The left periphery of multiple wh-questions in Slovenian

2016 ◽  
pp. 193-220
Author(s):  
Petra Mišmaš
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Wh Questions

scholarly journals Locality in the acquisition of object A’-dependencies: insights from French

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Durrleman ◽  
Anamaria Bentea
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Object A ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Performance Accuracy ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
Demonstrative Pronouns ◽  
Feature Overlap ◽  
Pattern Of Performance ◽  
Object Relative

Children’s difficulties with dependencies involving movement of an object to the left periphery of the clause (object relative clauses/RCs and wh-questions), have been explained in terms of intervention effects arising when the moved object and the intervening subject share a lexical N feature (Friedmann, Belletti & Rizzi 2009). Such an account raises various questions: (1) Do these effects hold in the absence of a lexical N feature when the object and the intervener share other relevant features? (2) Do phi-features with a semantic role modulate such effects? (3) Does the degree of feature overlap determine a gradience in performance? We addressed these in three sentence-picture matching studies with French-speaking children (4;8 to 6;3), by assessing comprehension of (1) subject and object RCs headed by the demonstrative pronouns celui/celle and matching or mismatching in number; (2) object RCs headed by a lexical N and matching or mismatching in animacy; (3) object who- and which-questions. Our results show that mismatches in number, not in animacy, enhance comprehension of object RCs, even in the absence of a lexical N feature, and confirm previous findings that object who-questions yield better comprehension than object which-questions. Comparing across studies, the following gradation emerges with respect to performance accuracy: disjunction > intersection > inclusion. The global interpretation of these findings is that fine-grained phi-features determining movement are both sufficient and necessary for locality, and the degree of overlap of these features can capture the pattern of performance observed in children, namely higher accuracy as featural differences increase.

scholarly journals W-Wort-Verdoppelung im Schweizerdeutschen

2005 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Natascha Frey
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Question Type ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
German Dialects ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Normal Sentence ◽  
Rhetorical Questions ◽  
German Data

In some Swiss German dialects, wh-questions can show the wh-word at the end of the sentence in addition to its 'normal' sentence initial position. This phenomenon called wh-doubling raises some puzzling questions for linguistic theories, such as: what kind of processes are involved in wh-doubling (syntactic, phonological)? Does wh-doubling enrich the poor left periphery of Swiss German? Why do speakers use an additional wh-word that seems to be absolutely superfluous? I will argue that wh-doubling depends on the information structure of the question, more specifically on the function of the wh-word as a focus constituent. Wh-doubling is also used in a special type of rhetorical questions in Swiss High German where in addition to doubling wh-words undergo diminutive formation and reduplication. My paper pursues two main goals: (i) to give a detailed description of wh-doubling constructions with regard to geographical distribution and question type (rhetorical, alternative, echo etc.); (ii) to present syntactic analyses of similar wh-doubling phenomena in other languages considering their application to Swiss German data.

Eppur si muove!

2001 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 147-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Munaro ◽  
Cecilia Poletto ◽  
Jean-Yves Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Sharp Contrast ◽  
The Other ◽  
Striking Difference ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Left Edge ◽  
Comparative Syntax ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Town

This article offers a comparative syntax approach to wh-questions in French and Bellunese, a Northern Italian dialect spoken in the town of Belluno. A striking difference between the two languages, otherwise very closely related, lies in the fact that bare wh-words in root questions, which display obligatory subject clitic inversion (SCLI), must appear at the right edge of the sentence in Bellunese. In French on the other hand apparent in situ structures ban SCLI and do not accept que in sharp contrast with Bellunese. To make sense of these data we suggest that despite appearances wh-words in Bellunese do move to the left periphery, just as they must in French SCLI structures. This in turn requires that the remaining IP also move to the left periphery which should then be “highly split”. The minimal parameter distinguishing French and Bellunese, we claim, lies in the existence of a class of non assertive clitics in Bellunese, which have turned into interrogative markers. Their absence in French triggers obligatory wh-movement to a high operator position at the left edge of the CP domain. In this light it is suggested that French wh in situ questions also involves invisible remnant IP movement and wh movement to a truncated left periphery.

Wh-questions, V2, and the Left Periphery of Three Norwegian Dialect types

2005 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 119-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit R. Westergaard ◽  
�ystein A. Vangsnes
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Wh Questions

scholarly journals The Layered Syntactic Structure of the Complementizer System: Functional Heads and Multiple Movements in the Early Left-Periphery. A Corpus Study on Italian

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincenzo Moscati ◽  
Luigi Rizzi
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Landing Sites ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Simultaneous Activation ◽  
Why Questions

In this paper we document the developmental trajectory of the complementizer system (CP-system) in Italian by looking at the earliest spontaneous production of eleven young children, whose transcriptions are available on CHILDES. We conducted a novel corpus analysis, tracking down a number of constructions in which the clausal left-periphery is activated. First, we considered the appearance of the different complementizer particles in the CP-system, which overtly realize the three distinct functional projections ForceP, IntP, and FinP. The analysis revealed that children acquiring Italian correctly use these complementizer particles already in the third year of life. Second, we looked for the simultaneous activation of different functional projections within the CP-system. We went through our corpus searching for complex sentences in which more than one constituent was moved to the left periphery. This option is allowed by the adult grammar of Italian and, as our search revealed, it is also attested in the grammar of young children. Soon after their second birthday, sequences in which a left-dislocated Topic and a Wh- element co-occur are attested, directly supporting the existence of a (high) Topic position above FocusP. Moreover, movement in general conforms to the constraints of the adult grammar, with no attested violation of obligatory inversion (a consequence of the Q-Criterion). Importantly, “why-questions” did not require inversion, much as in the adult grammar of Italian. Taken together, children's use of complementizer particles and their activation of multiple landing sites for movement show that 2-year-olds already possess a richly articulated functional structure of the CP-system, aligned to the layered adult structure. In concluding the paper, we also discuss some temporal differences between constructions activating high and low portions of the CP-system. In particular, we detect a temporal precedence for wh-questions over why-questions. Since the former activate a lower projection, this is consistent with the recently proposed Growing Trees hypothesis, according to which the development of the CP-system proceeds stepwise.

