguistic competence. In production, speakers
(not only children) may rely on utterances that have been memorized as un-analyzed
204 ACHIM STENZEL
wholes and are retrieved from memory whenever they seem to be appropriate. Especially
for young children, this may as well concern such structures that belong to earlier
developmental stages and mirror the grammatical knowledge of these earlier stages. Peters
(1983) explicitly includes with these holistic units sentence frames which can be easily
retrieved and have slots to fill with lexical material.
19. The reference of [sal[ә] is unclear, it might mean 'fish' for Pascal.
20. See Köppe (this volume) on subject raising in child language.
21. It is also possible that utterances like these might constitute evidence in favor of the
existence of two verbal functional categories in child German. Müller (this volume, chap.
9) argues that in such cases, the verb has been raised to a head-final AGR-position, but
has failed to be moved on to head-initial INFL.
22. I will argue below that (German) INFL will be acquired by Annika around the age of 2;6.
Peter Jordens (p.c.) suggested that the data in (41) might pose a problem for such an
analysis, but I think that one single utterance of such a kind does not influence the overall
analysis in any way.
23. The basis of these counts were all pronominal forms that occur in the recording, even
those that constituted one-word utterances.
24. See note 18.
25. See Müller (this volume, chap. 4) on possible differences between the phrase structure
representations of definite and indefinite articles.
26. Koehn (this volume) and Müller (this volume, chap. 4) study the acquisition of gender not by
Annika, but by other bilingual children of the DUFDE corpus. Cf. the references cited there,
and also Maratsos (1988) on the acquisition of gender in a cross-linguistic perspective.
27. Regina Köppe pointed out that (49a,b,h) could be formulas, i.e. unanalyzed, rote-learned
constructions. Yet the remaining number of utterances supports my argument well enough.
28. Note that the child studied by Parodi (1990b), who temporarily gave up most of his
French, retained the fairly general use of ça, although other pronouns were not used
during that period.
29. See Müller (this volume, chap. 9) for a discussion concerning [finiteness] and [wh].
30. As words ending in [s] do not receive the genitive [s] in German, it is not sure whether
Mathias in this utterance really is [genitive].
31. I would like to point out that the interpretation of POSS as the morphological reflex of
a semantic feature is essentially mine, and not intended in Tracy's work.
32. Cf. Fukui & Speas (1986:133): "The specifiers of functional heads are often (in our
model, always — see below) moved from within their complement."
33. I do not know whether it is justified to speak of "possessor" as a semantic role, or
whether a possessor might even be a 0-role of the NP. I do not want to discuss this issue
here and what to make clear that I use the term "semantic role" in an essentially pre-
theoretic fashion.
CASE ASSIGNMENT AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES 205
34. Natascha Müller pointed out to me that in the framework of Case Cheeking I advocated
above, one could say that genitive NPs might be interpreted by the child as having lexical
Case. One might then proceed to say that the child recognizes this feature and is forced
to project a category that in fact bears the feature to be discharged. I still would want to
argue that at least some children in the beginning do not analyze genitives as being
Case-marked, but as being marked for possession. This is a semantic feature and can be
licensed outside of the grammatical feature grid, namely by an NP in the phrase structure
that has the role or function of Possessor, thus assigns something like a POSS feature —
data from Hebrew (Ritter 1988, 1991) suggest that the genitive actually is a lexical case.
I shall explore this hypothesis and its consequences in forthcoming work.
35. But see note 2.
36. Czepluch (1982) argues that in some languages, French among them, the objective-oblique
distinction has been lost, and that therefore prepositions assign objective case structurally.
In these languages, indirect objects have to be governed by a preposition, as in his model
no category can assign the same Case twice. In German, di-transitive verbs assign the
objective (=accusative) and the oblique (=dative) structurally, and no preposition is
needed. This contrasts with Emonds (1985) who argues that German indirect objects
receive their Case universally from a preposition, this preposition being empty.
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Language Acquisition, ed. by Dan I. Slobin, 141-254. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Müller, Natascha. 1993. Komplexe Sätze. Der Erwerb von COMP und Wortstellungs
mustern bei bilingualen Kindern (Französisch/Deutsch) (=Tübinger Beiträge zur
Linguistik, Series A: Language Development, 16.). Tübingen: Narr.
Olsen, Susan. 1988. "Die deutsche Nominalphrase als 'Determinansphrase'."
Manuscript, University of Stuttgart.
—. 1989. "Das Possessivum: Pronomen, Determinans oder Adjektiv?" Linguistische
Berichte 120.133-153.
Parodi, Teresa. 1989. "Kasus bei Ivar." Unpublished Working Paper, University of
Hamburg.
—. 1990a. "Kasus bei Ivar im Alter zwischen 3 und 5 Jahren." Unpublished
Working Paper, University of Hamburg.
—. 1990b. "The Acquisition of Word Order Regularities and Case Morphology.
Meisel 1990, 157-190.
—. 1991. "Funktionale Kategorien im bilingualen Erstspracherwerb und im
Zweitspracherwerb." Spracherwerb und Grammatik. Linguistische Untersuchungen
zum Erwerb von Syntax und Morphologie. (=Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 3.),
ed. by Monika Rothweiler, 152-165.
Peters, Ann M. 1983. The Units of Language Acquisition (=Cambridge Monographs and
Texts in Applied Psycholinguistics.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peters, Ann M. & Lise Menn. 1990. "The Microstructure of Morphological Develop
ment: Variation Across Children and Across Languages." Manuscript, University
of Hawai'i/ University of Colorado.
208 ACHIM STENZEL
Regina Köppe
University of Hamburg
1. Introduction
2. Theoretical Background
Passive
(6) a. weil ei [dem Kind das Buchi geschenkt wurde] (VP-internal)
b. weil das Buchi [dem Kind ti geschenkt wurde] (NP-movement)2
'because the book has been given to the child'
Ergative verbs
(7) weil dem Linguisten ein Fehler unterlaufen ist (VP-internal)
'because a mistake has occurred to the linguist'
Grewendorf (1988, 1989) plausibly argues that VP-internal NPs such as those in
(6a) and (7) are coindexed with an empty expletive pronoun in Spec-IP.
Nominative Case is thus assigned to the expletive pronoun and can be inherited
212 REGINA Köppe
by the NP. In Grewendorf's view, the fact that number agreement between INFL
and the subject position is determined by the VP-internal NP provides evidence
for his analysis. Note however that this point is far from being settled since
NP-movement in German is closely related to the analysis of German in terms
of scrambling (see von Stechow & Sternefeld 1988; Fanselow 1990).
As noted above, Borer & Wexler (1987) argue that the ability to form
A-chains matures in the course of syntactic development. This hypothesis is
based on two observations concerning English child language. First, it appears
that young children have the capacity to produce and to understand lexical
passives, but not syntactic passives. Syntactic or verbal passives (e.g. the doll was
seen) are a result of NP-movement, whereas lexical or adjectival passives (e.g.
the doll was combed) do not involve movement. The second observation is that
children seem to overgeneralize causative constructions to intransitive verbs, as
shown in (8) below, even though causativization in English is only possible with
some ergative verbs, as shown in (9).
(8) the doll giggled → [*]Peter giggled the doll
(9) the doll moved → Peter moved the doll
According to Borer & Wexler, the causative rule is a syntactic rule which, in the
presence of a thematic role, adds an external thematic role. With respect to the
observation that children causativize intransitive verbs, Borer & Wexler assume
that thematic relations between verb and subject have to be changed: The
NP-MOVEMENT AND SUBJECT RAISING 213
to interpret lexical passives, which select the auxiliary sein 'to be', as syntactic
passives. Jakubowicz (1989) comes to similar conclusions in analyzing French
children's acquisition of passive and raising constructions (ages 3;0-7;5). Finally,
Pierce (1989), testing the comprehension of passive in Spanish children, is also
not able to corroborate Borer & Wexler's findings.
Concerning the lexical representation of ergative verbs, Pierce (1989) and
Deprez & Pierce (1991) argue that the fact that VS order is only used frequently
with ergative verbs in data from the acquisition of English constitutes evidence
for the assumption that ergative verbs are analyzed correctly as such from the
beginning. Clark (1985), on the other hand, reports that overgeneralizations of
the causative construction to intransitive verbs — apparently including those
ergative verbs which do not allow causativization — have been frequently
observed in English as well as in French child language, e.g. [*]She corned it,
[*]Je travaille les cailloux 'I am working the stones' (Clark 1985:734-735).
these postverbal subjects are licensed on the assumption that in early French,
Nominative Case can be assigned to the VP-internal subject. During a second
phase, then, Pierce observes that the rate of postverbal subjects decreases
simultaneously with an increase of pronominal subjects. According to Pierce, the
declining number of postverbal subjects indicates that subject raising has begun
to operate.
