The Underlying Position of External Arguments in French: A Study in Adult and Child Grammar

Abstract

In this article I argue in favor of a parameter ordering Spec VP with respect to V. After dealing with some adult phenomena, the study concentrates on early child French. Adopting Spec VP as the basic subject position, I show that some particular restrictions imposed on French Stylistic Inversion can be derived by assuming Spec VP to be right branching; these restrictions then follow from the typical linear adjacency requirement on Case assignment under government. Developmental data provide robust evidence for the right-branching Spec VP hypothesis, as children at around 2 years massively produce VOS utterances (and never VSO). Other sequences of constituents (e.g., (negation) - V[-finite]-subject) are also shown to favor a right-branching Spec VP hypothesis. The differences between the child and adult systems are treated as follows: The adjacency requirement is not compulsory at the relevant developmental stage, and the availability of an empty category to fill Spec IP is generalized. Finally, related points, such as conceivable triggers for parameter setting and cross-linguistic evidence for the hypothesis advanced, are discussed in some detail.

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