scholarly journals Growing trees: The acquisition of the left periphery

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Naama Friedmann ◽  
Adriana Belletti ◽  
Luigi Rizzi
Keyword(s):  
Left Periphery ◽  
Syntactic Structures ◽  
Adjunct Questions ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Transitive Verbs ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Interrogative Clauses ◽  
Why Questions

We suggest here a Growing Trees approach for the description of the acquisition of various syntactic structures in Hebrew, based on the main results reported in Friedmann and Reznick (this volume) and on our own research on a corpus of natural productions. The heart of our account is that stages of acquisition follow the geometry of the syntactic tree, along the lines of the cartographic analysis of the clause, with early stages of acquisition corresponding to small portions of the adult syntactic tree, which keeps growing with the growth of the child. The lower parts of the tree are acquired first, and higher parts are acquired later. We propose three stages of acquisition connected to the development of functional layers of the syntactic tree. In the first stage, the IP is acquired, including the lexical and inflectional layers. This allows for the appearance of A-movement structures, including SV/VS alternations with unaccusative verbs, alongside SV sentences with unergative/transitive verbs. The second stage involves the acquisition of the lower part of the left periphery, up to QP, which allows for the acquisition of subject and object Wh questions, some adjunct questions, yes/no questions, and sentence-initial adverbs. In the third stage, the rich structure of the left periphery is completely acquired, including the higher CP field. This is the stage in which sentential embedding (of finite declarative and interrogative clauses), subject and object relative clauses, why questions, and topicalization appear. A further, different type of stage, which occurs on the already-grown tree and which is independent of structure building, is the acquisition of intervention configurations, allowing for the mastery of structures involving movement of a lexically-restricted object across an intervening lexically-restricted subject. The paper illustrates the fruitful dialogue between the science of syntax acquisition and the cartography of syntactic structures.

scholarly journals Focus in Italian echo wh-questions: An analysis at syntax-prosody interface

Probus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Badan ◽  
Claudia Crocco
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Approach ◽  
General Level ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Focus Position ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Focus Projection

Abstract In this article, we propose an analysis of the so-called echo wh-questions in situ in Italian at syntax–prosody interface. We conduct a prosodic analysis under an experimental approach, showing that a focalized wh-word in echo wh-questions shows its own peculiar properties, different from informative and corrective focus, so that we can analyze it as an instance of Mirative focus. We demonstrate that the wh-word in echo wh-questions occupies a focus position in the low periphery of the clause. We also argue that this position has syntactic properties that, interlaced together with the prosodic properties, lead us to define the projection as a dedicated focus projection for Mirative focus. Crucially, the focus position within the low periphery activated in an echo wh-question, has different syntactic, prosodic and interpretive properties with respect to the informational focus, and to the corrective focus. Therefore, at a general level, our analysis strengthens the idea that partly different intonations and interpretations are associated to positions within the low periphery as opposed to the positions in the left periphery.

Wh-questions in child L2 French: Derivational complexity and its interactions with L1 properties, length of exposure, age of exposure, and the input

2014 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe Prévost ◽  
Nelleke Strik ◽  
Laurie Tuller
Keyword(s):  
First Language ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Formal Schooling ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Exposure Age ◽  
L1 Influence ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
L1 English

This study investigates how derivational complexity interacts with first language (L1) properties, second language (L2) input, age of first exposure to the target language, and length of exposure in child L2 acquisition. We compared elicited production of wh-questions in French in two groups of 15 participants each, one with L1 English (mean age 8 years 10 months or 8;10) and one with L1 Dutch (mean age 6;3), which were further subdivided into subgroups matched for the different variables under examination. Although in their L1s wh-questions display wh-movement and subject–verb/aux inversion, the learners did not perform similarly. A high number of wh-in-situ questions (i.e. the least complex option) was produced by the L1-English children, suggesting that derivational complexity can override L1 influence. In the L1-Dutch group, questions with overt wh-movement were more frequent. This may stem from the influence of generalized XP-movement to the left periphery in Dutch. Inversion (i.e. the most complex option) was rare in both groups and was related to contact with formal schooling. These results hold across the different subgroups, which suggests not only that complexity plays a role in child L2 acquisition, but also that its effects may differ according to the properties of the L1.

Responses of Language-Disordered Children to Wh-Questions

1986 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha M. Parnell ◽  
James D. Amerman ◽  
Roger D. Harting
Keyword(s):  
Relative Difficulty ◽  
Normal Children ◽  
Cognitive Linguistic ◽  
Wh Questions

Nineteen language-disordered children aged 3—7 years responded to items representing nine wh-question forms. Questions referred to three types of referential sources based on immediacy and visual availability. Three and 4-year-olds produced significantly fewer functionally appropriate and functionally accurate answers than did the 5- and 6-year-olds. Generally, questions asked with reference to nonobservable persons, actions, or objects appeared the most difficult. Why, when, and what happened questions were the most difficult of the nine wh-forms. In comparison with previous data from normal children, the language-disordered subjects' responses were significantly less appropriate and accurate. The language-disordered children also appeared particularly vulnerable to the increased cognitive/linguistic demands of questioning directed toward nonimmediate referents. A hierarchy of wh-question forms by relative difficulty was very similar to that observed for normal children. Implications for wh-question assessment and intervention are discussed.

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