In addition, I want to point out that Borer & Wexler's (1987) maturation
theory, as well, when applied to the question of subject raising from VP, should
predict the occurrence of VS structures where the verb, but not the subject, has
been raised.
French: 8), the first examples appearing at the age of 3;4. Most of these are
lexical passives (Iv 3;04,23 und dann war das abgerißt 'and then this was torn
off), and the few verbal passives are all target-like with respect to the position
of the subject (e.g. Iv 4;07,24 und dann wirst du gekocht 'and then you will be
cooked'). In addition, in neither language do we find any instances of
constructions involving raising verbs like scheinen 'to seem' or paraître 'to
appear'. This situation is perhaps not unexpected, as we are dealing with
naturalistic, spontaneous data where one does not find sufficient instances of
those rather specific constructions throughout the period of observation; the
results of Borer & Wexler (1987), Eisenbeiß (1990) and Jakubowicz (1989) are
all based on experimentally elicited data.
The analysis of early speech and especially of subject raising to Spec-IP
might provide additional insights concerning the status of NP-movement. For
instance, if subject raising occurs regularly as soon as a landing site for
NP-movement is available in the child's grammar, then one might reasonably
assume that — in terms of UG — the option making NP-movement obligatory
is chosen first, and that possible exceptions to this rule have to be learned later.
As a first hypothesis, we might assume that the structure of VPs in early
child language is the same as in the standard analysis of German and French,
with the subject being generated in Spec-VP. With respect to the base position
of subjects within VP in early child language, it is difficult to find evidence for
a fixed subject position. This might be the reason why Pierce (1989) and Deprez
& Pierce (1991), for instance, consider the ordering of subject and verb within
VP to be optional in French child language. Müller (1993) and Meisel (this
volume) propose similar analyses for early German as well.3 These are shown
in (10) below.
It is often assumed that the structure of IP in early German differs from the adult
structure in the sense that IP is analyzed as head-initial rather than as head-final
(e.g. Clahsen 1991; Clahsen et al. 1992; Weissenborn 1990; Müller 1993, this
volume, chap. 9)4, as shown in (11).
NP-MOVEMENT AND SUBJECT RAISING 217
shown by the example in (12). Alternatively, they can also appear together with
the clitic in a preverbal position (Spec-IP) as in (13) or in a postverbal position
as in (14).6
(12) [I il mangej- [VP tj- une pomme]]
'he eats an apple'
(13) [IP Pierrei [I il mangej [VP ti tj une pomme]]]
'Peter he eats an apple'
(14) [Iil mangej [VP ti tj une pomme] Pierrei]
'he eats an apple Peter'
If French can be considered to be a null subject language, it is possible to
analyze (14) analoguous to the "free inversion" of the subject in languages like
Italian or Spanish. According to Burzio (1986), these postverbal subjects are
adjoined to the VP (cf. also Rizzi 1982) in the case of transitive and intransitive
verbs. Postverbal subjects of ergative verbs, however, remain in the object
position within VP as in (15).
(15) [Iil arrivej [VP tj Pierre]]
'he arrives Peter'
In this perspective, it is important to observe that, on the one hand, subject
raising occurs in only some of the structures possible in French, and, even more
important, postverbal subjects in early child language cannot automatically be
classified as resulting from verb raising without subject raising (cf. Pierce's 1989
analysis). Instead, we must consider the possibility that postverbal subjects have
been moved to the right (with the clitic element missing), or in the case of
ergative verbs, that VS structures are simple VPs with both verb and subject
remaining in their base positions.
Another problem for the analysis of subject raising in French and German
child language is the large number of utterances with simple SV structure. Here
it is virtually impossible to decide whether the two elements have undergone
raising to IP or whether they are in their base positions within VP. Consequently,
in order to find clear evidence for movement of the subject and/or the verb, it is
necessary to take into account the linear position of subject, object, and verb in
relation to sentence-internal negation (which I assume to be located between IP
and VP, cf. Dieck 1989) and to non-finite parts of the verbal complex.
Furthermore, agreement phenomena may help to classify verb form as finite (=
i.e. raised to INFL) (cf. Meisel, this volume), so that subjects preceding such
finite verbs can be assumed to be raised to Spec-IP.
NP-MOVEMENT AND SUBJECT RAISING 219
4. The Data
The subjects of this study are Pascal and Ivar. The period of observation is
defined in terms of MLU, beginning with an MLU value of around 1.7
(corresponding roughly to the first combinations of verbs with noun phrases) up
to the time when MLU exceeds 3.0 in both languages. For Pascal, this period
covers the subjects' ages ranging from 1;10,0 to 2;5,5, for Ivar, from 2;2,7 to
2;6,6.
4.1. French
During a first stage, which lasts from 1;8,22 to 1;11,28 (Pascal) and from
2;2,7 to 2;4,9 (Ivar), verbs mainly occur with only one argument, either subject
or object, or with adverbials. Examples are shown in (16) and (17).
Ivar, for instance, initially appears to prefer preverbal subjects (see also
Parodi 1990). The number of postverbal subjects only increases at a time when
Ivar already uses clitics and right dislocations (2;5,7). In consequence, it is
plausible to explain earlier postverbal subjects as right-dislocated structures
where the clitic is simply missing. Note also that some of these subjects follow
the VP (2;3,5 c'est kaputt nounours 'it is broken the teddy bear', 2;5,7 (veut) un
noeud ivar '(wants) a knot Ivar'). In simple VS sentences like tire pas ivar 'pulls
not Ivar' (2;6,6), however, the position of the subject cannot be determined.
Burzio's (1986) assumption that subjects of ergative verbs remain in the object
position cannot be verified on the basis of these few examples.
Pascal does not seem to prefer preverbal subjects as clearly as Ivar.
However, early instances of postverbal subjects are difficult to explain: most of
the utterances containing postverbal subjects seem to be rote-learned forms like
où il est 'where is he' followed by a noun phrase. Nevertheless, there are also
many postverbal subjects following the complete VP (1;10,28 c'est mal encore
la plante, 'it is still bad the plant', 1;11,28 est partie l'enfant nadia 'is gone (to
the) kindergarten Nadia', 2;1,0 souffler les bougies nadia 'blow-INF the candles
Nadia').
These observations clearly indicate that postverbal subjects do not remain
in Spec-VP, their base position, as was argued by Pierce (1989), but that they
have been adjoined to the right of the VP. This structure is also frequent in adult
French (with the difference that the clitic is omitted in the children's speech).
Considering Pierce's analysis in a little more detail, it also becomes apparent that
constructions containing subject clitics are excluded from her count of pre- vs.
postverbal subjects. Rather, these constructions are counted in a different column
as instances of right dislocations. In other words, utterances are classified
NP-MOVEMENT AND SUBJECT RAISING 223
2;02,07 60 40
2;03,05 82 18
2;04,09 82 18
2;04,23 72 29 29
2;05,07 72 9 19
2;06,06 64 9 27
1;08,22 100
1;10,00 100
1;10,28 25 50 25
1;11,28 25 50 25
2;01,00 17 33 33 17
2;01,28 60 40
2;02,26 84 16
2;04,07 55 43 2
2;05,05 60 25 15
Assuming then that young children rely on formal and structural properties
of the input language in constructing their grammar, they indeed seem to be able
to detect that subjects of ergative verbs are generated in a postverbal position.
This means that the underlying order of the VP is correctly analyzed. Moreover,
the observation that ergative verbs show verb and subject raising earlier than
intransitive verbs possibly indicates that it is exactly this irregularity of ergative
verbs that facilitates or even triggers subject raising as soon as Spec-IP is available.
4.2. German
In German, the word order of early utterances presents certain problems for
the analysis proposed above. From the ages of 1;10,28 (Pa) and 2;3,5 (Iv)
onwards, we observe a number of utterances exhibiting SVO order, thus
suggesting verb and subject raising only by their order of elements. Consider, for
example, (31) and (32).
(31) a. so i mach [kua kua] (Pa 1;10,28)
'like this she makes [kua kua]'
b. papa mach diese (Pa 2;1,0)
'daddy make these'
(32) a. i will nounours (Iv 2;3,5)
'I want teddy bear'
b. das nimm en deddi (Iv 2;3,5)
'this one takes a teddy bear'
Several other early utterances exhibiting either postverbal subjects or postverbal
negation might also be interpreted as first instances of verb raising. Examples are
shown in (33-34) and (35-36), respectively.
