In English, a sentence like "The cat didn't eat the carrot or the pepper" typically receives a "neither" interpretation; in Japanese it receives a "not this or not that" interpretation. These two interpretations are in a subset/superset relation, such that the "neither" interpretation (strong reading)…

The two possible positions for "wh"-words (i.e., in situ or preposed) represent a long-standing area of research in French. The present study reports on statistical analyses of a new seminaturalistic corpus of child L1 French. The distribution of the "wh"-words is examined in relation to a new verb tripartition: Free…

This article investigates spoken productions of complex questions with long-distance wh-movement in the L2 English of speakers whose first language is (Canadian) French or Bulgarian. Long-distance wh-movement is of interest as it can be argued that it poses difficulty in acquisition due to its syntactic complexity and related high processing load.…

This paper reports the results of an elicited production task of Long Distance (LD) "wh"-questions conducted with typically developing French- and Dutch-speaking children aged four and six, and adult control groups for each language. It is shown that besides input-convergent "wh"-questions, in both languages children use nontarget strategies to…

Children between the ages of 6 and 11 learn to understand and use the relative pronouns "qui" and "que." The closer the subordinate clause is to favorite word order, the easier it is for the child. (MLA)

Special issue devoted to research and the teaching of French in the elementary school. (VM)

Cross-linguistic investigation of the importance of syntactic cues and cue processing cost in French and Spanish four through six-year-olds' sentence comprehension revealed that topological cues helped French subjects most, while local cues helped Spanish subjects most. (Author/CB)

Examines the nature of thematization and thematic progression in children's narrative styles, in order to draw some conclusions regarding the acquisition of textual skills. (AM)

Two experiments examined the process of acquisition of sentence structure in the passive voice among young children. The subjects were several hundred monolingual French-speaking children aged 4-11 in schools in Liege, Belgium. The two experiments used different subject groups. In the first experiment, the children were required to interpret…

This paper reports on a study of the acquisition of subject and object relative clauses by monolingual French speaking children aged 4-10 years, in Rimouski, Quebec. The children were tested for their comprehension of six types of relative sentences. A coordinate sentence control test was administered. An adult control group was also tested on the…

Argues that early French relative clauses (RCs) with gaps involve movement of the relative head. The article suggests that children lack relative operators for maturational reasons. This account shows that the deviation of early RCs from adult grammar is due to this lacuna and is compensated for in a manner consistent with Universal Grammar. (39…

This original comparative study explores two central questions in the study of first language acquisition: What is the relative impact of structural and functional determinants? What is universal versus language-specific during development? The study addresses these questions in three domains of child language: reference to entities, the…

This paper is based on a longitudinal study of the development of questions in the spontaneous speech of two anglophone boys learning French by attending French language schools. The development of form-meaning relations in information questions in the children's French L2 speech was examined and comparisons were made with the same form-meaning…

The purpose of this paper is to review recent Soviet research on the child's development of Russian grammar, with detailed information on valuable methods for investigating this process. Cross-linguistic comparisons are made where applicable in view of their relevance for the study of universal aspects of language acquisition and linguistic…

This study presents an analysis of the successive steps used by Italian-speaking secondary school students to acquire mastery of the relative pronoun in standard French. This structure was chosen for study because the acquisition of the French relative pronoun is a source of difficulty for Italian learners. An analysis was made of the students…