Growing trees: The acquisition of the left periphery

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.

A propos de quelques tournures interrogatives et constructions associées dans les légendes discursives (‘Reden und Rufe’) des tombes privées

"(Pseudo)-Interrogative Sentences and Associated Phrases in Speech Captions in Private Tombs": In this paper, I discuss the (pseudo)-interrogative phrases, both those that are introduced by an interrogative word as well as those that are not. My aim is to provide a synchronic and diachronic study of such sentences and to illustrate a few of their uses in the Reden und Rufe corpus. After a short introduction (section 1), the predicate questions jn and jn-jw are considered in section 2 and adjunct questions built with the interrogative pronouns jšs.t, zy, m and the interrogative adverb ṯn(y) in section 3. Section 3 will further discuss a couple of affirmative and exclamative sentences, which have to be linked with the rhetorical question jšs.t pw A. The fourth and last section before conclusions is devoted to three cases studies relevant for this investigation, i.e. the proclitic particle js, which allows the speaker to distance himself from his words through an ironic statement (4.1), interrogative phrases without interrogative words (4.2), and the particle ḫy hitherto known from letters only (4.3). As a result 50 examples from Old Kingdom mastabas to Late Period tombs have been considered. Even if real (or ordinary) questions (OQs) arose in a few cases, there is a clear majority of rhetorical questions (RQs), which are uninformative and assertive. Both OQs and RQs can be expressed by means of the same syntactic structure, be it predicate questions, adjuncts questions, or interrogative phrases without interrogative words. Some are however preferred for RQs, and vice versa. The RQs as adjunct questions, which are predominant in this text corpus, invoke a predetermined answer from the addressee, being either jnk pw or jnk + nominalized participle. As such they reveal a first rhetorical strategy in which the answer is the counterpart of the question with exactly the same syntactic structure jšs.t pw A – jnk pw, zy pw A – jnk pw, and (j)n-m + participle – jnk + participle). The jšs.t pw A and (j)n-m + participle patterns expose a further rhetorical strategy in which the speaker and/or the addressee is/are objectified.

Exhaustifying Focus Intervention Effects: A Crosslinguistic Study

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:This paper describes, from a crosslinguistic perspective, the empirical pattern of focus phrases interacting with wh-in-situ arguments in their scope, and provides a preliminary theoretical analysis of the pattern. I cite examples from genetically unrelated languages to show that, contrary to Kim’s (2002, 2005) claim, not all focus phrases (FPs) trigger intervention effects (IEs). To control for any potential asymmetry between wh-arguments and wh-adjuncts, in my discussion of focus-included IE, I exclude wh-adjunct questions from consideration. I will show that whether an FP is an intervener for wh-in-situ argument questions depends on whether the FP receives an exhaustive interpretation or not.