(33) [d] Schokolade diese (Pa 2;1,0)
'is chocolate this one'
(34) a. such deddi das (Iv 2;3,5)
'seeks teddy bear this'
b. war das ivar (Iv 2;3,5)
'was this Ivar'
(35) ich will nich (Pa 2; 1,0)
'I want not'
(36) kommt das (nich) (Iv 2;3,5)
'comes this (not)'
NP-MOVEMENT AND SUBJECT RAISING 227
Clear evidence for verb and subject raising, however, where both subject
and verb precede sentence-internal negation, is available only from the ages of
2;1,28 (Pa) and 2;4,9 (Iv) onwards.
1;10,28 1 3 1 3 4
1;11,28 1 1 1
2;01,00 2 6 4 6 10 7 1 7 1 8
2;01,14 7 7 7
2;01,28 13 2 7 2 2 22 24 1 1 1
2;02,26 1 2 3 3 1 1 2 2
2;04,07 1 36 2 1 38 39 1 1 1 1 2
2;05,05 1 15 6 1 2 21 23 1 6 3 8 3 11
2;02,07 1 1 1
2;03,05 7 31 2 9 31 39 1 1 2 3 4 3 7
2;04,09 1 3 9 31 1 1 11 15 26 1 3 2 3 3 6
2;04,23 1 3 2 5 3 8 11 3 3 2 3 5 8
2;05,07 6 5 1 11 3 7 19 26 4 3 1 1 4 5 9
2;06,06 4 5 4 1 7 7 14 1 2 1 1 1 3 3 6
1;10,28 50 50
1;11,28 100
2;01,00 72 22 6
2;01,14 100
2;01,28 68 20 12
2;02,26 60 40
2;04,07 92.5 5 2.5
2;05,05 79 18 3
2;02,07 100
2;03,05 2 59 28 11
2;04,09 12.5 31 44 12.5
2;04,23 84 16
2;05,07 69 20 11
2;06,06 75 15 10
Tables (9) and (10) show the percentages of subject raising in relation to the
linear position of the subjects. Concerning postverbal subjects, the situation in
German differs from that of French. In the adult language, German V2 effects
allow for XVS(O) structures in which the subject occupies a postverbal position.
In these structures, the verb has been raised to COMP (with a maximal
projection preceding it), and the subject has been raised to Spec-IP in order to
receive Nominative Case. In early child language, however, there is considerable
debate as to whether COMP is already available at the same time when INFL is
present. Müller (1993, this volume, chap. 9; see also Meisel & Müller 1992)
argues that during the time-span discussed in this paper, the category COMP is
not yet available in the grammar of Pascal and Ivar. Because Müller assumes that
both children's German sentence structure contains IP as well as AGRP, she
argues that in verb-second structures like hier kommt pascal 'here comes Pascal'
NP-MOVEMENT AND SUBJECT RAISING 229
(Pa 2; 1,14) or da kann man sitzen 'there can one sit' (Iv 2;5,7), the adverb has
been raised to Spec-IP, whereas the subject has been raised to Spec-AGRP in
order to receive Nominative Case.
If, on the other hand, one would argue that only one functional category is
necessary (see also Meisel, this volume), subjects of such verb-second sentences
should be regarded as remaining in preverbal Spec-VP Taking Case assignment
and case marking into consideration does not lead us any further here, given that
a) moved NPs receive Nominative Case, and b) Nominative is the first case to
be acquired (probably by default, see Stenzel, this volume). In other words,
during the early phases of grammatical development, Nominative marking of a
given NP does not present any evidence concerning its position, i.e. whether it
is in its base position or whether it has been raised to Spec-IP. Moreover, Stenzel
(this volume) notes that during this phase, very few NPs are case-marked at all.
Finally, what is interesting in comparison to the French data is that in
German again, the verbs exhibiting two different orders of base generated
constituents within VP and in IP are among the first verbs to be raised (see
tables 11 and 12). In German, this differing verb class is the class of transitive
verbs, exhibiting SOV order at D-structure within VP, whereas it is SVO (or
XVSO) at the level of S-structure. Another observation which deserves further
research is that in German as well, verb and subject raising of intransitive verbs
occurs late.
(37) a. tippen papa (Pa 2; 1,24)
'type daddy'
b. nein der paßt nicht (Pa 2;5,5)
'no this one does not fit'
These observations are in conflict with Clahsen's (1988) analysis of German
child language. Clahsen states that verb raising initially is limited to modals and
intransitive verbs ending in -t. According to Clahsen, -t is not yet analyzed as an
agreement feature, but seems to mark "low transitivity". Clahsen's analysis has
also been questioned by Weissenborn (1990) and Verrips & Weissenborn (1992),
who, analyzing the same data, do not come to the conclusion that verb raising
is limited to intransitive verbs. The fact that verb and subject raising with
intransitive verbs has been observed to occur later than with other verbs
exhibiting different orders of subject and verb within VP and within IP thus
might again lead us to conclude that children use their knowledge of the
structural relations between verbs and their arguments within VP in developing
the INFL projection.
230 REGINA Köppe
Table 11. Pascal — Raising, German Table 12. Ivar — Raising, German
age verb subject age verb subject
raising raising raising raising
1;10,28 T? 2;02,07 T?
E? E?
1;11,28 2;03,05 E E?
2;01,00 E T? T?
I? 2;04,09 T T
2;01,14 E E E
2;01,28 E I I
T?
2;02,26 T
2;04,07 I
2;05,05 I
5. Conclusion
effected in most of the cases and thus might constitute some evidence for the
obligatoriness of this process in German.
Finally, the data suggest that both children are able to analyze correctly
lexical properties of verbs and to develop a VP structure from very early on. It
also has been proposed that the recognition of structural differences in the
ordering of verbs and their complements at the level of VP might serve as a
trigger for the development of the functional projection IP.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks to all members of the DUFDE project for their
helpful and encouraging discussion. I am also grateful to Lynn Eubank for his
most valuable comments and suggestions.
Notes
1. The term "unaccusative" for this verb class is also used frequently in the literature. I
will nevertheless follow the terminology from Burzio (1986), who points out that the
terms "unergative" vs. "unaccusative" originally stem from Relational Grammar
(Perlmutter 1978). In Burzio's GB analysis, the traditional term "intransitive" is opposed
to "ergative".
2. Von Stechow & Sternefeld (1988) state that the meaning of the two sentences is not
exactly equivalent and that the sentence involving movement seems to be pragmatically
marked.
3. Note that Radford's (1986) small-clause analysis of early child language (see also
Parodi 1990) offered the possibility to generate the "subject" NP either to the left or to
the right of the "XP predicate".
4. There are various hypotheses concerning the further development of this structure. What
is important for the present analysis, however, is not whether early utterances are IPs
or CPs or whether there is an intermediate AGRP (cf. Müller 1993; this volume, chap.
9), but whether there is some kind of functional category above VP that has a left
specifier serving as landing site for NP-movement.
5. Further wh-movement of the subject to Spec-CP (as a result of the German verb-second
effect) will not be considered here.
6. According to this analysis of colloquial French, the "standard" SVO order belongs to
a different variety of French. Interestingly enough, the subjects of such SVO sentences
are often restricted to proper names in colloquial French:
[IPPierrei [I mangej [VPti tj une pomme]]]
232 REGINA KÖPPE
7. For a detailed analysis of the emergence of IP and the use of subject clitics, see Meisel
(this volume) and Kaiser (this volume).
8. Bickerton's (1990) theory of acquisition, explaining the "onset of syntax" as a
consequence of biological maturation of the child's brain at a given time, could account
for this observation quite well. As Bickerton's view of the "onset of syntax" mainly
concerns the development of hierarchical relations, i.e. phrase structure, one could
plausibly relate this "onset of syntax" to the emergence of INFL. Note, however, that
our data might present some problems for Bickerton's assumption that the earliest
multiword utterances are not syntactically structured and simply reflect the word order
of the input language. Concerning the combination of objects and verbs, Pascal sticks
to the target-like VO order in French, whereas he prefers OV structures in German. In
adult German, however, OV structures (subordinate clause) as well as VO orders (main
clause) can be observed. Ivar, on the other hand, uses OV and VO orders in both
languages up to the age of 2;5. What is interesting here, and still deserves further
research is the frequent occurrence of OV structures in French, since the French input
does not provide such an order. In both cases, then, the order of objects and verbs does
not exclusively reflect the input, but could instead be interpreted as resulting from the
presence of some kind of VP-structure.
