confs Belletti/Rizzi

[Lea Nash]

L'UMR 7023 (SFL)
a le plaisir d'annoncer deux exposés
,
Date : lundi 28 novembre 2005
Lieu : locaux SFL, 15 rue Catulienne, 93 Saint-Denis, salle 205
Heure :  9:30-11:00 (AB), 11:00-12:30 (LR)
Métro : Basilique de Saint-Denis
RER : Saint-Denis
9:30-11:00
Adriana Belletti
University of Siena
Answering strategies: A view from acquisition


RESUME

Different languages often make use of different strategies to answer the 
very same  question concerning the subject of the clause. Why should it 
be so? To what kind of analysis do the different strategies correspond?  
Are they as different as they appear to be? As discussed in part in 
previous work,  I will propose that principled reasons lead to the 
selection of the (partly different) preferred strategy in the languages 
considered (Italian, French, English; German will also be touched upon). 
Ultimately, the positive setting of the null subject parameter leads to 
the selection of the (subject)inversion/VS strategy in Italian, while 
different strategies, such as use of a (reduced) cleft or focalisation 
in the preverbal subject position (or in the left periphery) are adopted 
in the non-null subject French and English (and German). Despite their 
visible difference, these strategies will be shown to have more in 
common than it  appears at first sight. The analysis highlighting 
similarities and differences, will be developed in terms of the 
structural cartography of the low area of the clause. Acquisition data 
will be discussed against this background. In particular, adult L2 
acquisition experimental data will be shown to reveal the very existence 
of the detected strategies as well as some deep similarities among them, 
in a peculiar and interesting way. The question will also be addressed 
of how early in (first language) acquisition the different preferred 
strategies emerge and why and how one strategy typically takes priority 
over the others in the languages considered.

11:00-12:30
Luigi Rizzi
University of Siena
La discontinuité paramétrique dans l’acquisition  de la première langue 
et le « privilège de la racine »

RESUME

The study of development reveals that early linguistic productions by 
children are not mere structural copies of adult utterances: there are 
certain systematic discrepancies which call for an explanation. One 
important task of developmental linguistics is to precisely describe 
these discrepancies, and the changes they undergo. The analytic tools 
provided by formal syntax have turned out to be precious in this 
respect, but we want to go beyond an accurate descriptive chart of 
development, and try to understand what the inner causes are of the 
observed developmental course: why does the child entertain partially 
non-target consistent systems, producing structures that she does not 
hear? And what makes her eventually converge to the target system?  In 
this talk I would like to argue for a grammar-based and 
performance-driven approach to the target inconsistencies in child 
language, developing a line of inquiry which I presented in work  of the 
last few years (e.g., Rizzi 2005). The central idea is that the language 
acquisition device initially recruits certain  parametric values which 
facilitate the task of the child’s immature performance systems. The 
strategy thus is grammar based, as it involves the use of genuine 
options of Universal Grammar, but performance driven, as it is 
determined by the immaturity of performance systems. The empirical 
phenomenon which I will mainly focus on to substantiate this approach is 
the familiar case of systematic subject drop observed in child language. 
The analysis will integrate the grammar-based, performance-driven 
perspective on development with two advances in theoretical and 
descriptive syntax: the cartography of syntactic structures (Belletti 
ed. 2004, Cinque 1999, Cinque ed. 2002, Rizzi ed. 2004a), and Phase 
Theory (Chomsky 2001, Nissenbaum 2000).

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