9. With respect to Clark's (1985:711) observation that in various studies on the acquisition
of French, subject-verb order in French is reported to be highly variable with
intransitive verbs, one might ask whether these results are possibly caused by counts in
which intransitive and ergative verbs are not differentiated.
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Radford, Andrew. 1986. "Small Children's Small Clauses." Bangor Research Papers
in Linguistics 1.1-38.
—. 1990. Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition of Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian Syntax (= Studies in Generative Grammar, 11.).
Dordrecht: Foris.
Roberge, Yves. 1986. "Subject Doubling, Free Inversion, and Null Argument
Languages." Canadian Journal of Linguistics 31.55-79.
Sorace, Antonella. 1991. "Unaccusativity and Auxiliary Choice in Non-Native
Grammars of Italian and French: Asymmetries and predictable indeterminacy."
Paper presented at the 16th Boston University Conference on Language
Development, October 1991.
Sportiche, Dominique. 1988. "A Theory of Floated Quantifiers and its Corollaries for
Constituent Structure." Linguistic Inquiry 19.425-449.
von Stechow, Armin & Wolfgang Sternefeld. 1988. Bausteine syntaktischen Wissens:
Ein Lehrbuch der generativen Grammatik. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Verrips, Maaike & Jürgen Weissenborn. 1992. "Routes to Verb Placement in Early
German and French: The independence of finiteness and agreement." The
Acquisition of Verb Placement (= Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics, 16.), ed.
by Jürgen M. Meisel, 283-337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Weissenborn, Jürgen. 1990. "Functional Categories and Verb Movement: The
acquisition of German syntax reconsidered." Spracherwerb und Grammatik:
linguistische Untersuchungen zum Erwerb von Syntax und Morphologie
(Linguistische Berichte, Sonderheft 3/1990), ed. by Monika Rothweiler, 190-224.
Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Parameters Cannot Be Reset
Evidence from the Development of COMP
Natascha Müller
University of Hamburg
1. Introduction
— languages may differ with respect to which grammatical features they select,
although Felix (1990) and Rizzi (1991b) point out that some features are
selected universally. The feature "gender" is not selected by every natural
language, for instance.
— languages may differ with respect to the distribution of grammatical features
across the different syntactic positions (cf. Felix 1990). One example is the
distribution of the finiteness operator [+F] (cf. Platzack & Holmberg 1989
and further below).
If these suggestions turn out to be correct, then it is quite reasonable to
assume that functional categories may be unavailable at early points of language
development and that the abstract grammatical features in the children's
grammars may be distributed in a way deviating from the adult counterpart,
where these options are permitted by UG.
Recently, some researchers have proposed a more constrained version of
parameter theory. Among others, Valian (1988, 1990) has pointed out that the
current version of the parameter model cannot accurately describe the way the
child arrives at the target grammar. Given the fact that the data the child is
exposed to are sometimes contradictory, s/he could switch parameter values an
infinite number of times and as a consequence never settle on the correct value.
This clearly raises a fundamental theoretical problem. Apart from theoretical
shortcomings, there is also empirical evidence in favor of the assumption that
children do not constantly switch the value of parameters during the acquisition
process. Obviously, the theory of UG must be buttressed by a theory of
acquisition which constrains how parameters are set. What is needed then is a
constraint which requires that parameters cannot be reset during language
development. The parameter-setting constraint (Clahsen 1990; cf. also Penner
1992, Roeper & Weissenborn 1990, and Weissenborn 1990b) has been
formulated in order to meet these requirements. It states that fixed parameters
cannot be reset.
In what follows, I will present within this framework a syntactic analysis of
the word-order patterns used by bilingual children in French and German
embedded clauses. I will attempt to present empirical evidence in support of the
following two claims:
(i) The development of functional categories is characterized by the children's
exploration of the options offered by UG. More specifically, some abstract
grammatical features may be missing during the earliest stages and they
may be distributed in a target-deviant way even when the child has
PARAMETERS CANNOT BE RESET 237
discovered their relevance for the respective input language. In other words,
it is possible that children choose the wrong value of a parameter.
(ii) Parameters cannot be reset during the course of development.
1990; Platzack & Holmberg 1989; Pollock 1989) and thus cannot serve as a basis
for a decision in favor of one hypothesis. Examining language development can
therefore play an important role in theory development. If we can show that
children's syntactic representations differ from the target grammar not only with
respect to the distribution of the relevant grammatical features but also with
respect to the number of functional projections "activated", this would lead us
to the assumption that the short-clause hypothesis is more plausible than the
skeleton hypothesis.
In between these limiting proposals a number of other analyses have been
presented which assume that the children's grammars contain some under-
specified functional projections. This view has been advanced among others by
Clahsen (1990), Clahsen & Penke (1992), Gawlitzek-Maiwald, Tracy & Fritzen-
schaft (1992), Meisel (1990), Meisel & Müller (1992) and Roeper (1992). Note
that this approach is compatible with both the short-clause and the skeleton
hypothesis. The idea of incompletely specified functional projections has been
explored with respect to feature specification and the architecture of functional
projections. As far as the architecture is concerned, Lebeaux (1988), Hoekstra &
Jordens (1991), and Roeper (1992) argue that adjunction structures are the
precursors of fully articulated adult-like structures. They assume that categorial
analysis is a later step in the acquisition process and that it triggers X-bar-
structures.
In what follows I will confine myself to the problem of how the functional
category COMP is discovered by children. Before I turn to a brief overview of
the findings of other researchers concerning the development of the functional
category COMP in child grammar, I will summarize some of the basic facts in
the corresponding adult grammars.
Two hypotheses are discussed in the recent literature with respect to the
availability of CP as compared to IP in early child grammar. Some researchers
argue in favor of the assumption that CP is available only after IP has already
been established (cf. Clahsen 1990; Gawlitzek-Maiwald et al. 1992; Guilfoyle &
Noonan 1988; Haverkort & Weissenborn 1991 for French; Meisel & Müller
1992; Penner 1992; Roeper 1992; Rothweiler 1989; de Villiers 1992). Evidence
in support of this hypothesis is the lack of complementizers and V2-effects (in
V2 and residual V2-languages) at a point of development where there is no doubt
that INFL is available in child grammar. Others hypothesize that IP and CP are
available simultaneously (Hyams 1992; Poeppel & Wexler 1991; Verrips &
Weissenborn 1991; Weissenborn 1990a,b). The evidence for this view are
V2-effects (in V2 languages) and root wh-questions which show up at the same
time the acquisition data indicate the presence of IP.
Both approaches make the implicit claim that V2-effects are necessarily
related to the C-system in adult grammar and thus, the presence or absence of
V2-effects is taken to be an indicator for the presence or absence of CP in child
grammar. The plausibility of this assumption for V2-languages in general is weak
given the fact that there are V2-languages such as Yiddish (cf. Diesing 1990) and
Icelandic (cf. Platzack 1983, 1986) where V2-effects are not restricted to main
clauses, but show up as well in embedded clauses where COMP is filled already.
The following examples are taken from Diesing (1990:50).
(2) a. Vuhin geyt ir?
where-to go you
'where are you going?'
b. Zi iz gekumen zen ver frier vet kontshen
she is come see who earlier would finish
'she has come to see who would finish ealier'
c. Vemen hot er nit gevolt az ot di bikher zoln mir geben?
who has he not wanted that the books should we give
'to whom did he not want us to give the books'
In what follows, I will argue that V2-constructions in developing V2-
languages and root interrogatives in developing V2- and residual V2-languages
are most plausibly represented as IP-structures.
PARAMETERS CANNOT BE RESET 241
3. The Analysis
The subjects of this study are two boys — Ivar and Pascal — and one girl —
Caroline. The age period studied covers about four years of the children's
language development. Ivar has been studied from the age of 1;5 to 5;10, Pascal
from 1;5 to 4;7, and Caroline from 1;6 to 5;0 (for a detailed description of the
research project see Köppe, this volume, chap. 2).
In the data from all three children there is evidence to suggest that
properties of INFL are present from very early on (cf. Meisel 1986, 1990, this
volume). The children make productive use of verb inflection to mark person and
number agreement between subjects and verbs and begin to produce subjects
systematically in both languages (Ivar at approx. 2;4, Caroline at approx. 2;1, and
Pascal at approx. 2;2).
At this point of development, where both INFL and AGR and V2-patterns
in German are clearly established, the children do not yet use complementizers.
Meisel & Müller (1992) and Müller (1990, 1991) argue that the lack of
complementizers can be explained neither by the supposedly too complex
242 NATASCHA MÜLLER
(10) i muß i muß fragen mama — ha-hat hat die k[j]ebe (Iv;2;10,11)
I have to ask Mummy has the glue
'I have to ask Mummy where she's put the glue'
(11) wo is der auto (Iv;2;8,15)
'where is the car?'
(12) guck mal — ich hab,hab ich (Ca;2;6,22)
look I have,have I
'look what I have'
(13) was is das denn darein (Ca;2;10)
'what is that in there'
In order to solve this conflict, a refinement of the wh-feature system is
needed. Following Rizzi (1991b), the non-selected wh-specification of main
clauses has to be distinguished from the lexically selected wh-specification of
embedded clauses. He assumes that, among the other autonomously licensed
specifications (like e.g. the tense specification of the whole sentence), the
wh-specification of main clauses occurs in INFL. The position of the wh-specifi-
cation in embedded clauses is COMR
The first question to ask is how the wh-specification can occur in main clauses. I will
assume that this, as well as any other substantive feature specification cannot occur "for
free" in a structure, and must be licensed somehow. The occurrence of wh in an
embedded Comp is determined by a standard licensing device, lexical selection. What
about main questions? Of course, the theory of licensing cannot be too demanding: there
must be at least a position in a structure whose properties and specifications are
independently licensed, i.e. a point which the chain of licensings can be anchored to, and
start from. It is natural to assume that such a position can be the main inflection (or one
of the main inflectional heads, if some version of the Split-INFL-hypothesis is adopted,
as in Pollock 1989), the head that also contains the independent tense specification of
the whole sentence. I would like to propose that among the other autonomously licensed
specifications, the main inflection can also be specified as wh. (Rizzi 1991b:4)
That the main inflection can also be specified as wh is suggested by the fact
that in some natural languages the verb manifests a special morphology in
interrogatives. Assuming that the distinction between the selected and the
non-selected wh-specification and the arguments against the existence of the
C-system in early child grammar are correct, the children's developing grammars
can be said to include only non-selected wh. Furthermore, under the view that
the main inflection can be specified as wh, the use of root interrogatives is
PARAMETERS CANNOT BE RESET 245
consistent with the assumption that the children's grammars still lack the
complementizer system.
Another important observation is that root wh-question formation always
displays the target-like V2-pattern in the children's German data. If we analyze
root wh-interrogatives as IP- and not as CP-structures, this could be accounted
for by the assumption that the wh-element is positioned in Spec-IP and the finite
verb in INFL (for further details of the analysis see below).
In German, verb-second patterns start to appear with temporals (jetzt 'now'),
locatives (da 'there') and objects.6 The appearance of topicalization would also
be expected under the analysis presented by now since it is quite conceivable
that the child, having recognized the relevance of non-selected +wh (defining the
interrogative sentence type), has discovered the importance of non-selected -wh
(defining the declarative sentence type) as well. Note that both wh-question
formation and topicalization are generally taken to be instances of one movement
process, namely A-movement.7
Meisel & Müller (1992) present a syntactic analysis of V2-constructions
which is based on the "split-INFL-hypothesis" according to which some
INFL-features are held to be independent heads (cf. Chomsky 1989; Pollock
1989). They suggest that the children's grammars contain two verbal functional
categories (above VP) which they call AGR and INFL8 respectively. Further
more, they argue in favor of Pollock's analysis, namely that INFL dominates
AGR (cf. structures (25) and (26) for German and French respectively).9 In other
words, finite verbs in the children's grammar of German and French first have
to move to AGR before they can be raised to INFL. As far as the position of the
finiteness operator is concerned, the authors assume that it is assigned to the
highest functional head, INFL, in both languages, i.e. that INFL is analyzed as
a possible landing site for finite verbs in both languages. The use of V2-con-
structions in German and SVX-patterns in French indicates that IP is head-initial
in both languages. Directionality is interpreted in Meisel & Müller (1992) as the
result of the lack of COMP and the decision to place [+F] in INFL as one option
(presumably the default-value) of the finitenes s-parameter.
One consequence of deriving the V2 effect in German by movement of the
finite verb into INFL and by movement of any maximal phrase into Spec-IP is
that A-movement can also be accounted for in the absence of COMP. More
specifically, I want to argue that Spec-IP may function both as an A-position and
as an A-bar position in the children's grammar of German (cf. Müller 1991).
Thus, Spec-IP can host subjects10, wh-elements and topicalized non-subjects. This
possibility has been suggested by Diesing (1990) for adult Yiddish (cf. also
246 NATASCHA MÜLLER
Horvath 1981 for Hungarian and Rizzi 1991a) which shows V2-effects in
embedded clauses. One consequence of this analysis is that being an A-position
depends on whether or not a theta-role or nominative Case can be assigned. In
view of the absence of verb second patterns in the children's grammar of French
it seems reasonable to assume that, here, adjunction to IP is the only option in
the case of A-movement. Note that topicalization always results in V3-patterns
in French.
(14) ici on peut dormir (Iv;2;5,7)
'here you can sleep'
(15) ça on met (Iv;2;5,7)
this we put
'we put this there'
(16) un petit peu ça pique (Pa;2;4,7)
a little bit it pricks
'it pricks a little bit'
(17) là il pleure (Pa;2;4,7)
'there he cries'
(18) là elle est cassée (Ca;2;2,9)
'there it is broken'
(19) la chaussure on va jouer (Ca;2;4,8)
the shoe we will play
'we will play with the shoe'
The analysis presented so far has consequences for the assignment (or
checking) of nominative Case in the children's grammar of German and French.
One characteristic of V2-languages such as German is that the subject of a main
clause may precede or immediately follow the finite verb. In non-V2- or residual
V2-languages such as French, V2 effects are restricted to clitic subjects, hence
the ungrammaticality of *a Jean lu le livre? 'has John read the book'. On the
basis of these observations, Rizzi & Roberts (1989) develop the idea of
directionality of nominative Case assignment. The authors suppose that in
French, nominative Case can only be assigned leftward (here: Spec-IP), while in
Germanic languages such as German either direction (leftward or rightward; here:
Spec-IP or Spec-AGRP) of assignment is chosen.11 Under these assumptions,
raising of a into a position above the subject Jean (Spec-IP) represents a Case
Filter violation in French, since nominative Case can only be assigned leftward
here.
PARAMETERS CANNOT BE RESET 247
Furthermore, Meisel & Müller (1992) report that all three children
sometimes use verb-final patterns in German main clauses which they interpret
as evidence in favor of a head-final AGRP in German.12 The observation that
these patterns are completely absent in the French data suggests that AGRP is
analyzed as a head-initial projection here.13
(20) (p)apa lenkrad sitz (Iv;2;4,7)
Daddy steering wheel sit
'Daddy sits at the steering wheel'
(21) (var) ein [s]iff' macht (Iv;2;5,21)
Ivar a boat builds
Tvar builds a boat'
(22) da so macht (da=der) (Pa;2;2,12)
it like this goes
'it goes like this'
(23) das,das wo is (Pa;2;5,5)
it where is
'where is it'
(24) diese da drauf is (Ca;2;10)
this one there on top is
'this one is there on top'
Following Meisel & Müller (1992), the finite verb has not moved far
enough in examples (20)-(24). Since examples of verb-final patterns in German
main clauses are very infrequent, nothing forces us to assume that V-movement
in the children's grammars derives from principles which are different from those
in the respective adult grammar. Nevertheless, it seems to be the case that
performance factors may sometimes interfere with grammatical principles (cf.
Meisel 1990).14
The analysis so far would involve structures like the ones in (25) and (26)
for German and French respectively (see next page).15
Meisel & Müller (1992) present further empirical evidence in favor of two
positions for finite verbs in the children's grammars. They observe that the
children use constructions of the type jetzt sagt der das sagt 'now says he it says'
in which the same verb appears twice, initially and finally.
Furthermore, all three children use constructions which contain a finite
modal auxiliary verb and a finite main verb (cf. Müller 1991).
248 NATASCHA MÜLLER
Note that copying constructions of the type jetzt sagt der das sagt and the
verb final pattern in German (cf. examples (20)-(24)) are excluded with modal
auxiliaries. These distributional facts can be accounted for if we assume that
INFL is specified as modality and that modal auxiliaries are base-generated in
INFL.16
So far, the distribution of finite verbs was taken as empirical evidence for
the existence of the second functional projection AGRP, namely that all finite
verbs which show up in AGR also appear in INFL (V2-position), but not vice
versa (modal auxiliaries are excluded from AGR). Although I think that we need
two functional categories, neither of which corresponds to adult COMP, in order
to account for the children's utterances during this developmental phase (but see
Meisel this volume for a different view), exactly which features are generated
under the syntactic position labelled AGR remains a matter for further empirical
investigation. Since the children, according to Schlyter's (1990) analysis, mark
lexical aspect (change-of-state vs. non-change-of-state) during the period
discussed, aspect might be a possible candidate. Interestingly enough, most of the
verbs which show up in the syntactic position labelled AGR have the 3rd person
inflection. However, not only 3rd person singular forms, e.g. ist 'is', but also 3rd
person plural forms, e.g. sind 'are', ham 'have', are used in this position.17
Meisel (1986, 1990) reports that the children already make productive use of 1st
and 2nd person singular verb forms during this developmental phase. Since AGR
seems to be restricted to verb forms with 3rd person singular and plural
inflectional affixes, I hypothesize that number is another possible candidate for
the feature specification of AGR (cf. the discussion in Müller 1991). I think these
observations clearly demonstrate that it is worth reflecting upon the category
labelled AGR here once more in detail. For the development of subject-verb
agreement see Meisel (this volume).
To summarize, then, there is evidence for the existence of two functional,
verbal categories and for the claim that AGRP is head-final in German and
head-initial in French, whereas IP is head-initial in both languages, where INFL
minimally contains [+F], non-selected wh, and modality. Note that INFL contains
those specifications which according to Rizzi (1991b) are autonomously
licensed.
I want to come back to the hypothesis that [+F] is associated with INFL in
French and German child grammar during the period discussed. I assume that
"[+F] in INFL" represents the default-setting of the finiteness parameter. This
follows from markedness theory since it describes the smaller language. If the
arguments against the existence of the C-system are valid, the actual grammar
250 NATASCHA MÜLLER
does not provide the child with all the necessary information s/he needs in order
to choose some marked option of the finiteness parameter. Since the child seems
to have recognized the importance of finiteness in the respective grammars on
the one hand, and since COMP (or the importance of selected wh) has not yet
been discovered at this point of development on the other hand, the default-value
"[+F] in INFL" is used.
prevent the finite verb from moving to the V2-position (=INFL) in his grammar.
The analysis for German embedded clauses would thus involve a structure like
the one in (42):
The question is how we can account for Ivar's wrong choice concerning the
value of the finitenes s parameter for German. I want to argue that Ivar does not
analyze first complementizers as functional categories and that he, therefore,
projects a new category in syntax which is superfluous.
It can be observed that the category COMP in Ivar's grammar of German
develops out of a lexical category, namely the preposition für 'for'. 18 Such a
development is not observed in Caroline's or in Pascal's German. The lexical
nature of the forerunner für might lead Ivar to the hypothesis that a new category
which is lexical is needed in syntax in order to generate complementizers. If
"complementizers" are first analyzed as lexical categories, they cannot be
associated with functional [+F], i.e. they are not generated in INFL which
contains [+F] in Ivar's grammar. This amounts to saying that the choice of a
syntactic position for complementizers is made before Ivar has discovered that
they constitute functional categories. As a consequence, the finiteness parameter
is set to the wrong value for German.
What evidence is there to suggest that complementizers develop out of the
preposition für?
PARAMETERS CANNOT BE RESET 253
für+S
(47) f [um] tiere weg nich [n]aufen (Iv;2;7,17)
for animals away not run
'in order for the animals not to run away'
(48) muß da sei rein guck pour pour tie[j]e nich
has there to go in look for animals not
nich weg[n]aufen (Iv;2;8,l)
not away-run
'this has to go in there in order for the animals not to run away'
(49) f[o] de f[o] de reiten komm du (Iv;2;9,18)
for it ride come you
'you come in order to ride it'
(50) emm das das für k[j]em[d]en (Iv;2;10,11)
this for to comb
'this is for to put in your hair'
(51) das für k[j]emmen deine haare (Iv;2;10,11)
this for to comb your hair
'this is for to put in your hair'
(52) fü,für nich der [n]öwe beißt (=Löwe) (Iv;2; 11,21)
for not the lion bites
'in order for the lion not to bite'
Cf. also later in the developmental process:
254 NATASCHA MULLER
(53) das is für der rauch geht hoch, in das hau (Iv;3;4,9)
this is for the smoke goes up, in the house
'
in order for the smoke to go up...'
(54) f[um] björn hat das abgerißt (Iv;3;4,23)
for Björn has it off-torn
'because Björn has torn it off'
(55) so föm föm für die kinder, kann das abrissen (Iv;3;4,23)
for the children can it off-tear
'in order for the children to tear it off'
There is more evidence to suggest that für is categorized as a preposition:
Besides the form für, Ivar uses the variants fo, fum, föm which do not correspond
to the target language. In adult German, some prepositions may fuse with
case-marked articles, cf. am, zum. In contrast to prepositions, complementizers
are invariant in German. This is also true for Ivar's language use. Furthermore,
Ivar never uses complementizers in combination with NPs at later points in his
development.
Another observation supporting the claim that complementizers first
constitute lexical categories is that early elements introducing clauses are
base-generated weil 'because', wenn 'if', als 'when', specified as [-wh]. During
the age period from 2;11 to 3;1 no moved wh-words introduce embedded clauses.
If we assume that functional categories differ from lexical categories with respect
to the specifier-system (cf. Fukui & Speas 1986; Raposo & Uriagereka 1990;
Speas 1990), i.e. functional heads assign certain inflectional (Kase-) features (e.g.
[+F], [+wh], [+AGR]) under agreement and these features are licensed by a
particular (adjacent) specifier (cf. Speas 1990), then the absence of embedded
wh-words in Ivar's grammar is a natural consequence of the assumption that
COMP, the syntactic position of complementizers, is specified as (non-Kase
assigning) [-wh]. In other words, since COMP does not contain selected [+wh],
for instance, it does not license a specifier as a landing site for embedded
wh-movement. Note that subordinating conjunctions and moved wh-words appear
simultaneously in Caroline's and Pascal's German embedded clauses.
The next step comprises the integration of functional COMP into Ivar's
grammar of German which is evidenced by the use of wh-words introducing
embedded clauses. From the age of 3;2 onwards, Ivar starts making productive
use of wh-words in embedded clauses. Thus, lexically selected [+wh] is part of
the child's category system. It seems reasonable to suppose that Ivar has
discovered the functional category COMP. However, the integration of functional
PARAMETERS CANNOT BE RESET 255
COMP into the grammar does not entail the correct word order in German
embedded clauses. Up to the age of 4;4, Ivar's embedded clauses mainly show
main-clause word order with the finite verb in third position. Interestingly
enough, there are examples of the V2-effect in embedded clauses, such as weiß
du warum da sind so böse tiere 'know you why there are that vicious animals'
(cf. also (36) and (37)). This observation seems to confirm the analysis given
above for German V2-constructions in non-embedded contexts (Spec-IP=A-
position).
Note that the occurrence of the V2-effect in German embedded clauses does
not depend on the type of element which introduces the clause (subordinating
conjunction wenn 'when', complementizer daß 'that', wh-word warum 'why').
Another interesting aspect is that V2-effects are restricted to German embedded
clauses. Crucially, the subject surfaces in the position immediately following the
element introducing the embedded clause in French. Again, we have reason to
believe that the analysis presented above is plausible, where I argued that in
French, Spec-IP functions exclusively as an A-position.
We can account for these observations if we claim that selected [+wh] is
associated with the earlier developed syntactic position of base-generated für and
weil, wenn, als, but not with INFL containing [+F] as a consequence of the
assumption that fixed parameters (the verb-second parameter) cannot be reset.
Thus, Ivar ends up with a structure like the one in (42) for German.
The question is how Ivar arrives at the target-like V-final pattern in German
embedded clauses. The data from Ivar clearly show that the acquisition of the
V-final pattern in German embedded clauses is a step-by-step (or item-by-item)
learning process. Note that under the assumption that fixed parameters cannot be
reset, we would also expect a long drawn-out learning process.
From the age of 4;4 onwards, V-final patterns appear quite frequently in
embedded clauses. The relative proportion of V-final patterns amounts to 50%
in one third of all recordings during the age period from 4;4 to 4;11. An obvious
assumption would be that the occurrence of V-final patterns is random. However,
this conclusion is premature. It seems to be the case that their usage is subject
to severe restrictions. It can be observed that the patterns appear with particular
verbs only, namely with main verbs in the present tense. The pattern is excluded
with modal and temporal auxiliaries (in the present and past) and with
main/copula verbs in the past tense like war 'was'. During the period discussed,
the data do not contain a single example of the use of a modal or temporal
auxiliary or a main/copula verb in the past tense like war in clause-final position.
256 NATASCHA MULLER
grammar of German, i.e. AGR is restructured as shown in (88). If this were the
case, however, we would expect an item-by-item learning process as in the case
of restructuring INFL as rich COMP. As we are dealing with a sudden step in
development, it may also be very tentatively suggested that Ivar projects a new
verbal (head-final) functional category in syntax which is specified as [Modality]
and [PAST]. This would be a plausible analysis, if we had enough empirical
evidence for two (head-final) verbal functional categories in adult German as
well. This last point, however, is far from being settled (cf. e.g. Iatridou 1990).
The proposed analyses would involve structures like the ones in (88) and (89)
respectively:
262 NATASCHA MÜLLER
I want to leave open the question of whether structure (88) or structure (89) is
to be preferred (cf. Müller 1991 for a discussion of this issue).
If the analysis presented for Ivar's development in German is correct, then
we should obtain the same conflict in Caroline's and Pascal's grammar of
German. I argued in favor of an analysis according to which modal auxiliaries
are base-generated in INFL in the German grammar of all children during the
phase where COMP has not been developed yet.19 Note that this is the wrong
analysis for adult German. Caroline and Pascal have to reconsider the distribution
of these verbs by the time they restructure their INFL node as a rich COMP node
(the rich COMP node cannot contain two types of base-generated elements at the
same time, a complementizer and a modal auxiliary). As soon as INFL is
restructured as a rich COMP node, modal auxiliaries can no longer be base-
generated in this node. The conflict mentioned is not visible in Caroline's and
Pascal's case since the restructuring of the INFL node results from the setting of
the finiteness parameter to the correct value in the grammar of these children and
therefore is not a step-by-step process as in Ivar's case.
6. Discussion
I have suggested that the reason for Ivar's development is that he does not
analyze first complementizers as functional categories but instead as lexical
categories and that consequently, lexically selected [wh] and [+F] are distributed
across different categories. We have to ask further the reasons for the wrong
classification of complementizers.
There is no doubt that subordinating conjunctions in adult German share
many properties with lexical categories such as prepositions.20 For instance, they
encode similar semantic relations (temporal, causal) and they appear in front of
sentences and noun phrases respectively (cf. Müller 1991 for a discussion of this
issue). Thus, there may be confusion with respect to the categorial status of these
elements in the child's grammatical system. If we consider the fact that
subordinating conjunctions are used by the children only at a later point in
development where they already make productive use of prepositions, the hypothesis
about the wrong classification of subordinating conjunctions becomes even more
plausible. Note that authors like Bickerton (1981), Koopman & Lefèbvre (1981),
Washabaugh (1975), Woolford (1979) argue for some English- and French-based
creoles that prepositions (for, pour) are possible precursors for complementizers.
The approach presented so far claims that the development of the two
PARAMETERS CANNOT BE RESET 263
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Susanne E. Carroll, Peter Jordens, Georg Kaiser, Caroline Koehn,
Regina Köppe, Jürgen M. Meisel, Zvi Penner, Tom Roeper, Achim Stenzel, and
Jürgen Weissenborn for comments on earlier versions of this paper.
Notes
1. Weissenborn (1990b) suggests that there is an initial stage in the acquisition of German
where the children use residual, but not generalized V-to-C-movement. The important
assumption is that the CP is available for syntactic processes from very early on.
2. Note that according to the skeleton-analysis the child should be said to determine which
grammatical features are not relevant in the input language.
3. If we assume the short-clause analysis to be correct, then the child has to decide which
features are relevant in the respective language. This decision, however, has to be made
only for those features which are not selected universally. Finiteness, for example, is
seen as a universal feature and thus is excluded from the set of possible choices (cf.
Felix 1990; Rizzi 1991b).
4. Platzack & Holmberg (1989) suggest a parameter which specifies the occurrence of
AGR a) in syntax or b) not in syntax. Whether a language chooses option a) or b)
depends on the kind of subject-verb agreement.
5. For the assumption that lexical categories differ from functional categories in their
specifier-system, cf. below.
6. Fronting of temporals and locatives is much more frequent than fronting of objects.
7. For a detailed discussion of A-movement in adult and child language see Müller (1991).
8. Meisel & Müller (1992) use the category label TENSE for the syntactic position which
minimally contains [+F]. Since the children do not seem to have discovered the
PAST-feature yet (cf. Meisel 1985; Schlyter 1990), this terminology is misleading.
9. This hierarchy of functional projections is incompatible with Haverkort & Weissen-
born's (1991) analysis of clitic placement in positive imperatives. I do not want to
discuss this problem here. Note, however, that there is a selectional interdependency
between complementizers and tense (that selects [+tense], for selects [-tense]) in the
adult grammar which suggests that INFL (or TENSE) dominates AGR and not vice
versa (cf. Zubizarretta 1992).
10. I take Kuroda's (1988) and Sportiche's (1988) analysis of subjects to be uncontroversial,
namely that they originate in a position within VP and are A-moved into their
s-structure position.
PARAMETERS CANNOT BE RESET 265
11. The existence of copying constructions such as (du) nimmst du 'ne blaue 'you take you
a blue (one)', i bin i ein kirsch 'I am I a deer', wir wolln wir eine (kutsche) machen 'we
want we a cab make', where the subject appears pre- and postverbally, in the German
data from all children and the absence of such examples in French suggests that this
may indeed be the correct generalization (cf. Müller 1991 for further discussion).
12. Caroline uses this pattern only once. In the data from Ivar and Pascal, the finite verb
shows up in clause-final position in 4% of all finite multi-word sentences.
13. Peter Jordens, Monika Rothweiler, and Jürgen Weissenborn have pointed out to me that
verbs like macht 'makes' and sitz 'sit' may also be interpreted as non-finite verb forms
in child grammar. Note however that this interpretation is not very plausible for is 'is'.
14. We know that this is valid for adults as well.
15. I argued in Müller (1991) that adjunction to IP is base-generated (cf. also de Villiers
1991). Thus, the d-structure for those constructions derived by adjunction would look
as follows:
16. If we take modal auxiliaries to be the lexical spell-out of INFL, INFL is the highest
functional category in the children's syntactic representation of sentences, as suggested
in Meisel & Müller (1992). For a different view cf. Haverkort & Weissenborn (1991),
Verrips & Weissenborn (1992), and Weissenborn (1990b) among others.
17. Again, these verb forms also show up in the V2-position, cf. the example of a copying
construction at a later point of development (3;04,23) ...wenn da sind eh da sind [n]öwen
sind in meine ca[s] 'when there are eh there are lions are in my cages'.
18. The hypothesis that prepositions are precursors for complementizers has also been
explored for monolingual English children. Nishigauchi & Roeper (1987) find that for
is the first lexical item which the children use in order to introduce clauses.
19. Note that in contrast to modality, the [PAST]-specification is not available in Caroline's
and Pascal's grammar during this first developmental phase.
20. This is also valid for subordinating conjunctions in relation to adverbs.
21. There seems to be a quantitative difference between monolingual and bilingual
acquisition of word order in embedded clauses which still has to be accounted for. To
my knowledge the literature on monolingual language acquisition has not yet reported
on a case like Ivar where the acquisition process takes approximately two years.
266 NATASCHA MULLER
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Index of Names
Abney, Stephen 53, 85, 161-163, 202, 92, 124-126, 135, 154-156,
205 264
Aldridge, Michelle 112, 113, 126 Chomsky, Noam 63, 90, 109, 112,
Anisfeld, Moshe 31, 50 115, 119, 126, 132, 134, 156,
Aoun, Yoseph 202, 205 163, 165, 199, 202, 205, 235,
Arnold, Doug 50, 86, 159 245, 266
Ashby, William J. 133, 155 Clahsen, Harald 8, 14, 19, 26, 53, 57,
Atkinson, Martin 50, 86 58,62,85,86,96, 116, 120, 121,
Auger, Julie 133-135, 155 126, 127, 151, 156, 196,
Baker, William J. 31, 50 198-200, 205, 214, 216, 229,
Barnes, Betsy K. 155 232, 236-238, 240, 250, 266
Berkele, Gisela 26, 58, 64, 77, 78, 84, Clark, Eve V. 137, 156, 214, 232, 233
85 Contreras, Heles 211, 233
Berko Gleason, Jean 30, 31, 50, 271 Corbett, Greville G. 50, 71, 84, 86
Bhatt, Christa 53, 56, 85 Crysmann, Berthold 152, 158
Bickerton, Derek 6, 14, 78, 85, 94, Czepluch, Hartmut 200, 205
124, 126, 181, 205, 232, 262, 266 de Villiers, Jill 240, 265, 266, 269
Borer, Hagit 209, 212-216, 221, 225, Demuth, Katherine 83, 86, 164, 172,
230, 232 206
Braine, Martin 206 Deprez, Viviane 12, 14, 214, 216,
Brown, Roger 188, 263, 266 224, 233
Bryant, B. 31, 50 Derwing, Bruce L. 31, 50
Burzio, Luigi 210, 218, 222, 224, 231, Dieck, Marianne 26, 110, 127, 218,
232 233
Bybee, Joan 29, 30, 49, 50 Diesing, Molly 82, 86, 240, 245, 266
Carroll, Susanne E. 2, 25, 56, 82, 85, Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria 154, 156
272 NAMES
Poeppel, David 168, 208, 237, 240, Schwartz, Bonnie D. 86, 205, 206, 266,
268 275
Pollock, Jean-Yves 97, 108, 110, 112, Shin, Hyo-Shik 202, 208
118, 128, 158, 238, 244, 245, 268 Sigurðsson, Halddór 202, 203, 208,
Prideaux, Gary D. 50 275
Prinz, Michael 154, 158 Silva-Corvalán, Carmen 155, 158
Prinzhorn, Martin 268 Slobin, Dan I. 29, 30, 50, 87, 156,
Pullum, Geoffrey K. 135, 154, 159 207, 233
Radford, Andrew 53, 88, 90, 128, 136, Sorace, Antonella 210, 234
158, 168, 169, 196, 208, 212, Speas, Margaret J. 56, 86, 163, 164,
214, 231, 234, 237, 268 195, 204, 206, 208, 237, 254,
Raposo, Eduardo 112, 128, 254, 268 266, 269
Rigault, André A. 51, 57, 88 Sportiche, Dominique 114, 127, 202,
Ritter, Elisabeth 82, 88, 202, 205, 208 205,211,233, 234, 264,269
Rizzi, Luigi 91, 128, 134, 158, 218, von Stechow, Armin 111, 126, 128,
234, 236, 239, 244, 246, 249, 211, 212, 231,234
264, 268 Stenson, Nancy 112, 128
Roberge, Yves 100, 128, 134, 135, Stenzel, Achim 3, 10, 11, 25, 54, 58,
155, 156, 159, 217, 234 62, 82, 154, 161, 213, 215, 229,
Roberts, Ian 91, 128, 246, 268 264
Rochette, Anne 156 Sternefeld, Wolfgang 111, 126, 128,
Roeper, Thomas 2, 58, 82, 88, 122, 124, 211, 212, 231, 233, 234
128, 169, 194, 208, 232, 236, 238, Strozer, Judith R. 154, 159
240, 242, 264, 265, 267-269, 275 Stump, Gregory T. 112, 128
Ronat, Mitsou 133, 134, 159 Tracy, Rosemarie 11, 14, 57, 86, 196,
Ronjat, Jules 15, 26 198, 200, 204, 208, 238, 266
Rothe, Wolfgang 134, 159 Tucker, G. Richard 31, 49-51, 57, 88
Rothstein, Susan D. 88, 164, 208 Uriagereka, Juan 254, 268
Rothweiler, Monika 88, 128, 207, 208, Vainikka, Anne 53, 58, 62, 86, 200,
234, 240, 265, 267-269 205
Sadler, Louisa 50, 86 Valian, Virginia 236, 269
Safir, Kenneth 134, 154, 157, 159 Vater, Heinz 82, 88
Sankoff, Gilian 133, 159 Veh, Birgitta 26, 27
Schäle, Heike 200, 208 Verrips, Maaike 108, 110, 113, 121,
Schlesinger, I. 206 124, 128, 129, 147, 159, 214,
Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte 159 229, 234, 237, 240, 265, 269
Schlyter, Suzanne 25-27, 125, 128, Vet, Co 156, 240
249, 259, 264, 269 Vinet, Marie-Thérèse 100, 128, 155,
Schöler, Hermann 200, 208 159
NAMES 275
Washabaugh, William 262, 269 Williams, Sarah 26, 27, 232, 267
Weissenborn, Jürgen 13, 14, 108, 110, Woolford, Ellen 262, 269
113, 121, 124, 128, 129, 137, Zubin, David A. 36, 49, 51, 57, 86
147, 151, 155, 156, 159, 168, Zubizarreta, Maria Luisa 269
208, 214, 216, 229, 234, 236, Zwicky, Arnold 135, 154, 159
237, 240, 243, 264-266, 269
Wexler, Kenneth 168, 208, 209,
212-216, 221, 225, 230, 232,
237, 240, 268
Index of Subjects
Aa Adjective
A-chain 212, 213 and numeral; choice between 62
A-position 245, 246, 255 declension of 165
Ä-movement 245, 246, 264 nominalized 65
Ä-position 255, 259 quantifying 56
Acquisition Adjectives 165
of agreement 8, 29, 97, 111, 120 and numerals; choice between 85
of Case 10, 11, 161, 169, 185 gender marking on 33, 38
of clitics 8, 131, 136, 137, 141, inflectional markings on 60
143, 167 participle used as 106
of combinatory rules 32 possessive 196, 199
of DET 198 Adjoin, adjunction 169, 238, 246, 265
of finite verb forms 6, 7, 106, 147 Affix, affixation 30-32, 36, 37, 121,
of functional categories 164, 237 123, 135, 156, 165, 266
of gender and number 3, 4, 29, 58 Agreement
of INFL 8, 167, 181 article-noun 55, 71, 75, 76, 164
of morphological markings 29-31, as Case 96
42, 44, 152 as instantiation of finiteness 109
of NP-movement 209,212,214 chain 168, 194
of number and gender 4 errors 67, 83,99, 102, 117
of plural morphology 3 gender 56, 57, 64, 71, 77
of pronouns 203 markers; object clitics as 135, 151,
of subject clitics 10 152
of subject raising 12 markers; subject clitics as 9, 134,
of syntactic categories 6 150, 167
of tense and aspect 104, 106, 259 markings 97, 99, 100, 102, 104,
step-by-step 255 109, 112, 113, 120
278 SUBJECTS
Category—Continued Ee
governing 112 Ergative 12, 13, 210-215, 217-219,
grammatical 40 222, 224-226, 230-232
lexical 14, 77, 131, 202, 252
syntactic 62, 124, 251 Ff
Causative, causativize 212-214, 225 Feature
Clause grammatical 40, 56, 57, 68, 76, 78,
embedded 242, 255, 258 82, 124, 205
main 232, 246, 255, 257, 260 inherent 55-57, 71
short clause 237, 238, 264 semantic 11, 57, 61, 77, 78, 198,
small clause 211, 231 204, 205
subordinate clause 232 sharing 84, 115-117, 124
Clitic Free inversion 134, 149, 150, 159,
doubling 133, 135, 167, 192 218, 234
object (OCL) 135, 137, 143, 144, Frequency 4, 31, 33, 117, 135, 155,
146, 152, 167, 180, 192 179, 188, 189, 192
pronoun 131, 132, 152, 166 Function word 34
subject (SCL) 9, 100, 123, 133, Functional head 10, 77, 163, 245
135, 137, 138, 141, 147, 148,
188, 190, 217, 221, 223, 230 Gg
Complement 10, 151, 161, 202, 204 Gender
Conjunction 255 agreement 56, 57, 64, 71, 76, 77
Continuity 89, 93, 94, 135, 136, 147, attribution 3-5, 45, 46, 48, 56, 57,
152, 209 59
Copula 139, 255, 259 marking 54, 71-73, 75
Copy, copying construction 122, 265 patterns 45
Creole 78, 267 phonologically based regularities
Cue strength 33, 43 36,37
rules 36, 37
Dd semantically based regularities 45
Definite article 6, 34, 40, 44, 46-49, system 34, 51
57, 64, 65, 69, 71, 72, 74, 77, 84, Government 126, 156, 202, 205, 232,
165, 203 268
Definiteness 54, 55, 58, 59, 78, 84,
134, 150, 169, 202, 203 Hh
Developmental phase, stage 12, 58, Head
59, 61-64, 67, 72, 75, 85, 102, head-final 91, 95, 121, 123, 161,
104, 215, 249, 260, 265 164, 182, 204, 216, 239, 247,
Direct object 179, 180, 183, 191, 192 249, 259-261
Dislocation 156, 157, 164, 224 head-initial 91, 121, 161, 164, 204,
Dominant language 23 216, 239, 245, 247, 249
280 SUBJECTS